Nova Swing Read Free

enveloped the table-edge. His voice was quiet and urgent, but you could hear the odd word, “entradista,” “hard X-rays,” “Chinese Ed.” Vic stared through him too, then said, “Shut up or I’ll shoot you where you sit.” The fat man looked hopelessly away. He said all he wanted in this bar was a chance, Vic should give him a chance. He was trying not to cry. “I’m sorry,” Vic said, but he was already thinking about something else, and when Liv Hula brought him his drink, and sat down and said, “Black Heart, Vic, just the way you like it,” he barely seemed to recognise her.
    “Shit,” he said again.
    “Where’s the woman, Vic?”
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “Only I don’t want to hear you left her there.”
    “She cracked and ran. She’s in the aureole somewhere. Antoyne, go to the door, tell me if anyone’s in the street.”
    “All I want is a chance to fit in,” the fat man said.
    “For fuck’s sake, Antoyne.”
    Antoyne said, “No one understands that.”
    Serotonin opened his mouth to say more, then he seemed to forget Antoyne altogether. “I never saw panic like it,” he said. He shook his head. “You couldn’t even say we’d got inside. It’s bad this morning, but it’s not that bad.” He finished his drink and held out the glass. Instead of taking it, Liv Hula caught his wrist.
    “So how bad is it?” she said. She wouldn’t let go until he told her.
    “Things are moving about,” he admitted. “I’ve seen worse, but usually further in.”
    “Where is she, Vic?”
    He laughed. It was a laugh he had practised too often. “I told you,” he said tiredly, “she’s somewhere in the aureole. We never got any further. She runs off between the buildings, I see silk stockings and that fucking fur coat, then I see nothing. She was still calling from somewhere when I gave up,” he said. “Get me another drink, Liv, or I don’t know what I’ll do.”
    Liv Hula said, “You didn’t go after her, Vic.”
    He stared.
    “You stayed where it was safe, and shouted a couple times, and then you came home.”
    “Vic would never do that,” the fat man said in a blustering way. No one was going to say Vic would do that. “Hey, Vic. Tell her. You would never do that!” He got up out of his chair. “I’m going in the street and keep an eye open now, just the way you wanted. You got a wrong idea about Vic Serotonin,” he said to Liv Hula, “if you think he’d do that.” As soon as he had gone, she went to the bar and poured Vic another Black Heart rum, while Vic rubbed his face with his hands like someone who was very tired and couldn’t see his way through life anymore. His face had an older look than it had when he left. It was sullen and heavy, and his blue eyes took on a temporary pleading quality which one day would be permanent.
    “You don’t know what it’s like in there,” he told her.
    “Of course I don’t,” she said. “Only Vic Serotonin knows that.”
    “Streets transposed on one another, everything laid down out of sync one minute to the next. Geography that doesn’t work. There isn’t a single piece of dependable architecture in the shit of it. You leave the route you know, you’re done. Lost dogs barking day and night. Everything struggling to keep afloat.”
    She wasn’t disposed to let him get away with that.
    “You’re the professional, Vic,” she reminded him. “They’re the customers. Here’s your other drink if you want it.” She leaned her elbows on the bar. “You’re the one has to hold himself together.”
    This seemed to amuse him. He took the rum down in one swallow, the colour came back into his face and they looked at one another in a more friendly way. He wasn’t finished with her, though. “Hey, Liv,” he said softly after a moment or two, “what’s the difference between what you’ve seen and what you are? You want to know what it’s like in there? The fact is, you spend all those years trying to make something