Hollow Man Read Online Free Page A

forward over the desk. I wanted him to know that the joking was over, that this mattered to me. “But Ijust moved into a new apartment, with a roommate no less, but I have more than forty grand in school loans. I have credit-card debt and a car lease I can't get out of.”
    He held up placating hands. “It not that much of a pay cut. Couple hundred a month.”
    I clenched my fists and worked hard not to punch the desk, the wall, him. “I'm on the edge as it is. I don't have leeway to give up a couple hundred a month.”
    â€œYou have your music gigs. Don't they pay?”
    â€œNo, Cherry, they don't. The going rate is a couple of free beers and a waitress passing around the tip jar.”
    Austin, the Live Music Capital of the world, was chock-full of musicians like me, part-timers who could play well enough but who competed for time at the smaller joints and had no hope playing at the big ones, except as an opening act. Which took luck and a crapload more exposure than a part-time soloist like me could manage. Meanwhile, the pubs and small clubs gave us stage time for tips while they cleaned up with the sale of booze. Win-win for the bars and customers, not so much for the free help, the hopeful, the dreamers like me.
    â€œAh, I didn't realize,” Cherry said. “I'm sorry about the money thing—all of it really—but there's nothing I can do at this point.”
    I sat back and loosened my tie, wondering whether it was for moments like this we weren't allowed guns in the building. It crossed my mind to tell him about the phone call this morning, make him feel like a weasel for doing this to me on the day I heard my parents were dead, but I knew it wouldn't make any difference. He and I were cogs in the machine, and the machine had been preprogrammed to spit me out into juvie and didn't have the capacity to care.
    â€œHow long is this for?” I asked.
    â€œThey're trying to keep these rotations to a year, give or take a few months. A year is the goal, though.” He scratched the back of hishead and squinted. “I'm not being facetious, but technically this is a promotion. As far as your résumé goes, that is. You'll be second in command over there, under Maureen but senior to the three other juvenile prosecutors.”
    â€œA promotion.” I needed deep breaths to stop myself from throttling the messenger. “I'll be handling shoplifting, weed-smoking, car-breaking little punks instead of real criminals. I'll get a pay cut and will share an office with a dork. How the fuck do I apply for a demotion?”
    â€œYeah, I know. Sorry.” He looked up, like a hopeful child. “I gather the workload is much lighter. Less stress and all.”
    â€œI know this isn't your fault, Cherry, but that won't stop me plotting your miserable death as I stare out of my window on those interminable, but low-stress, days.”
    â€œYes, well.” He stood and smoothed down his trousers, a tiny smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “I suppose my demise is far from imminent then.”
    â€œMeaning?”
    â€œFunny thing, really. They're all interior offices down there. You won't have a window.”

    There's a coldness that settles around my heart when my life starts to slide in the wrong direction. It's a physical sensation, not an emotional one. I don't really do emotions, you see, not like most people. I can feel some of them, ones like anger, disappointment, and lust. Emotions that begin and end with me, those I can feel, but my life is generally governed by logic, reason, and manipulation. Emotions that tie me to others, like compassion, love, or even fear, those I don't feel. I pretend to, of course, I've been pretending since I was a kid, and my success in life depends on me wearing the right mask at the right time.
    So when Cherry walked out of my office, I wore the hangdog, poor-me face that he expected, lowering my eyes so he couldn't see the