Читать книгу Dark Rooms - Lili Anolik, Lili Anolik - Страница 14

I’m vomiting before I’m awake, my eyes still closed when my stomach seizes and acid floods my throat. I jackknife, lurching forward to open the door of my car but don’t quite make it in time, and a pale brown mixture of Diet Coke and low-sodium Saltines splatters out of me in a series of long convulsions. After the last one, I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, sit all the way up.

I hadn’t intended to fall asleep. The house I’d been watching had gone dark just after eleven, which meant I was free to go. My lids, though, were heavy, getting heavier, so I put away my mom’s old camera, the one with the telephoto lens, doubling for me at the moment as a pair of binoculars, and crawled in the back. As I stretched out, my hand brushed the sleeve of a jacket: Nica’s, thin, dark blue denim, button-flap pockets. Immediately I recoiled. She’d left it there the day before she died. The way she’d tossed it, it still seemed to retain her shape. And I didn’t want to touch it, make it flat, or jostle it so that the scent of her, caught in its folds, escaped. As I moved back to the front of the car, reclined the passenger seat, I told myself I’d just close my eyes for fifteen minutes then drive home. That’s the last thought I remember having.

I lower the windows and get out of the car. The street I’m on is crowded with single-story houses set back among scraggly shrubs, the plaster statues of Our Lady in the front yards chipped and faded: a run-down neighborhood in a borderline part of town. The day’s going to be a hot one. I reach through the window for the Diet Coke can in the cup holder, swish the liquid around my mouth before swallowing, slowly and carefully, in distinct shifts, hoping my stomach won’t notice. Then I walk to the rear of the car, pop the trunk. The pack of paper towels is under a tennis hopper.

I use nearly an entire roll cleaning the passenger-side door.

It’s too early for traffic and I make it home in under ten minutes. I haven’t even stepped all the way inside the front door when the smell hits me: a kind of stale fustiness, a combination of dust and old furniture, of meals cooked and eaten, of frayed carpeting. If sadness has a scent, this is it. Dad would’ve gotten back from work just a couple hours ago, is probably in bed now, asleep. I move quietly as I go upstairs, shower and change, slip a book in my bag so I’ll have something to read later.

Before heading out the door again, I walk into the kitchen, as dark as the rest of the house. I open the refrigerator, the sudden bright light making me blink. On the bottom shelf, in front of a carton of milk, its use-by date several days past, is an aluminum container with a clear plastic top: linguine in red clam sauce. Dad must’ve swung by that all-night Italian place near the Amtrak station on his way home. My stomach begins to churn again, and I have to close my eyes, keep myself from imagining the smell of the congealed Parmesan, the glistening noodles, the gynecological-looking bits of gray shellfish coated in pureed tomato.

Blindly, I reach for the milk. Next, I take the box of Raisin Bran out of the cabinet. I pour a few flakes into a bowl, wet them with a splash of expired milk, then drop the bowl inside the sink. Dad’s pretty checked out these days. I doubt it would register with him that I’ve stopped eating breakfast, and if it did register with him, I doubt even more that it would register why. Still, it never hurts to be careful.

I’m about to get back in my car. Then I think better of it. If I smell vomit, I probably will. While I’m standing there, hand on the latch, I catch sight of the dashboard clock. It’s already past eight. Immediately I let go of the latch, start walking. If I don’t hurry, I’ll be late to my first day of work.