Read The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue for Free Online

sore
thumb. He had his three shopping bags, two empty ones inside of the
other. He had a small day-pack on his back. He had his bus pass, a
sixty-dollar a month value as the government was fond of saying
when asked why the disabled must live sixty-five percent below the
poverty line.
    Criminals lived better, and that was
okay with Scott Nettles.
    That’s because he was about to become
one.
    We’re moving on up in the
world.
    It’s about fucking time,
too.
    Damn, but this felt good.
    She had some money, but they had
decided it was better if she avoided crowds and cameras altogether.
This would not be easy but they had disguised her to some extent
with different clothing, an old pea jacket, and a big red bandanna
for a head scarf.
    He could only imagine the
effect.
    Damn them all.
    “ I love you too,
Betty.”
    He smiled. It was a beautiful thing to
see, or so he had been told.
    “ Don’t you worry about me,
Baby. I’ve been doing this for a long time.”
    She did up the buttons on his
jacket.
    “ I know,
Scott.”
    “ I’ll be there.” His smile
was gone. “Just make sure you show.”
    A hard lump of concrete or something
obstructed his throat, and while swallowing was hard enough,
getting the words out was something else.
    “ Promise, Betty. Please
promise me. Please.”
    She kissed him lightly on the lips and
gave him one last hug.
    “ Don’t you worry, Scott. I
promise. I will never lie to you, Scott.”
    Her face was moist.
    “ You’re wet—what is that?”
In wonder, he reached up and touched her cheek.
    He nodded, face pulling downwards, grim
with the thought of separation.
    The odds were worse than fifty-fifty,
he thought.
    There’s no way she’s going to show.
It’s a just a way of getting me out of the way while she bolts for
freedom.
    To start crying now would be too much
for him. That would be it and it would be over.
    He steeled himself with false hope and
fake courage.
    “ All righty then.” His
head swiveled and then his body followed his decision. “Let’s do
this.”
    She held the door and carefully closed
and locked it after his departure.
    She had everything they might
reasonably need or could possibly carry, packed in two pieces,
mismatched as to colour and size, of hard-sided plastic
luggage.
    Scott had all the cash he could find in
the house, including a fistful of change. Scott had a backpack. He
had his bank debit card. He had his credit card, passport, birth
certificate, anything they could think of. Betty’s raw physical
strength meant that poor Scottie would have clothes, socks,
underwear, and they had a supply of food. Upon her recital of the
items included, Scott figured it was good for four or five days, or
enough to get them out of the city and most probably the state.
Short and erratic steps all the way.
     
    ***
     
    He was surprisingly cheerful, having
made the decision.
    Scott was buoyed up by the sheer
novelty of it.
    For whatever reason it felt right, and
Scott had been plenty fed up with his lot in life for a very long
time.
    Maybe now we can get someone to kill
me.
    Scott laughed out loud at that
one.
    He liked the feeling of being bad. It
was a ray of hope.
    Is this guts? I always thought I
already had them.
    This is something new.
    This was the chance to do something
different, for Scott to reassert his manhood, although he would
hardly put it in those terms. The sounds from directly ahead
indicated that he had made it to the street, but then Scott wasn’t
the subject of the manhunt.
    He paused, hand on the
latch.
    Off in the building, some people next
door, to the west of Scott’s place, were having an argument. They
were one floor up.
    There were eight million stories in the
naked city. Betty and Scott’s was merely one of them.
    Scott opened the door, and stepped out
into bustling pedestrian traffic. He turned right and began to
walk.
     
    ***
     
    Her internal clock counted off the
seconds, the minutes and the hours and then it was time to
go.
    She made a