ARRvol34 master reduced - Flipbook - Page 107
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” He departed, I thought, for his baseball bat, because, of
course, he was going to beat me to death. Wishing to die clothed, I
got dressed. I went to the kitchen-living-room, where I could see
Brian drinking coffee and texting on the balcony. It will take me a
week to figure out why Bobby came home early.
Bobby came back. He didn’t have a baseball bat. Actually, he
appeared to have been crying. His face, which I realized was remarkably square, curled in around his upper lip, and his eyes turned
into little squinty red circles. Bobby and Ashley argued. I remained
silent because I was still gauging my odds in a fight with this short,
but powerfully built man, and the way I’d justify fighting back later.
But this was superfluous because all that happened, The Collected
Fictions notwithstanding, is that Bobby said “You need to get your
stuff and get out of here,” before leaving again, getting in his car,
and going to a friend of Katie’s house, where over the next few days
he will have sex with someone I didn’t know.
While I was packing, Ashley smoked. Brian was still texting, having not met my eyes since the night before.
A week later, when she tells me she’s staying with Bobby, I’ll
tell Ashley that it won’t work. “You’ve been doing this since I met
you. You’ll fight, break up, and waste everyone’s time.” We’ll be in
her truck when this happens, but I won’t get another blowjob. I’ll
probably scowl. It’ll be night, in a park around the corner from the
apartment. I’ll tell her my story about how abusive Bobby is, and
it’ll be lovely in the sodium lamp’s orange and the moon’s gray, and
it’ll be stupid, but I’ll recite the poem I wrote about her eyes. I’ll be
thinking of her breasts for at least part of this discussion, and the
way her triangle-shaped smile collapsed into a line when she bit her
lip. A few weeks later, Bobby and Ashley will move to either Boston
or Chicago. I’ll never be sure which.
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