Read Online Escape Velocity by Robin Stevenson - Free Book Online Page A

kind of person folds their dirty clothes? Her apartment is like her car—clean, empty, impersonal. I pick up her copy of Escape Velocity , which is still lying on the coffee table where she left it after last night’s reading, and flick through it for markings, notes, highlighted sections. There is nothing though—no clues to help me decode it further than I already have.
    I think again about that odd woman at the reading. My certainty that Zoe was lying is fading, but still, there is something about that woman and my mother’s reaction that I can’t let go of. It is a rough spot on a smooth surface, a dirty mark on the polished veneer, and my mind keeps going back to it the way my tongue always finds that chipped place on my front tooth.
    It feels like a crack in my mother’s armor.

    Zoe shows up mid-afternoon, but she has someone with her: a tall slender guy with dark-lashed eyes, dreadlocks to his shoulders and smooth skin that is closer to black than brown.
    â€œLou, this is my friend Brian.” Zoe is wearing a white shirt and faded jeans, and she looks like she is lit up from within. I feel a pang of something—envy or admiration, love or hate—and have to look away.
    I shake his hand and wonder if Brian is the latest boyfriend. He is good-looking enough, and my mother is never without a man in her life. Men are one of the things she would talk to me about during our occasional phone calls. I guess she thinks it’s a good subject for mother-daughter bonding, only obviously I never had much to share so the conversations usually ended up with her giving me advice: Never let a man know how you really feel. Keep them guessing. Watch out for men who need you. You don’t want to be someone’s crutch. Always remember who you are. Etcetera, etcetera.
    â€œAre you guys dating?” I ask. I know it’s considered rude to be so direct—Dana Leigh’s always bugging me about it—but sometimes I can’t seem to help it. It’s like the words scoot right past the little brain filter that is supposed to stop them.
    â€œLou!” My mother stares at me for a second. Then she laughs and turns to Brian. “What do you think, Brian? Is this a date?”
    He raises one eyebrow. “I don’t think Richard would appreciate that, do you?”
    â€œAhh, no. Damn it.” Mom winks at me. “Actually, Brian’s one of my students. A wonderful poet. And he’s married. To Richard.”
    â€œOh.” I look at him curiously, trying not to stare.
    I don’t know any gay people back home. Or black people. Or poets, for that matter. Though if I was gay, I probably wouldn’t stay in Drumheller any longer than I had to. I’m sort of embarrassed and feel like I need to say something, to sort of move the conversation along. “My boyfriend writes poetry,” I hear myself say.
    Zoe’s eyes flicker toward Brian for a fraction of a second, and I can practically see the wheels in her head turning as she decides how to play this so that she comes off looking like a good mother. Then she laughs. “I didn’t even know you had a boyfriend, you sly creature.”
    I shrug, half wishing I hadn’t said it but also realizing that for once, my mother actually seems interested in me. “We haven’t been together long.”
    â€œWell. What’s his name?”
    Mr. Samson’s face appears in my mind, smiling. “Tom.” I say it quickly, without planning the lie. I run my tongue over my chipped tooth. “His name is Tom.”
    â€œReally. Tom the poet.” She laughs again. I wonder what she’d say if Brian wasn’t here, if she’d react differently. But even when it is only the two of us, I feel like she is always acting, always putting on a performance. “Is he at your school?”
    I nod. “Yeah.” I don’t think she has ever asked me so many questions about myself all in a