C15 The Slumdog Fool

I seem to have heard those words somewhere, where on earth …. Ah, yes, it's that Gypsy.

On the first day they moved in, she had once pulled Lina along and said a bunch of strange things.

"… …." The hunter of the forest you are spying on, because you are his prey. "

I opened my eyes. The cold wind made me shiver. I was already half out of the window. I subconsciously grabbed the window frame and looked down — —

There was nothing. On the street opposite the window, there was only a trash can that had been blown down by the wind. There was no Lina, nor was there any corpse.

The old gypsy woman, standing on the opposite side of the street, looked up in my direction. In her hands was the stray cat.

I shrank back into my room, my heart pounding, and pushed open the bedroom door.

"Lina?" I called softly.

Lina was still sleeping on the bed, but when she heard my voice, she gently turned her body over.

Was everything just an illusion? Or was I just dreaming?

I went back to the window and looked down.

Fear spread from the bottom of my feet. I almost fell off the sixth floor. I sat down on the sofa, my legs weak.

The dream was so real that the tears on my face hadn't dried yet. I still had the monster in my hands, its wet and slimy touch.

His head was in a mess. After sitting for a while, his throat felt dry and uncomfortable. He stood up and went to the kitchen to get a cup of water.

Because he was in a panic and didn't even wear a pair of slippers, his feet were stabbed by something and he almost fell over.

It was a colored pencil.

Lina and Alpha would often sit on the carpet to draw, and when I finished drawing, I would place the brush and paper directly on the carpet.

I squatted down and put the pencil back into the pen case. Beside the pen case, there was Alpha's painting book that was still open.

What he drew was a sketch of Lina's side.

Alpha's drawing was very moving, with just a few strokes, Lina's outline was outlined, it was extremely vivid.

I picked it up and flipped through a few pages, then drew some sketches of the kitten.

Suddenly a painting caught my attention. It was a sketch, and Lina sat on a chair with a child in her arms. The child even had a pacifier in his mouth.

It could be Lina asked him to draw it, or it could be his imagination.

This drawing paper is folded in half, I can only see the upper half of Lina and the baby. The lower half is folded over and nestled behind.

I opened the half-folded sheet.

The infant in Lina's arms, from the moment it was folded, drew the other body that was growing in the opposite direction.

Taken together, it was the monster I just saw.

The picture book fell to the ground with a thud.

"... Lei? " Lina's voice came from the bedroom. She was sleeping very lightly, and my movements had woken her up.

"No …." "Nothing." I quickly picked up the picture book, tore it out, and put it in my backpack.

Who exactly was Alpha?

I decided that she would definitely know something when I look for that Gypsy tomorrow morning.

February 21, 1988

I made a pot of espresso early in the morning.

"You don't look like you slept well." Lina heated up two breakfasts in the kitchen. I forced myself to smile. In reality, I hadn't slept for the entire night. After what happened last night, how could I dare to sleep again?

"Do you still remember that litter of kittens? That tiger skin has a spot on its head, and it's too weak. It can't get a nipple every time. There were a few times when I thought it was going to die." Lina took some hot milk from the stove and poured it into a plastic bowl as well. "Try to feed it today, let's see if it drinks."

I recalled that the one with spots on its head was the cat that Alpha touched before. At that time, its eyes were covered in feces and it had been isolated by other cats in a corner of the box. Alpha seemed to have named it Peter.

"I'll go back to the research room and give a report." — an excuse I had come up with last night.

Lina did not ask any further. I finished my coffee, picked up my bag and rushed out.

Today was the weekend, so the wholesale markets around were not open. There were only plastic bags and newspapers flying around.

Walking out of the building, I looked around. There was no direction in the concrete forest, so I could only search along the side street.

The street was empty, and after a few steps I saw an overturned trash can facing the window on the sixth floor. That's where the old gypsy woman stood looking at me last night.

After passing through the small street, they arrived at the street park in the downtown area. Los Angeles is a mix of luxury metropolises and squalid slums, both a paradise for the rich and a habitat for the homeless. Under the colorful neon lights, there were at least 6,000 homeless people. More and more trash cans appeared on the roadside. There were dehydrated perfume and small ads stuck to the lampposts and cement ground. All of the shops, without exception, pulled the iron gate which was sprayed with strange patterns of graffiti. The tramps leaned against the iron gates in their tattered clothes, covered with tarps, and rested their heads on their belongings and plastic cans.

A black man pushed a shopping cart from the supermarket and spoke to himself as he walked past me. I frowned as I smelled strongly of urine.

"Do you have any change?" He suddenly stopped me.

I gave him a dollar. "Have you seen a gypsy?"

As if he hadn't heard me, he put the change in his pocket and continued talking to himself as he walked away.

Continuing to the south, temporary tents began to appear on the roadside, and occasionally one or two luxurious open sports cars would fly past them.

"Have you seen a gypsy?" I asked a woman who looked younger than me.

She was wearing an ill-fitting shirt, her hair was tied up behind her head, and there were tattoos and needle marks on her arms.

"Handsome, buy me something to eat. I'll let you have whatever you want." Her teeth were yellow and her mouth tasted of hemp.

I asked all the way. Some of them ignored me, some ran the train for a few dollars.

At noon, as soon as the sun rose, my sweat quickly soaked my shirt. After a few hours of nothing, I decided to go back the way I had come and find something to eat.

"Who are you looking for?" A voice came from behind me.

A middle-aged black woman with blue eyeshadow and purple lipstick, wrapped in a colorful artificial fur robe, holding a zebra bag.

Subconsciously, I fished out a dollar from my pocket. "I'm looking for an old gypsy. He looks to be around 80 to 90 years old, about 5 feet 1 inch tall. He has a black turban wrapped around his head and his eyes are blind."

The black woman looked at the money I handed her and didn't take it.

"Do you have a cigarette?" she asked me, and I shook my head.

"Why are you looking for her?"

"I... I just moved here, I've seen her before, and she gave me some advice. " For a moment I didn't know how to answer. If I did say it, I might be taken for a lunatic.

The black woman stared at me for a while, as if to check if I was lying. Then she snorted in disdain.

"Follow me."

I followed her across the street, back a block, and turned into an alley.

"You can call me Nina," the black woman said as she walked, her heels clattering on the concrete. "You don't live in the Joshua Building, do you?"

"How do you know?"

"How the hell did you get the nerve to live there? Do you people from the East really have nine lives? "

After turning left and right for a while, I could no longer tell which direction was which.

"My wife and I found it in the newspaper ads. By the time we found out we'd been cheated, the rent had already been paid."

"Move away while you're still alive."

"Why?"

"No one lives there." Nina suddenly stopped and turned to look at me, shaking her head. The Joshua Building is empty except for the sixth floor, but there are so many homeless people in the lower city who would rather sleep on the street than live in an apartment there. "

"But... "But there's a tenant on the sixth floor and an old lady on the sixth floor …" I argued.

Have you ever thought about how an old woman like her could survive a robbery in such a disorderly area, in a place where a young man like you would be robbed if he went out for a walk?" Nina asked me quickly.

I choked on Nina to the point where I was unable to speak. After a long time, I cautiously asked, "Then …" "Then how do you think she survived?"

Nina rolled her eyes. "How would I know!?" Every day, poor people like us open our eyes and think about how to survive — we watch people's faces, who are Italian gangsters, who are drug addicts, who are murderers — just like mice that can smell cats from miles away, we are born with a keen sense of danger. "

"That building is filled with the smell of death." Nina paused.

After a few more minutes of walking, we stopped in front of a gate covered with graffiti. Nina took out her key, twisted it, and opened it.

Below was a long, narrow staircase, dark and endless.

I followed Nina, who came down the stairs in a familiar way, down the hall, and into the lock.

It was a bar.

The United States banned alcohol in 1920, and after that there were a number of underground bars, all hidden in basements and garages downtown. The ban on alcohol was later repealed, but there were still many underground pubs that operated in secret, offering, in addition to alcoholic beverages, hemp and pornography.

This bar was also filled with a kind of hallucinatory smell.

Nina came around the bar. "Drink something."

Nina had unlocked the door with her key, so it was obvious that she wasn't one of those homeless people out there. "You work here?"

Nina ignored my answer and poured me a glass of whiskey. "Only this bottle is real, not free. Five dollars."

"You're the boss here?"

"This is a small business, I also came out from a cave of commoners. When there are many tips, I will buy some food for those poor bastards, "Nina poured herself a cup of wine." Those Gypsy will also be here to beg for food. In fact, they will be coming soon. You still haven't told me your true reason, but why are you looking for Vadoma? "

"I actually had something that couldn't be explained with science. I think she could help me."

"Puff …" Nina choked on her wine and laughed out loud. "Haha, you really found the right person, do you know what Vadoma means in the Gypsy Language?"

I looked suspiciously at Nina.

"Foolish man," Nina said, poking her head with her fat finger. "Vadoma means' foolish man 'in Gypsy. She was crazy years ago."