Third Rail Read Free

circus hair.
    â€œThanks, Marnie.” Harkness takes the beer. Why not? Thalia’s friends are his friends now.
    â€œThalia just told me you’re that Harvard Cop!”
    He shakes his head and drinks.
    â€œDude. That was like the fucking worst thing
ever
?
That happens, then the Sox haven’t won ever since?”
    That happens
—his notorious incident reduced to two words.
    â€œYou go to jail?”
    â€œNo,” Harkness says. “They don’t send cops to jail for doing their job.”
    â€œGood, ’cause that whole thing was fucked up? I mean way fucked up. What kind of douche would do that shit? Drop a friend off a bridge . . . down onto the Pike?”
    It’s a question Harkness asks himself every day. And its darker twin—
Why couldn’t he stop them?
    â€œBeantown is a mean town,” Marnie recites.
“That’s what I always say. Looks all nice and historical on the surface. But underneath it’s fucking rotten. Boston’s built on these piers from the 1700s, you know? When they rot, the whole city is going down. Gonna be total fucking chaos.”
    With her curling voice and fake tough talk, Marnie makes Harkness feel old at twenty-nine. “I’ll remember that,” he says. “You seen Thalia?”
    â€œSaw her in the kitchen.” Marnie points. “Over there.”
    â€œThanks.” He makes his way through the crowd. Like Marnie, half of them think Harkness is wearing a costume. The others sidle away, sure he’s here to shut down the party. He walks across the loft floor trying to keep it together, one foot in front of the next.
No staggering. No falling.
That’s the order of the day.
    His cell phone rings and Harkness clicks it open.
    â€œThalia, where are you?”
    â€œDon’t you know?”
    â€œWho’s this?”
    â€œPauley Fitz,” a man’s voice says. “
Turnpike Toreador
. Happy anniversary, Harkness.”
    Â 
    Thalia’s passed out, face down on a paint-stained wooden table crowded with empties, surrounded by a clutch of art guys in thin leather jackets smoking cigarettes. They turn toward Harkness, decide he’s not a real cop, and keep talking. The tallest of them, wearing old-style black jeans and a tight white pocket T-shirt, is telling a joke. Harkness hangs back.
    â€œSo there’s this clown and this little girl. And they’re walking into a forest.” Art guy bends his shining bald forehead toward the listeners. “The girl says, ‘I’m scared, these woods are creepy.’” He pauses. “Then the clown stops, turns to the girl, and says,
‘How do you think I feel? I’m gonna have to walk back home alone
.
’”
    They laugh, paper-white faces twisted, crooked teeth flashing. They’ve never seen a dead girl. Or pieces of one.
    â€œC’mon, Thalia.” Harkness shakes her shoulder and her eyes open. “Gotta head out. Now.”
    Thalia reaches back for her coat. No confusion, no fighting it. Harkness takes her arm and leads her out of the kitchen. The art guys watch them like crows.
    â€œNever seen anyone that drunk,” someone whispers in their wake.
    â€œThalia? Thalia Havoc?” another says. “That girl’s legendary.”
    Â 
    Harkness shoulders the heavy door to one side and they fall into Thalia’s loft, locked in a kiss so hard that Harkness feels her teeth. She’s peeling off his uniform before the door slams closed. She helps him unbuckle the belt and the leather and metal viscera of his job clunks to the floor.
    Thalia strides across the dark wood floor. There’s a studio with an easel and canvases on one side and a cluster of mismatched furniture and a futon on the other. Ten minutes ago she was passed out at a kitchen table. Now she’s wide-awake, buoyed by a brutal second wind, stalking across the splintered loft floor to light candles on the windowsill. The