Читать книгу The Arsonist's Song Has Nothing to Do With Fire - Allison Titus - Страница 11

On the morning of the day she died, Vivian Foster woke earlier than usual, woke to dim half-light, slung down clouds fat with impending rain, the shrieking pushcart sounds of the limping bottle collector, the pigeons’ scuffed purrs rummaged up from the alley. She is survived by was where she faltered, no heir, no indebted, no lover to claim—but she thought her obituary through every night anyway. Worried over all the mechanics of the evered this and evered that. A bad habit. The bargain for a last resort: If all else failed/If it couldn’t get any worse. Sometimes the death she imagined was uneventful: she grew old and died in her sleep. More often, though, an elevator collapsed on its cable at the fifty-third floor; or the train derailed; or the gas pump, struck by lightning, went up in flames. Vivian was convinced a freak accident would befall her eventually, some pathetic and arbitrary devastation. So she resigned. She waited for the appropriate disaster.

In the meantime, she practiced dying, submitting to the idea of death in all its terrible versions. Car accident, factory fire, heart attack; hypothermia, avalanche, homicide; tuberculosis, malaria, syphilis: steady and progressive illness was, by far, the worst. The body wasted to its husk of bone; the drafty sick room with its thin-sheeted bed; limp wrist pale and buckled on the fleece. Guessing at every potential cruelty or misfortune was tedious, for sure, was oppressive, but she couldn’t quit. She had to practice dying, and practice dying, and remain vigilant by practice-dying. And so on.