Читать книгу Election - Том Перротта - Страница 14

I'M NOT SURE what happened between Tammy and Lisa. They'd been best friends for a couple of years, but then they had a falling-out. When I asked Tammy about it, she screamed. I mean it. She threw back her head, opened her mouth, and shrieked. She couldn't have wailed any louder or more convincingly if a man in a hockey mask had attacked her with a meat cleaver. Mom came rushing downstairs like a maniac, holding the toilet bowl scrubber out in front of her like the Olympic torch, her right arm sheathed in an elbow-length orange rubber glove.

“Jesus,” she told me. “I thought you were killing her.”

Tammy likes nothing better than to persecute me and manipulate Mom. Now that she'd accomplished both goals in one fell swoop, a smile of angelic satisfaction spread across her face.

“Mom,” she said, “would you kindly tell this asshole to get out of my face?”

Mom sighed, and I felt sorry for her, a tired-looking woman with a dead marriage who couldn't even clean the bathroom in peace.

“Tammy, do you have to use that word?”

“For him it's a compliment.”

“Hey,” I said. “Excuse me for living.”

“Gladly,” she said. “Just let me know when you get a life.”