Read Online Upright Beasts by Lincoln Michel - Free Book Online Page B

night. “Let’s let bygones be bygones. Also, let me know if you want to get coffee sometime.”
    While I’m on the phone, Petunia opens the gate and sits down on a fun noodle near the pool’s edge. I click the phone off, stuff it in my pocket.
    â€œWhy are you filling in our pool?” she says with an angry face.
    â€œJust the deep end, baby-doll.”
    â€œWhy are you filling in the deep end?”
    â€œSo you don’t die.”
    She frowns and eats another fish stick. She walks to the edge and kicks a floaty duck into the pool, watches it lower inch by inch.
    Backyard deep ends can go up to ten feet deep, which I level out to four. That’s a lot of cement. Sometimes I toss little things down as it dries. A plastic truck or some coins, makeup or jewelry Sarah left at the house, whatever is around. They get covered up and left where no one will ever find them. You could fold a few bodies into that goop before it hardens.
    After a day’s work, I like to just drive around looking for splashes of blue over the fences. I keep a map of potential clients. What’s funny about these neighborhoods is you drive around them enough, and they start to feel like a giant maze. You can’t remember where anything is supposed to be. The faces of each house look the same as the last.
    I give Sarah another call and again she doesn’t pick up.
    â€œHow much of this is a man supposed to take, Sarah?” I say. “This is my fucking basement we’re talking about! It’s growing a weird mold.”
    I pull into my driveway, go inside, and flip on the TV .
    I’m back the next day, mixing up the cement. Petunia is squatting on the noodle, singing a song. The mother gives us mugs of lemonade.
    I’m watching the gray bits swirl together and thinking about Sarah, the way she thinks she can treat me, when Petunia pulls on my wallet chain.
    â€œWhy are you sad?” she says.
    â€œWhat?” I say.
    I make my face look confused for a while. Then the mother comes sprinting up with the cordless still in her hand. She’s holding the baby tight in the other.
    â€œI’ve got an emergency,” the lady says to me.
    I give her a nonchalant wave, tell her I’ll be okay. She puts her arm around Petunia, smothers her against her knees.
    It’s her father, she mouths. She can’t see him.
    â€œCan you keep an eye on Petunia?” she says out loud.
    â€œSure,” I say, “protecting children is my job.” I give her the all-business smile and Petunia the silly-clown smile. Petunia winces. Her mother pulls her inside and gives me a string of thank-yous and curses.
    The cement takes quite some time to dry after you’ve flattened it out, so I go inside to wash the gunk off my hands, maybe find the little girl a bag of fruit snacks or a stack of crackers.
    The house isn’t that large, but it feels comfortable and calm. The walls are decorated with framed family photos and paintings of running dogs. It feels like the place Sarah and I always thought we’d have, although Sarah was a calico cat girl. I didn’t like having to clean up after her’s but liked the look of its furry tortoiseshell face. When she left, she took the cat too.
    Petunia is at a computer playing with cartoon hippos.
    â€œIs that educational?” I ruffle her hair a little, give her a pinch on the cheek.
    â€œCan I have a juice box?” she says.
    â€œSure thing, sweet pea.”
    It feels good helping out a family in need. I walk to the fridge and fish out a grape juice for Petunia, then search around until I find some whiskey. I pour a little into my mugwith a picture of a beaver and the phrase “too much dam work to do” and walk around the house checking out the different rooms.
    Something about the blue mug, with its comical phrase printed on the front, makes me feel like a father as I stroll through the rooms. Like this could have been the castle