How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,122
I reckon,” one of them said in a slow country drawl.
“Chow for the reptile house,” said the other.
“I would've thought frogs,” Blythe said.
“Frogs, too,” said the country boy. “Frogs was last week.”
As they wheeled the rodents away, a large red-and-white-striped box appeared between the flaps.
Blythe saw it before I did, and a pained expression crossed her face as she lifted her hand to her mouth. I looked again as the box emerged, sliding toward us on the steel rollers. Then I saw the blue field of stars at the other end of the box—an American flag wrapped neatly around a coffin.
“Oh my God,” Blythe said.
I looked around. “Shouldn't someone … be here?”
For the moment we were alone.
I looked at her. “Maybe we should …”
“I don't know.”
“Me, neither.”
At that moment a uniformed baggage handler holding a small animal carrier approached us.
“Are you the pig parents?”
Blythe nodded, gingerly taking the carrier. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she bent down to look in through the slats. “Look at him—he's so scared,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “The poor baby.”
“Maybe you should tell someone about … this,” I said to the baggage handler, gesturing toward the coffin.
He shook his head and sighed. “Second one this week.”
Back in the car, the little pig squealed like a banshee when Blythe took him out of the carrier and held him in her lap. He was about the size of a beer bottle, with black-and-white bristles, stubby legs and a straight tail that twitched incessantly. “The sweet thing,” Blythe said, stroking his back. The tears reappeared as we drove down the exit ramp. “That poor boy,” she said. “Why wasn't anybody there for him?”
I shook my head, not trusting my voice.
“It's so awful,” she said, rubbing the piglet. “All alone, nobody to welcome him home. Oh God, my poor Jimmy.”
It was, I realized, just the second time I'd heard her say her brother's name.
We drove in silence until I finally found my voice. “I'm so sorry, Blythe,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. “I'm so goddamn sorry.” It was some time before I could speak again. “Please forgive me. I never even said I was sorry.”
“It's okay, McSwine,” she said, turning to me and wiping my cheek. “You know my motto:‘Don't look back.’” I took her hand and lifted it to my mouth. Kissing the back of her wrist, I could smell the sweet, milky, barnyard tang of her fingers. As I squeezed her hand and pressed her fingertips to my lips, I believed there was still time and hope for me, if I could only remember always exactly how I felt at that moment.
2007
Everything Is Lost
Sabrina decided to throw Kyle a surprise party for his thirty-fifth. Her biggest concern was that she wouldn't be able to keep it a secret—so pleased was she with the whole idea. She liked to say she shared all her thoughts and feelings with Kyle. “I tell him everything,” she would say. And Kyle would say the same.
She'd been talking to the owner of the Golden Bowl—the hottest new place in TriBeCa—telling him she expected maybe forty or fifty people for the party, dropping some names in hopes of getting him down a little on the price, when Kyle walked into the bedroom and threw himself across the duvet.
“Who was that?” he asked, stroking her knee after she quickly hung up.
“Just a fact checker.”
Much to her relief, he didn't seem to notice she was blushing; at least she assumed the heat in her cheeks had to be visible. She felt so transparent that she could hardly believe he didn't sense something amiss.
She suddenly realized that her preparations would be complicated by the fact that the bedroom walls stopped six feet short of the ceiling in their loft. She didn't usually think about it, except when Kyle was being particularly loud on the phone in the other room or the time her brother had spent the night on their sofa and she'd been self-conscious about having sex. When they'd first seen the loft and the Realtor had suggested the walls could be extended up to the ceiling, Sabrina had remarked, rather smugly, that they didn't need privacy. Walls were for people who weren't really in love.
“What was that you were saying about Toby Clench?” he asked.
“Toby Clench?” She was trying to buy a minute to think of what to say.