Читать книгу The Arsonist's Song Has Nothing to Do With Fire - Allison Titus - Страница 14

Vivian lived in strangers’ houses. The way some people are nurses. Or chefs. The way a nurse catalogues injuries and reads fevers, and the person in charge of the kitchen paces the stations shouting BLACKEN THE OYSTERS and ORDER UP. Taking up in strangers’ houses was just something she did, until by default it became her occupation. It suited her—she preferred departures to abiding. She preferred elsewhere over everywhere else. She enjoyed how noncommittal her existence seemed, how theoretical. Letters took months to reach her through the limbo of forwarding last known address to last known address. A locker at the Lost Mail Repository in St. Paul or Cleveland held old packages, bills, wedding announcements, et cetera, that never found her, all those obligations gone missing, and when she thought about that she felt relieved. Off the hook. Which made her the opposite of a nurse. She was not one to oversee anyone’s bedside. She did not dote. And when you got down to it, anyway, her life depended on solitude and the extended absences of other people. If no one ever left, she’d have no place to go, and she knew what to expect from these temp arrangements—hot water, a decent couch, someone else’s weather and fingerprints; someone else’s dust.