Read Online A Density of Souls by Christopher Rice - Free Book Online

untouched on her plate, and the skyline of Rome sparkling behind her son, Monica felt weighted with the responsibility of being Stephen’s sole source of information about his father. Her words would shape Stephen’s memory of him. A daunting prospect, when she felt he might do better without any memory of his father at all.
    “He rode the streetcar to school. I rode it to work. We met one day at the streetcar stop. Well, we didn’t really meet. He saw me and I saw him looking at me. So when we boarded, he walked by my seat and dropped a piece of paper into my lap. It was a poem. A very sweet one . . .”
    Actually, the poem had baffled and offended Monica. On that afternoon in 1964, Jeremy had been staring at her as Monica attempted to dig a cigarette out of her tattered leather satchel. At nineteen, Monica interpreted “Angel of Smoke” as an insult about good girls and nico-tine.
    “What did it say?” Stephen asked.
    “It was about how beautiful I was,” Monica responded flippantly, taking her first bite of food.
    Stephen furrowed his brow.
    “It was a love poem, Stephen,” she said.
    “What kind of love poem?”
    Monica went silent. She recalled the words as they had been written in Jeremy’s severe cursive:
    her eyes cut knives
    through the smoke she breathes,
    a dragon mistaken for a witch.
    What beauty waits to come
    From an angel hidden in her smoke.
    When Stephen looked into his lap, embarrassed, Monica realized she had been silently mumbling the words of the poem. He changed the subject.
    The Falling Impossible
    49

    • • •
    That night, after Stephen had drifted into sleep, the memories he had stirred in his mother came to life. Monica lay awake in her double bed next to Stephen’s, listening to her son’s slow and easy breaths punctuating the sounds of Rome winding down into the deeper part of night.
    Jeremy Conlin was the first person not to laugh when Monica told him she had been named after a moon.
    Monica was working the candy counter at Smith’s Drug Store on a hot, sticky afternoon in June of 1964, doling out scoops of ice cream that was practically milk. Other girls were sauntering in, sporting longer hair and bared midriffs, sashaying over the dirt-caked linoleum floors with a freedom Monica envied. Jeremy made his entrance at around three o’clock in the afternoon—the moment when the day seemed interminably stuck and Monica was forced to polish the counter furiously to rid herself of the panicked feeling that the day would never end. As Jeremy perched on one of the stools, it seemed that the counter was the only thing in the entire store that had been touched by human hand. It glistened with care, courtesy of Monica Mitchell, her blonde hair spilling over her face and threatening to conceal her ferociously blue eyes.
    Jeremy slid a second poem into the path of Monica’s rag. She slapped the cloth down with exaggerated annoyance, unfolded the piece of paper, and began to read. Jeremy pressed his stomach against the edge of the counter, looking dizzy with a joy that seemed guiltless and earned.
    Monica read the new poem without concentrating on a single word.
    She had to keep her eyes off of Jeremy’s gaze. He was obviously tortur-ing her. She could tell he was one of the well-heeled Garden District boys. Darkly handsome, olive skin, undeniably attractive broad frame.
    He obviously thought he was better than she, simply because from birth he was rich enough to fend off fever and rats.
    “You look like someone who has watched people die,” Jeremy finally said in a low voice. She glanced up from the poem.
    “People who’ve watched people die”—his tone was almost clinical—“they aren’t as easily distracted by loud noises. Things don’t bother them as easily.”
    “My mother died last year.” Monica could almost not hear the sound of her own words.
    50
    A Density of Souls
    “I’m sorry . . .”
    “She was . . . She was a drunk,” Monica said evenly. “She didn’t