The artist would be his third kill in the Cities, the fifthof his life. Themicrowave crap would kill her if he didn’t, the maddogthought. She slept on anarrow bed in a tiny storage room, beneath an art-decocrucifix, immersed in vapors of turpentine and linseed.She was out now, shopping for microwave dinners. She lived illegally in thewarehouse, bathing late at night in the communal restroom down the hall, furtively cooking microwave mealsafter the building manager left for the day. She had smooth olive skin and liquid brown eyes,tidy breasts and a slender waist. For some people, for people like his father, it mustbe like this every minute of every hour: life on a higherplane of existence. He was never so alive as in the last moments of a longstalk. Feel the sweat tricklefrom the pores of his underarms. A digital clockpunched red electronic minutes into the silence. Knives.Ī stereo was dimly visible as a collection of rectangularsilhouettes on the window ledge. An ashtray full of pennies and paper clips. The light ricocheted offglass and stainless steel: an empty crystal bud vase rimedwith dust, a pencil sharpener, a microwave oven, peanut-butterjars filled with drawing pencils, paintbrushes andcrayons. 1A rooftop billboard cast a flickering blue lightthrough the studio windows.
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