Read Online Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty Short Stories by Stuart Dybek - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stuart Dybek
Ads: Link
fourteen-hour sleeping spells from which she’d wake confused but only too aware of how terribly alone she was, Faye felt better.
The usual grim weariness was gone from around her lips. Her eyes no longer peered out like a miner’s from sallow tunnels smudged with mascara. They seemed enlarged with light, glowing limpidly from her pale face. Even the shadow beneath her chin where her darkness most accumulated had burned away. It was as if everything unessential had burned away.
“What happened to you?” Aldo blurted, startled by the sight of her sitting, legs crossed, back behind the reception desk.
“Flu,” Faye said. “Everybody’s getting it. I mean, you sit up here in front all day and you’re going to come in contact with everything anybody walks in with.”
“Everybody should get so sick,” Aldo said.
It seemed to Faye an odd remark at the time, but she ignored it and kept talking, about the job, the weather, the flu epidemic. It was the first conversation she’d had since she’d been sick and she clung to it, needing desperately to talk, aware the entire time of how Aldo was watching her.
And later, when people would ask them how they met and fell in love, it was always Aldo who would answer. “Flu.” He’d smile earnestly. “It all started with flu. I still haven’t recovered.”
Swing
The mute boy was dragging the great stalled clock from his father’s study to the trash heap that smoldered at the edge of the woods when an old man with a stick chased him.
Back when the boy’s father was alive, he’d tried to console his son, and maybe himself as well, by telling him that, in ways mysterious, God always compensates. In place of speech, God must have given the boy some gift—perhaps a rare gift of the spirit, one the boy would recognize only when he grew older. His father was mistaken, not about there being a gift but about when the boy would recognize it, for even as a child he knew his compensation for silence was speed—winged heels. The boy believed that he was fast enough to outrun everyone, any danger, too fast to be overtaken even by the stride of the stilt-legged shadow of Death. But he kept this a secret from everyone, including his father, because he was afraid his father would be disappointed. Speed wasn’t a rare spiritual gift. He didn’t reveal it even when, to the resounding, impassive tick of the study clock, his father lay weeping on his deathbed. His father wept because he was leaving his dumb son with a stepmother who cared more for her ferret than him, and with the stepmother’s bitter twin sister, who, expelled from the convent, paced the halls of the mansion at night moaning her beads and tearing at her newly grown-out hair.
The boy kept his secret until the old man with the stick came after him. The old man swung the stick in an arc that would have dislodged the boy’s head had he not ducked and darted away. He could hear the whine of air swatted behind him as the old man pursued him. The man might have been old and his trousers droopy, but he ran surprisingly well, and the longer he chased, the more determined he seemed to catch the boy. They were racing along a puddled forest path strewn with deadfall and, afraid he’d trip, the boy didn’t dare look back. The rush of his running drew the skin tight over his face, as if he were masked in latex. As he ran the boy unclasped a silver penknife that had belonged to his father and butchered his unkempt hair so that it no longer streamed behind him, snagging on the branches that shredded his clothes. To protect his eyes from the pressure of velocity and from the blurred birches with their slashing limbs, the boy kept his gaze on the earth scrolling beneath his feet.
He could outpace the flailing stick that had elongated into a hooked bone, he could outdistance the shouts of the old man’s threats and curses, the baying of the greyhounds the old man had summoned, the shadow of the falcon he’d
The usual grim weariness was gone from around her lips. Her eyes no longer peered out like a miner’s from sallow tunnels smudged with mascara. They seemed enlarged with light, glowing limpidly from her pale face. Even the shadow beneath her chin where her darkness most accumulated had burned away. It was as if everything unessential had burned away.
“What happened to you?” Aldo blurted, startled by the sight of her sitting, legs crossed, back behind the reception desk.
“Flu,” Faye said. “Everybody’s getting it. I mean, you sit up here in front all day and you’re going to come in contact with everything anybody walks in with.”
“Everybody should get so sick,” Aldo said.
It seemed to Faye an odd remark at the time, but she ignored it and kept talking, about the job, the weather, the flu epidemic. It was the first conversation she’d had since she’d been sick and she clung to it, needing desperately to talk, aware the entire time of how Aldo was watching her.
And later, when people would ask them how they met and fell in love, it was always Aldo who would answer. “Flu.” He’d smile earnestly. “It all started with flu. I still haven’t recovered.”
Swing
The mute boy was dragging the great stalled clock from his father’s study to the trash heap that smoldered at the edge of the woods when an old man with a stick chased him.
Back when the boy’s father was alive, he’d tried to console his son, and maybe himself as well, by telling him that, in ways mysterious, God always compensates. In place of speech, God must have given the boy some gift—perhaps a rare gift of the spirit, one the boy would recognize only when he grew older. His father was mistaken, not about there being a gift but about when the boy would recognize it, for even as a child he knew his compensation for silence was speed—winged heels. The boy believed that he was fast enough to outrun everyone, any danger, too fast to be overtaken even by the stride of the stilt-legged shadow of Death. But he kept this a secret from everyone, including his father, because he was afraid his father would be disappointed. Speed wasn’t a rare spiritual gift. He didn’t reveal it even when, to the resounding, impassive tick of the study clock, his father lay weeping on his deathbed. His father wept because he was leaving his dumb son with a stepmother who cared more for her ferret than him, and with the stepmother’s bitter twin sister, who, expelled from the convent, paced the halls of the mansion at night moaning her beads and tearing at her newly grown-out hair.
The boy kept his secret until the old man with the stick came after him. The old man swung the stick in an arc that would have dislodged the boy’s head had he not ducked and darted away. He could hear the whine of air swatted behind him as the old man pursued him. The man might have been old and his trousers droopy, but he ran surprisingly well, and the longer he chased, the more determined he seemed to catch the boy. They were racing along a puddled forest path strewn with deadfall and, afraid he’d trip, the boy didn’t dare look back. The rush of his running drew the skin tight over his face, as if he were masked in latex. As he ran the boy unclasped a silver penknife that had belonged to his father and butchered his unkempt hair so that it no longer streamed behind him, snagging on the branches that shredded his clothes. To protect his eyes from the pressure of velocity and from the blurred birches with their slashing limbs, the boy kept his gaze on the earth scrolling beneath his feet.
He could outpace the flailing stick that had elongated into a hooked bone, he could outdistance the shouts of the old man’s threats and curses, the baying of the greyhounds the old man had summoned, the shadow of the falcon he’d
Similar Books
