Read Death Kit for Free Online Page B

alarmed. “I was watching you all the time. Don’t you remember? Try to think. Please! I said I was going for more information. For all of us. To find someone on the train who knew what was going on.”
    â€œI don’t remember that. I’m sorry.”
    â€œBut if you don’t believe me,” Diddy says, almost in tears, “how can I tell you what happened outside the train?”
    â€œI didn’t say I don’t believe you left the compartment,” says the girl, soothingly. Her hand tightened on Diddy’s. “I just said that I don’t remember your leaving.”
    â€œThat isn’t good enough,” groaned Diddy.
    â€œPlease tell me,” she says, reaching out to touch his face. “Please don’t cry.”
    â€œOh, don’t pity me!” Diddy pushes her hand away, but it comes back. “I can’t stand pity. If you only knew how sick I am of feeling sorry for myself.”
    â€œI’m not sorry for you. I swear it. Tell me what happened.”
    â€œAll right.” Diddy takes a deep breath, pulling his face slightly away from her fingers. Even the air felt guilty. “I—” He can’t. Why won’t it come out? “I was going to kill myself. That’s why I went outside. I intended to lie down on the tracks and wait for the train to start up again.” The girl is silent, her palm resting on Diddy’s cheek. He gazes imploringly at her. It wasn’t the truth, but it felt like the truth.
    â€œWhy do you want me to know this?” says the girl quietly. “Do you think I can help you?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Diddy, closing his eyes for a moment. “I suppose I just had to tell someone. Otherwise, it’s so unreal.”
    â€œBut it’s equally unreal to me,” says the girl in a still quieter voice. “Since you didn’t do it. Since you’re here. With me.”
    â€œAm I real to you?” Diddy’s eyeballs ache.
    â€œVery.” She continues caressing his face.
    â€œBut you can’t … You can’t … see me.”
    In reply, she leans against his chest. For a moment Diddy thinks she’s been thrown there by the motion of the train; then realizes she wants to kiss him. Eagerly, gratefully he folds his arms around her, strokes the girl’s plump liquid body, curiously soft, boneless. As if she were naked. The brown print dress of some cheap synthetic material feels like another skin, to which his hands seem to adhere. There is suction in the tips of his fingers, desire warming his belly. “I want to make love to you,” he whispers. Has she understood? “There’s something I haven’t told you. I mean, something you didn’t ask me.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWhy I didn’t go through with it. Outside.”
    â€œBecause you were afraid?”
    â€œWell, that too. But it was also because I thought—I thought of you,” says Diddy, one hand on the girl’s breast. Diddy the Seducer. “I’d been staring at you ever since the train started. I wanted to touch you, to make love to you. That’s why I came back.”
    â€œI’m glad.”
    Is it wrong, what Diddy the Seducer is doing? Another wrong? A crime, an insult to trust?
    â€œI want to make love to you,” he repeats stonily. A tryst, a truce.
    She nods, drops her hands to his waist and rubs her face against his cheek. For a moment they stand there immobile, a tableau of desire. Graven on stone.
    Then the dry, withering grief breaks over Diddy, and he sags under its weight. The girl seemed to vanish; there’s only the whistling train, and Diddy trying helplessly to remain standing, allowing himself to be propped up. “What am I doing?” he groans. Feels the train under his feet, furiously eating up the track. Its obscene velocity mocking the languor that now invades his frail body. “I think I’m lying to