Cash Burn by Michael Berrier Page B

drapes glowed against the sun. On the other side of the glass the LA air was packed dense, and the sidewalk was two stories down—no way for anyone to crawl up or in. But he sensed the fragility of the glass as a thin barricade against the outside.
    He walked into the kitchen. Shards of glass from the broken coffeepot still sparkled on the linoleum. He passed an instant of wanting to grind the soles of his naked feet into the curved spikes of glass winking in the light like crystal claws.
    He stepped into the living room, the carpet under his feet stiff with wear and accumulated dust. Here sunlight through another window was barricaded off by blinds, parallel lines of glare seeping between and illuminating him and the yellowed walls. Where two of them joined the ceiling, a cobweb dangled, a gray wisp like a tiny hangman’s strand.
    At the edge of the door, the metallic bar of the dead bolt was visible in the crack beside the jamb. Locking out. Locking in. He went to it, put his fingers on the switch. He twisted it to make sure it was locked.
    His hand. He brought it up and stared at the back of it, brought up the other next to it to compare them. The right was still purple where he’d bruised the knuckles on the kid’s face, but the cut was healing. He had needed no weapon other than these bones, this skin, these muscles and tendons all clenched together into a club. These were his weapons. He flexed them into fists, regarded the tools he’d used to steal a life.
    A knock on the door startled him. He dropped his hands and took a step backward.
    He should look through the peephole, but his feet stayed rooted to the carpet.
    It could be Cole. The prospect of seeing the PO nagged at Flip’s chest as inevitable as gravity. He couldn’t handle Cole now. In this condition, he might as well give him a signed confession.
    Another knock, softer. A woman’s voice. “Flip? Flip, darlin’, you in there?”
    He rushed to the door, his purple-backed hand fumbling with the dead bolt. Sliding it clear, he twisted the knob, and there was Diane. She stood in that lifeless, stained hallway like a flower crowding through a crack in the city’s asphalt. Her lips shifted into a smile, and they moved to form words, the soft pink flesh of her tongue grazing her front teeth.
    Flip couldn’t process her words. Her presence in his doorway shocked his mind until she reached out to press her fingertips into his arm. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
    He wanted to seize her, fold his arms around her and squeeze, feel her warmth against his chest as a denial that he could do the things he’d done.
    But all he did was step aside.
    She moved before him, some inches shorter even though she wore heels. Her hair passed him, its fragrance bringing to mind cleanness, freshness. He wanted to bury his face in it and drink in the scent.
    He slammed the door. Locked it.
    She was talking again, words with meanings that escaped him, her back to him, blouse snug against her waist where it slipped into the top of the skirt hugging her hips, covering her to where her calves emerged like twins flexing until she turned to bring that face back to him. Those lips, damp and red. Those eyes.
    She dropped onto the sofa, folded her legs beside her. A hand went to the sofa cushion next to her, patted.
    Mute as a crab, he scrabbled across the floor to her. He couldn’t take his eyes off her face. When she smiled, his own face bloomed into a smile too, the oppression of his memories ascending from his mind. Cradled by the sofa cushions next to her now, he brought his eyes down to her hands where they were folded on her lap, nails painted pink, fingers tapered, bending, smooth and white.
    One of the hands moved to his. The contrast of this delicate hand on his made him recoil upon himself. Underneath her hand, his was a bruised mallet, his fingers like knotted, blackened sausages cobbled into the lumpy meat of his backhand. This hand was who he was. It was what