Read The Evil Seed for Free Online

while.’
    ‘Well, I’m back here to
stay now,’ went on Joe. ‘I’ve got a flat on Maid’s Causeway, I told the
landlady I was a grad student and she believed me. She’s deaf as a post, and
lets the band practise in her cellar. She says she likes Irish music because
she’s a lapsed Catholic. Just as long as she doesn’t listen to any of the
lyrics.’
    Alice smiled in spite of
herself. ‘That bad, eh?’ she asked.
    He made a non-committal
sound. ‘Could be better,’ he admitted. ‘Still, we manage all right on income
support, and once we start playing the colleges, you never know, we might begin
to get a core of discerning followers. You know, the kind that throw full cans
at you instead of empty ones.’
    ‘Joe …’ said Alice
carefully. ‘It’s late. Why are you phoning me now? It’s been over three years—’
    ‘Does there have to be a
reason?’ His voice was almost aggressive now. ‘You always did try to find
hidden meanings in everything. Why don’t you loosen up a bit? I felt like
catching up, that’s all. Maybe we could go for a walk, have a pizza, anything.
You might even want to see me play.’
    The anger, if it had
been there at all, was gone from Joe’s voice now, and the idea suddenly seemed
not just possible, but attractive. A pause, during which Alice looked out of
the window at the magnolia nodding in the orange street-light. Then Joe went on
in a strange tight voice: ‘So how’re you doing these days, Al? You’ve not gone
and married the boy next door?’
    ‘You were the boy
next door,’ she said. ‘And you? Have you found the L-word yet? Does she play
the cello? You always fantasized about a girl who could play the cello.’
    ‘No, she doesn’t play
the cello,’ said Joe, with a low laugh. ‘But…’ Underneath the light tone
Alice thought she could hear anxiety. ‘I met her quite by accident. You’d never
have expected to see her there, in a dive like the Sluice… you know the
place? They drink the beer, then they eat the glass. Anyway, there was this
girl there, sitting right at the front, all by herself, watching me all the
time. Did you ever hear of anyone going to see a gig and watching the bass
player all the time? The lead singer, yes. That’s the pretty one with the long
blond hair and that kind of fetching undernourished look. But me? I mean, who
am I? I went to the bar to get a beer and she watched me all the way there as
well. It made me feel weird. As if she could see right through me. So I kept
looking away, right? Thinking, pretty soon she’ll get bored and move off But
she never did. And so I took another look at her, and then I went in for a
closer look. And she was waiting, as if she knew. The rest, as they say, is
history.
    Alice was silent, taking
it in. She was beginning to feel she understood. This phone call, after all
this time… A complex feeling overwhelmed her; something a little like
regret, but mostly like relief.
    ‘Good for you,’ she said
at last, realizing that she meant it.
    ‘Do you mean that?’
    ‘Of course I do.
Friends, Joe, remember?’
    His answering laugh was
a little unsteady, and she could tell that he was moved.
    ‘God, I’m relieved!’
    ‘So am I. Now I don’t
have to spend my life looking over my shoulder expecting to see you in pursuit.’
    Good laughter together.
Alice held the moment to her, that warmth, knowing that in some way for Joe it
was an exorcism of her, of their wild and bad years, of what he still thought
of as her rejection of him. She felt a sudden rush of unpossessive,
uncomplicated love for him, sad Joe hiding his isolation behind a wall of
facetiousness, Joe who only needed to be needed and wanted and clung to before
he could blossom. She hoped that this girl would be the right one for him now,
hoped that she would like electric folk music, would want babies and marriage
and all the things which Joe had wanted, and Alice had given up in the name of
her freedom.
    Something cold and hard
and