Read Yellowthread Street for Free Online Page B

her long hair flew out and whisked painfully across Mr Skilbeck’s fragile eyes.
    ‘Not while I’m here anyway,’ Spencer said. He glanced at the party of sailors.
    ‘I’m going out to get some money,’ the African said. He got up and left.
    Spencer looked at Mr Skilbeck. Mr Skilbeck smiled absently at him.
    ‘Office?’ Spencer confirmed.
    Apricot nodded.
    Mr Skilbeck nodded.
    Spencer went past the sailors towards the office.
    ‘Have a drink,’ Apricot Tang Lee said. She poured a quick shot for Mr Skilbeck. She was so annoyed she spilled most of it on the table.
    ‘I’ve got bad eyes,’ the little old Chinese lady said to O’Yee, ‘I can’t read the subtitles in the front.’
    ‘Go to the back then,’ O’Yee said. He handed her a front stalls ticket for the money she had counted out on the counter-top.
    ‘Thank you, thank you,’ the little old Chinese lady said eagerly. She scuttled towards the manager and the curtained doorway, handed him the ticket, and told him what the nice young man in the cashier’s booth had said.
    The manager moved back the curtain and the little old Chinese lady went in happily. The manager looked daggers at the nice young man in the cashier’s booth.
    ‘I’ve got bad eyes too,’ the little old Chinese man next in the queue behind the little old Chinese lady said. He counted out the exact price of a front stalls ticket.
    ‘Not twice in a row,’ O’Yee said. ‘You must think I’m stupid.’
    Tears appeared in the little old Chinese man’s eyes. ‘We’re married,’ he said plaintively, ‘We couldn’t—’
    ‘O.K.,’ O’Yee said. He thought this was a hard job for a man who suffered from an excess of kind-heartedness. He looked up at the next customer in the queue. The next customer was a teenage boy who wore no glasses, looked in the pink of health and prime condition and handed him a ten dollar note.
    ‘Front or back?’ O’Yee asked confidently.
    The healthy specimen of a teenage boy thought for a moment.
    ‘What did you sell my grandfather and grandmother?’ he asked, ‘I’ll sit with them.’
    The African went out of
Alice’s,
crossed over Icehouse Street, and turned into Hong Bay Beach Lane near the Bus Station. He went into the first novelty shop in the lane and purchased three plastic bow and arrow sets, a plastic speedcar made in Taiwan, a Ludo and Chess set made out of cardboard with little paper markers, a magnetic Scrabble game set in a green plastic travel wallet, a black plastic imitation of a Colt Government Model .45 calibre automatic pistol, three Chinese dolls with fixed expressions of schizophrenic withdrawal and no clothes on, and a rubber snake with green eyes and yellow fangs. The girl assistant put it all in a paper bag for him.
    Back in Icehouse Street he deposited everything except the pistol into the first litter bin he saw and walked up the road to see what was on at the movies.
    Auden leaned back in his wooden chair in the Yellowthread Street Police Station and contemplated the finished accident report still in his typewriter. All he had to do was sign it. He contemplated the final flourish of a signature andthought it wasn’t a bad typing job. He glanced at the open door to the street. A few people went by, one way and the other, going or coming to or from places, but none of them seemed in dire need of the police. No one came in with a problem. Delicious, that was the word that crossed Auden’s mind. It was a delicious feeling that all was right with the world. The accident report from last night had been typed up. It would go to the insurance company. There would be no court case; life, limb or serious property damage had not been involved, and Minnie Oh was down the corridor in her office. She might even feel all was so well with her world to come out and talk to him while the new opposition, Spencer, was away in the brothel centre of the Orient.
    Auden felt a delicious feeling of well-being. It was ten o’clock and he