Free A Bright Moon for Fools by Jasper Gibson

withdrawing the necessary funds right away.
    Without dark glasses to act in his defence, Christmas was interrogated by daylight, the sun sitting in judgement while an unfamiliar, feverish city whispered and accused. He went back to El
Barco. It was barely open. There was a different man behind the bar and someone else cleaning the floor. They looked at him blankly and shook their heads.
    He went back to the hotel and made it to his room without being stopped. He searched it again. He went into the bathroom. He checked under the towels, in the bin, under the sink, inside the
cistern. Then he sat down on the toilet and closed his eyes, seething black spells of hatred against the world. How could this be happening? He went and sat down on the bed. He took out
Emily’s book and held it against his face, groaning. Why hadn’t he listened to her? Why hadn’t he put it in the room safe?
    His secured credit card was undoubtedly out of funds. Apart from an emergency thousand pounds hidden away in London, the rest of Diana’s money he had already spent or gambled. He paced
around his room until lunchtime. There was neither a friend nor a bank left in the world that would lend him a penny more. He was stranded. “Up on two legs, man!” he shouted at himself.
“Pull yourself together!” Most of his money was gone. That was no longer the point. The point was: what was he going to do next?
    Christmas rang room service. He ordered a large vodka and tonic, a bottle of carbonated water, cream of tomato soup, roast chicken with fried rice and vegetables and a cocktail glass stuffed
with balls of sorbet. He consumed the lot, summoning energy for his next move. Then, as he had anticipated, the phone rang.

13
    “I ’m sorry to keep you waiting, sir,” said the duty manager as he hung up the receiver. “Actually Mister Christmas said
he’s on his way down.
    “Remember,” said Slade, “it’s a surprise.” The duty manager gave him a professional smile. The side of Slade’s face was bruised. He smelt of alcohol.
    Slade sat beside a table fanned with magazines that faced the elevator doors. He took in the luxury that Christmas was buying with his stepmother’s money.
    Once Slade had found a hotel room he had cleaned the blood from the cut above his ear and ordered a bottle of whisky. It was a wretched room that stank of cigarettes but he had
taken it anyway, desperate for Caracas to be on the other side of a locked door. He sat on the bed staring at a television he couldn’t understand with toilet paper in one hand and a glass of
fake scotch in the other, patting his head for new blood, hands starting to steady as he got drunk and retold himself what had just happened: how he had sprung to his feet as soon as the bandits
holstered their guns and fled; how he chased them; how they disappeared into their own city like the rats they were; how if they had fought like men, he would have walked away from a pile of bodies
with his kitbag still on his shoulder; how it was Harry Christmas’ fault. They were his men, sent to deliver another insult, another humiliation, another theft. Slade thought back to his
first encounter with Christmas and cursed the fat man’s escape.
    Diana had freely opened an account with her fiancé so the police were not interested when Christmas disappeared with her money. Slade had no idea she even had a boyfriend. He hadn’t
talked to Diana in almost two years, though he often drove past her house and wrote letters and emails that were never answered.
    When she called, she was so raving drunk he could hardly understand what she was saying. He went over to her house and she was crawling around the kitchen floor as if newly blind, empty bottles
of wine everywhere, screeching and sobbing out the story of how Harry Christmas had betrayed her; how she wanted his legs broken; how she wanted him dead. Finally, he had a mission.
    Diana started to droop and he gathered her up and carried her to bed and