The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [63]
“You piece of shit,” Tully said. “Did you just look at me? Did you fucking look at me? Shouldn’t you be cleaning shit off my arse instead of sleeping with our girls?”
Continuing to stare at a point to the side of Tully’s face, the man said nothing. Now the girl had awoken. She might have been ten.
The kholic said, “This is not what you think.”
“How you know what I think?” Tully kicked the man again, harder this time, in the ribs. “I think I see a piece of shit sleeping on a rooftop.” Against Tully’s back, his heavy bag moved, and he remembered his intentions. “Lazy-ass motherfuckers. Sleeping away the day. You’re lucky I’m in a good mood. You,” to the girl, “what are you doing with this piece of shit?”
“He’s nice,” the girl said, barely audible.
“What? What did you say?”
“He’s a nice man. He takes care of me.”
“Nice?” Spittle sprayed from Tully’s mouth. “Mother fuck! You called him a man? He’s not a man. Does he look like me? I’m a fucking man! Let’s cut him open and see what comes out.”
Yet Tully laughed to see the girl’s face.
Rain that had just recently stopped had soaked the roof here, so that the couple lay in a puddle. Tully knew they were addicts, most likely not lovers, as the kholic had said. Not that he cared about the girl’s age—he had slept with younger—but hemos were for hemos. Kholics were for gutters and shit. He glanced about for anything worth taking but had no expectations and saw nothing that belonged to the pair anyhow except the rags they wore and countless fleas. He entertained a fleeting image of violence, kicking the kholic in the face, or perhaps forcing himself on the child, to give her a taste of red blood, and he amused himself briefly with these lurid images. But he had no time right now to follow through.
Besides, he was in a good mood.
He gave the kholic another kick but the kholic remained on his side, breathing heavily.
“You need to learn your place,” Tully said. “Go back to where you belong. Are any of you left in that fucking shithole you live in? Seems like you get bolder every day, you lot. People won’t take this anymore. You’ll see. There’s something in the air. Find out soon enough. And you, kid, you’re as bad as him. You should be marked with a tattoo. You disgust me.”
The girl seemed to be waiting for Tully to say something else but Tully was done. He would remember this roof. He would return. He told the couple this. The girl looked lithe and strong. She hadn’t been addicted for long. Most addicts had bags under their eyes and the skin of their faces was yellowed and creased. Like the kholic’s. What Tully could see of his face, anyhow.
Tully smiled at the girl.
As for the fleas, well, they could keep them—he had enough of his own. Adjusting the load on his back, Tully grinned. “If I ever see either of you again,” he said, “I will fuck you up, I promise.”
Then, happy with himself, Tully stepped over the pair to scale the damp and mouldy bricks of the adjacent building. This residence had been constructed, or had fallen, in such a way that the surface of the wall merged with the roof Tully stood on. Moss and lichen and spawl gently sloped away from him. Masonry crumbled as he scaled it. His fingers, in more than a few places, sank right into porous bricks.
The higher rooftop sagged under his considerable weight. Tully was a large-boned and meaty man. Always had been. Other body types irritated him. Any man who was not large and strong was unworthy, unless they had money or food.
Women, other than his dear mother, and the whores of Canning Street, were entirely baffling.
Once, his first time making the upward trip, he had nearly plunged through this very spot. But he learned where the hidden beams were and placed his feet accordingly now, almost without looking. A few inches made all the difference.
Deeper water had collected in a pool here. The water must have been stagnant for a while, since swarms of the tiny tube-like creatures that lived in unemptied barrels and brackish ponds, and in the rain gutters of Nowy Solum, churned to detect his dim shadow.