never been his problem. He had been loyal to Blue Mountain coffee.
He had been loyal to Undergrounds. He had been loyal to Ellie, or
would have if he had been given the chance. He knew it be the same
with Sprout. He knew this because, despite the fact that they had
made love many times now, she always grew more beautiful in his
eyes after the height of climax. He could travel along with her and
never come crashing back down to earth.
Of course he sympathized with Leona, felt terrible that she had
been injured by the whole affair. But what could he do about that? He
knew that change was the only constant, and whether things changed
for better or worse was anyone’s measure of chance. He had seen his
own share of bad fortune. It was only fair that something good finally
came his way.
Because Partment was so protective of his tenants, Roy was
reluctant to walk through the lobby at night with flowers on his arm.
The old man was in many ways a proud but fanatical father, his
tenants and employees substitutes for the family he would never
enjoy. He was especially protective of Sprout. Roy saw the light on in
her room and instead walked around to the side of the building.
Selecting a pebble, he hurled it up at her third-floor window but
he was unsure if it hit. She did not appear.
He was searching for another stone of just the right size when he
saw her thin arm emerge from the window, waving a message of
some sort. As she let go it flapped downwards, spinning in air
currents electric with change. Laughing, he tried to catch it but it
fluttered and landed across his beaming face.
Roy’s ancestors had been able to tell fortunes by reading coffee
grounds, animal bones and even cow intestines, but he didn’t need
any special knowledge to make sense of this message. Rotund letters
reading Colin Biddenprovided a cruel redundancy. The faded hearts
over the “i”s seemed suddenly as sickly ridiculous as his own.
4. Inland
Yak knew about the crazed kid long before he saved him from the sea.
It was hard not to notice him if you were out on the streets at night.
There were many like him, the ones who saw too much, who felt too
much, who could not ignore the merest trifles. Where most tried to
ABYSSINIA
156
 |
 |
 |
 |