Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,24
happy for you to have other consensual relationships; in fact, at your age, I expect it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means this is why I insisted we agree on an open relationship.”
I carried my half-drunk juice to the sink. “Richard?”
“Yes, dear?”
I hesitated, and then I dumped out the juice. “Never mind.”
When he came back down with his briefcase, he kissed me. Pulling back, he added, “Elien, sweetheart, I think you should talk to Zahra about this.”
“About what?” I asked as I loaded the few dishes from breakfast.
“This defensiveness after intimacy.”
“Oh, I thought you meant my nymphomania.”
My back was to him, and he didn’t quite sigh, but I could feel his weariness. “Have a nice day.”
“Or maybe my anorexia.”
His steps clicked toward the front door.
“I’m wasting away, Richard.”
I waited until I couldn’t hear the Lexus anymore, and then I went out to the porch. It was a bright October day, cooler than usual, and the sun outlined the bald cedars and the tupelo trees on the far side of the Okhlili. Something moved along the bank, disturbing the brush; the morning painted the vegetation gold. A swamp rabbit, maybe. Or a cottonmouth. Farther north, where the river fanned out to form Bayou Pere Rigaud, alligators swam under curtains of Spanish moss. Tourists often sighted black bears along the Tangipahoa. I wondered if any of those wild beasts were as vicious as me.
Muriel arrived in her Subaru. When I hopped into the passenger seat, she was applying eyeliner.
“Want me to do that?” I asked.
“Good gravy, you’d probably do better than I am.” She touched up a corner and then checked herself in the mirror. Muriel was probably in her fifties, wanted to look like she was in her forties, and acted like she was in her sixties. I guessed she’d always been mothering and clucking, probably ever since she was old enough to walk. In a cartoon, she’d have worn a long white apron that she fanned herself with. “Child, you are skin and bones.”
“Richard’s been talking behind my back.”
She pinched my wrist. “I’m getting you a beignet and a coffee.”
“Hey, ow.”
“I could fit your heinie in a pencil box.”
“That sounds awful.”
“And you’re grumpy today, too.” She turned her full attention on me, one hand reaching out. “Why are you grumpy when you’re just so cute?”
“If you pinch my cheek, I’m going to bite off those fake nails.”
“Lord, Elien. You are on a tear, aren’t you?”
“To the library, Jeeves.”
“I am a highly educated professional,” she said, pointing a tube of lipstick at me before returning her attention to the mirror.
“Noted.”
“I have a B.S.N. from Tulane.”
“The Harvard of the Bayou.”
“I have an M.S.N. from Louisiana State.”
“I’ve heard the stories. Stonewall Jackson was at the commencement, right?”
“I am a PMHNP-BC. Do you know what that means?”
“It sounds like a mouthful.”
“Why are you being so awful?”
“Because I feel awful.”
“Well,” she said, stuffing the tube of lipstick away and focusing on me again, “do what any decent person does: bottle it up, smile, and tell your priest.”
“I will remember that.”
“And just so we’re clear, young man, I am not your chauffeur.”
“Yet here we are.” I clapped. “Library, Jeeves.”
Sighing, she shifted into drive, and we headed toward Bragg.
Muriel dropped me at the Bragg branch of the DuPage Parish Library; when she asked about picking me up, I told her to keep the car running at the end of the block, at which point she rolled her eyes and drove off.
The library was from the 70s, built of brick, with skinny, floor-to-ceiling windows breaking the walls at regular intervals. I went inside, passed through the RFID gates, and found myself in one of those spaces that was desperately bleak in spite of everyone’s best efforts. Clearly, the library staff had tried to gussy up the place with banners and posters and colorful displays of books and puzzles and DVDs. But nothing could fix what was really wrong with the space: the low ceilings, the fluorescent lighting, the industrial carpet, the smell of cabbage.
I hadn’t been in a library since high school. College hadn’t interested me, although Richard still brought it up from time to time, and even in high school, my visits to the library had been strictly functional and as short as possible. Now, staring around me, I remembered why. I saw the retirees, the housewives, the kids. Newspapers on sticks. An ancient man paying a fine with pennies. A bulletin board with a flyer advertising WARHAMMER GAME NIGHT BRING YOUR OWN ARMY SLAY A CHAOS LORD. I