Читать книгу The Arsonist's Song Has Nothing to Do With Fire - Allison Titus - Страница 21

Three was safer than ten. So Vivian left the house. Helen had mentioned a market nearby and pointed the way downtown, so she headed in that direction. She would establish a routine. Routine established purpose, a trick Vivian had learned to feel less like a visitor. Though, if she was being honest about it, community and stability weren’t what she sought from her profession. This time felt different, if she couldn’t exactly pinpoint how. But she noticed it as she walked—zipping her jacket against the damp, pulling the collar close at her neck—that she didn’t feel the familiar drumming urgency to be anonymous, an outsider on the periphery slipping in and out of towns, giving fake names to fellow subway passengers, baristas, guys at bars. Here was a place, apparently, where someone could just vanish into thin air. What else could happen in a place like that.

At the market she weighed grapefruits. There was an announcement: reduced cakes. Vivian paced the aisles looking for the bread, found it, chose multiple grains. At the checkout she touched the slick corner of a celebrity magazine but did not buy it. She handed over her twenty-dollar bill and said thank you for the change.