Read Online A Life in Men: A Novel by Gina Frangello - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Gina Frangello
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that it might help break up the mucus in her plugged chest, when the bartender makes an announcement. “We’ve had a bit of a bomb threat,” he explains, laughing. “Er, better evacuate, yeh?”
Mary jumps up as though her seat is on fire. Again, though, it is as though she imagined the words. Brits sit at their tables casually finishing drinks. Some laugh. The roar of the pub makes individual sounds indistinguishable. A few people head lackadaisically to the door. This, Mary realizes, is their idea of “evacuation.” She races for the exit. Only a handful of the vigilant—probably American students—cluster on the sidewalk.
She heads back in the direction of the Indian restaurant, but the moment she sees the mouth of the Tube station gaping at her, yawning its smell of train exhaust and escape, she runs in and swipes her pass, bolting down the steps. As if fated, the train is waiting, doors slung open, a clipped British voice reminding commuters to “mind the gap.” In the car, Mary grips the silver pole in front of her, hands slick against its surface.
On the wall is a sign warning passengers not to open or touch any unattended parcels, but to notify the Underground staff immediately and leave the train car.
In Kettering, Ohio, if you find an unattended handbag or parcel, you are taught to open it, looking for a wallet with ID. In Kettering, you would call the owner up and offer to drive over with the lost items. Perhaps in New York City, you look for the wallet intending to
steal
it, but you open the parcel just the same! It is 1990. Nowhere in America would anyone think an unattended package might contain a bomb.
During her time in London, Nix sent exactly four letters. In none did she mention that the city was dangerous, littered with bodies on the tracks, bombs on the Underground, pubs on the verge of explosion. She wrote only that she could walk alone at night without fear. Nix bragged, like recent expats are wont to do of their new environs, that nobody owned a gun.
As though everyone they knew in Kettering possessed firearms!
Nix’s last letter was different from the others, which had an impersonal quality, like a travelogue. The final installment, by contrast, was breathless and giddy, if paradoxically the briefest. In it, she announced that she was in love. Though her mother had no idea, she was not returning to Skidmore for the spring semester but coming back to London immediately after the New Year. She had “big news” to share, which Mary feared might be her engagement to the mysterious Hasnain, whose surname Mary never learned. Nix wrote,
I’m sorry for how I’ve acted
, though it had felt impossible, during the anxious months before, to pinpoint precisely
how
Nix was acting—exactly what seemed off.
I can’t wait to see you again
, she ended, signing that final letter in their childhood code,
BFA,
for “best friends always,” which the other letters had mysteriously withheld, employing the far more impersonal sign-off,
Love
.
Mary holds her face into her
A to Z,
hot tears darkening and buckling its pages. The vibrations of the train make her heaving shoulders shake unevenly. Her mother was right. Though she initially came to London like a detective to follow a trail, after two years, whatever she hoped to find has evaporated. Nix is gone.
And all around her, London is burning, but nobody else has noticed. Even Nix.
Four months doesn’t sound like a long time, but for me it has been another world. In this world, I’ve been to the Tate after eating a slice of hash cake, where I listened to Yank and Sandor argue over Dalí for hours. I’ve made love with Joshua on the sloping concrete of an underpass where part of Pink Floyd’s
The Wall
was filmed, where they now hold drag races. I’ve been to a reggae pub in Lambeth where Yank had his pocket picked by a tattooed prostitute who gives him freebies sometimes but must have decided she wanted back pay. I’ve danced on the Latchmere
Mary jumps up as though her seat is on fire. Again, though, it is as though she imagined the words. Brits sit at their tables casually finishing drinks. Some laugh. The roar of the pub makes individual sounds indistinguishable. A few people head lackadaisically to the door. This, Mary realizes, is their idea of “evacuation.” She races for the exit. Only a handful of the vigilant—probably American students—cluster on the sidewalk.
She heads back in the direction of the Indian restaurant, but the moment she sees the mouth of the Tube station gaping at her, yawning its smell of train exhaust and escape, she runs in and swipes her pass, bolting down the steps. As if fated, the train is waiting, doors slung open, a clipped British voice reminding commuters to “mind the gap.” In the car, Mary grips the silver pole in front of her, hands slick against its surface.
On the wall is a sign warning passengers not to open or touch any unattended parcels, but to notify the Underground staff immediately and leave the train car.
In Kettering, Ohio, if you find an unattended handbag or parcel, you are taught to open it, looking for a wallet with ID. In Kettering, you would call the owner up and offer to drive over with the lost items. Perhaps in New York City, you look for the wallet intending to
steal
it, but you open the parcel just the same! It is 1990. Nowhere in America would anyone think an unattended package might contain a bomb.
During her time in London, Nix sent exactly four letters. In none did she mention that the city was dangerous, littered with bodies on the tracks, bombs on the Underground, pubs on the verge of explosion. She wrote only that she could walk alone at night without fear. Nix bragged, like recent expats are wont to do of their new environs, that nobody owned a gun.
As though everyone they knew in Kettering possessed firearms!
Nix’s last letter was different from the others, which had an impersonal quality, like a travelogue. The final installment, by contrast, was breathless and giddy, if paradoxically the briefest. In it, she announced that she was in love. Though her mother had no idea, she was not returning to Skidmore for the spring semester but coming back to London immediately after the New Year. She had “big news” to share, which Mary feared might be her engagement to the mysterious Hasnain, whose surname Mary never learned. Nix wrote,
I’m sorry for how I’ve acted
, though it had felt impossible, during the anxious months before, to pinpoint precisely
how
Nix was acting—exactly what seemed off.
I can’t wait to see you again
, she ended, signing that final letter in their childhood code,
BFA,
for “best friends always,” which the other letters had mysteriously withheld, employing the far more impersonal sign-off,
Love
.
Mary holds her face into her
A to Z,
hot tears darkening and buckling its pages. The vibrations of the train make her heaving shoulders shake unevenly. Her mother was right. Though she initially came to London like a detective to follow a trail, after two years, whatever she hoped to find has evaporated. Nix is gone.
And all around her, London is burning, but nobody else has noticed. Even Nix.
Four months doesn’t sound like a long time, but for me it has been another world. In this world, I’ve been to the Tate after eating a slice of hash cake, where I listened to Yank and Sandor argue over Dalí for hours. I’ve made love with Joshua on the sloping concrete of an underpass where part of Pink Floyd’s
The Wall
was filmed, where they now hold drag races. I’ve been to a reggae pub in Lambeth where Yank had his pocket picked by a tattooed prostitute who gives him freebies sometimes but must have decided she wanted back pay. I’ve danced on the Latchmere
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