Free The Radiant City by Lauren B. Davis Page B

willing him to hear her even if she makes no sound, Joseph! Run! Run! Run!
     
    How did he get past Joseph without waking him? What has he done to Joseph? Anatole steps closer, so slowly, he is torturing her. He smiles, his thin pale tongue rubbing against his top teeth, as though she is something he will enjoy eating, once she is properly cooked. He stands over her, lifts the pot, his face is blackness, shiny, empty. She hopes she will die this time, and quickly.
     
    “ Maman! Maman! Wake up. You’re dreaming! You’re dreaming again."
     
    The sound coming from her throat is like that of an animal, bellowing with the lion at its throat. Strangled. Wordless. As though her throat had been cut. Joseph shakes her and then takes her in his arms and pushes her hair back from her sweaty forehead. Slowly she comes to herself and wraps her arms around her son.
     
    “It’s okay,” she says, “I’m all right.”
     
    “Wake up, wake up,” he murmurs. “Wake up.”
     
    Their tears are impossible to separate. Rain from the same sky, making the flames of her terror sizzle and hiss and steam, until they are nothing but grey ash.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter Ten
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Itis Saturday and Matthew lies on his bed, staring up at the midday ceiling. The dull dishwater light shows up the cracks in the paint. Last night he dreamed about women. Ghost women with long fingers and pale, bruised legs. Friendly. He dreamed of Kate, and now he aches for her, knowing it is irrational. Something about holding each other. Forgiving each other. Tears. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and searches for an argument compelling enough to make him get out of bed. Here he is, come to the City of Light and what does he do? Skulks in the shadows of basement bars with ex-mercenaries, with broken down ex-cops, with hookers. Well, at least tonight he’ll be going to dinner at Anthony’s house. A change of scene from the Bok-Bok, right? Only sort of .
     
    He moans. Sits up. Enough. Get out of bed. He smells sour . The bed smells sour. Take a shower. Do a wash . The idea of lugging his laundry to the launderette on rue de Clichy is enough to make him roll over and go back to sleep. Agreed, then. No laundry . But there must be something. There must be a reason to get out of bed.
     
    You could write something . He moans again, louder this time. Brent leaves messages every second day. He should write something. Why not write anything and send it to him? Shut him up at least?
     
    He drags himself to the bathroom, pisses loudly. Brushes his teeth and talks himself into taking a shower. The small shower is built into one of those fantastic French jokes, the sitz bath: a thigh-high square tub just large enough for one dainty Frenchmen to squat in, with a shelf for sitting, if one could figure out where to put one’s legs. For Matthew, at his height, it is impossible. From the ceiling hangs a chrome ring with a white plastic curtain around it and a jerry-rigged plastic hose attached to the faucet below. At least there’s lots of hot water. He strips off his underpants and steps in. The water pricks at his skin and the steam softens the air. He looks down at his hard-on. Soaps up his hand. He begins to believe there may yet be hope for the day.
     
    Half an hour later, coffee in hand, he sits as his desk. He picks up a pen. Begin where today? Try Srebrenica. Try Herzegovina. But his mind is on women. Ghost women. And as he tries to write they haunt him . . .
     
     
     
     
     
    There was a girl in Herzegovina. No more than sixteen or seventeen. She had a small wound on the side of her temple. So small it was astonishing to think it had killed her. By then I’d seen bodies ripped up so many times it felt as though that was the way death should be. But this small spot, so little blood, seemed impossible. Her mother or grandmother (ages were hard to guess) knelt beside her, doubled-over with arthritis, her