Читать книгу The Arsonist's Song Has Nothing to Do With Fire - Allison Titus - Страница 31

Overnight it had gotten colder, shifting the last week of November into an official cold snap that began in the earliest hours as ropes of sleet and by mid-morning glazed the roads over completely, shut everything down. By early afternoon, branches and power lines overlapped in a shiny grid. The storm went on and on. Viv had spent the entire day in bed. Her encounter with Ronny the night before had left her feeling depressed and out of sorts. When she finally left the bedroom to put the kettle on, she hadn’t even bothered dressing, just buttoned a long-sleeved shirt over what she’d slept in, a thin-as-paper slip and her underwear. She was, she decided, done with the world of other people. She settled in the living room with her tea, covered herself in the guestroom quilts, and flipped through an issue of National Geographic from 1971, the only thing she could reach without moving from the couch. She read an article about Lenin called “The Social Catastrophe,” and didn’t think about Ronny. She didn’t think about Ronny. She didn’t know Ronny. She had no reason to feel as if she’d lost something. She was fine. She was fine in the house of a missing man, fine in a town that wasn’t hers, fine on her own. She didn’t exactly need other people in her life, and didn’t exactly miss them when they were gone, except for certain fleeting, companionable parts of them. She didn’t miss the entire, overlapping history of a person because people were generally messy and selfishly dramatic and took up too much room. Vivian preferred not to commit to drawn-out, exhausting relationships and endless compromises and dim stains on bed sheets. It had always seemed like something her exes appreciated about her, how she didn’t altogether want them in ways they didn’t know how to be needed yet. They were happy to test the give and take, the physical measures of desire, and that was all, and that was enough for her, too. Nights, Vivian found, were easy. Mornings were unavoidable—naked bodies done with their nakedness and cold, and unfamiliar socks balled up on the floor, and someone politely pretending to sleep while someone else politely turned toward the door—but those were short-lived. A person would eventually be dressed and you could lock the door behind them. Maybe that was partly what this was about—it had been months since she’d slept with anyone—but no, not that, it was something else, more obscure than sex. She’d spent twenty-five minutes with Ronny, tops, making a fool of herself. What kept him on her mind? What kept him.