Read Online Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lauren Groff
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more, in pitying.
Above the scrum, Mathilde shivered and pulled her cardigan closer. A burgundy leaf fell from the Japanese maple and landed upright in a spinach-artichoke dip. It was chilly in the shadow under the tree. Soon, there would be the long winter, cold and white. An erasure of this night, the garden. She plugged in the strand of Christmas lights that they had twined through the branches above, and thetree sparked into a dendrite. She sat behind her husband because she wanted to hide, and his back was so beautiful, broad and muscled, that she rested her face there and felt comforted. She listened to his voice muffled through his chest, the smooth edge of his Southern accent.
“. . . two old men sitting on a porch, shooting the sea breeze,” Lotto was saying; so, a joke. “This old hound dog comes out and circles around in the dust and sits down and starts licking at his junk. Slurping and gulping and loving the heck out of his pink little stump. A tube of lipstick all the way extended. So one of the old guys winks at his friend and says, Man, I sure wish I could do that. And the other old guy says, Pshaw! That dog would BITE you.”
They all laughed, not so much at the joke, but at the way Lotto delivered it, the pleasure he took. Mathilde knew it had been his father’s favorite, that it had made Gawain guffaw into his hand and turn red every time Lotto told it. The warmth of her husband through his emerald polo shirt began to break up the clod of dread in Mathilde. Kristina had lived on her freshman floor. Mathilde had walked in on her once crying in the coed showers, had recognized her beautiful alto voice, and had walked out again, choosing to give the gift of privacy over that of comfort. Only in retrospect was that the worse choice. Mathilde felt a slow welling of anger at Kristina in her gut and breathed into Lotto to quell it.
Lotto reached behind him for Mathilde and scooped her sideways into his lap with his paw. His stomach rumbled but he couldn’t eat more than a bite or two: he’d been waiting for a callback for a week now, unwilling to leave the apartment for fear of missing it. Mathilde had proposed the potluck to get his mind off it all. The role was for Claudio in Measure for Measure , Shakespeare in the Park next summer. He could see himself in a doublet in front of thousands. Bats darting. Dusk shooting pink flares overhead. Since graduation, he had worked steadily, if in small roles. He had gotten Equity. This was the next step skyward.
He looked through the window inside the apartment, where the phone persisted unringing on the mantel. Behind it stood the painting Mathilde had brought home a few months earlier from the gallery where she’d worked for the past year. After its artist had stormed out, flinging the canvas against the wall and breaking the stretcher, the gallery owner, Ariel, told her to toss it in the dumpster. Instead, Mathilde took the broken painting, restretched it, framed it, hung it behind the brass Buddha. It was a blue abstract and reminded Lotto of the moment every morning before dawn, a misty dim world between worlds. What’s the word? Eldritch. Like Mathilde, herself. He would come home some days after auditions to find her sitting in the dark, staring up at the painting with a glass of red wine cradled between both hands, a vague look on her face.
“Should I be worried?” he’d said once, after an audition for a show he didn’t even want, when he came home to find her sitting there in the darkening room. He kissed her behind the ear.
“No. I’m just so happy,” she had said.
He didn’t say that it had been a long day, that he’d had to wait in the drizzle on the street for two hours, that after he finally went in and read his lines and went out the door, he’d heard the director say, “Stellar. Too bad he’s a giant.” That his agent wasn’t returning his calls. That he would have relished a nice dinner for once. Because, in truth, he
Above the scrum, Mathilde shivered and pulled her cardigan closer. A burgundy leaf fell from the Japanese maple and landed upright in a spinach-artichoke dip. It was chilly in the shadow under the tree. Soon, there would be the long winter, cold and white. An erasure of this night, the garden. She plugged in the strand of Christmas lights that they had twined through the branches above, and thetree sparked into a dendrite. She sat behind her husband because she wanted to hide, and his back was so beautiful, broad and muscled, that she rested her face there and felt comforted. She listened to his voice muffled through his chest, the smooth edge of his Southern accent.
“. . . two old men sitting on a porch, shooting the sea breeze,” Lotto was saying; so, a joke. “This old hound dog comes out and circles around in the dust and sits down and starts licking at his junk. Slurping and gulping and loving the heck out of his pink little stump. A tube of lipstick all the way extended. So one of the old guys winks at his friend and says, Man, I sure wish I could do that. And the other old guy says, Pshaw! That dog would BITE you.”
They all laughed, not so much at the joke, but at the way Lotto delivered it, the pleasure he took. Mathilde knew it had been his father’s favorite, that it had made Gawain guffaw into his hand and turn red every time Lotto told it. The warmth of her husband through his emerald polo shirt began to break up the clod of dread in Mathilde. Kristina had lived on her freshman floor. Mathilde had walked in on her once crying in the coed showers, had recognized her beautiful alto voice, and had walked out again, choosing to give the gift of privacy over that of comfort. Only in retrospect was that the worse choice. Mathilde felt a slow welling of anger at Kristina in her gut and breathed into Lotto to quell it.
Lotto reached behind him for Mathilde and scooped her sideways into his lap with his paw. His stomach rumbled but he couldn’t eat more than a bite or two: he’d been waiting for a callback for a week now, unwilling to leave the apartment for fear of missing it. Mathilde had proposed the potluck to get his mind off it all. The role was for Claudio in Measure for Measure , Shakespeare in the Park next summer. He could see himself in a doublet in front of thousands. Bats darting. Dusk shooting pink flares overhead. Since graduation, he had worked steadily, if in small roles. He had gotten Equity. This was the next step skyward.
He looked through the window inside the apartment, where the phone persisted unringing on the mantel. Behind it stood the painting Mathilde had brought home a few months earlier from the gallery where she’d worked for the past year. After its artist had stormed out, flinging the canvas against the wall and breaking the stretcher, the gallery owner, Ariel, told her to toss it in the dumpster. Instead, Mathilde took the broken painting, restretched it, framed it, hung it behind the brass Buddha. It was a blue abstract and reminded Lotto of the moment every morning before dawn, a misty dim world between worlds. What’s the word? Eldritch. Like Mathilde, herself. He would come home some days after auditions to find her sitting in the dark, staring up at the painting with a glass of red wine cradled between both hands, a vague look on her face.
“Should I be worried?” he’d said once, after an audition for a show he didn’t even want, when he came home to find her sitting there in the darkening room. He kissed her behind the ear.
“No. I’m just so happy,” she had said.
He didn’t say that it had been a long day, that he’d had to wait in the drizzle on the street for two hours, that after he finally went in and read his lines and went out the door, he’d heard the director say, “Stellar. Too bad he’s a giant.” That his agent wasn’t returning his calls. That he would have relished a nice dinner for once. Because, in truth, he
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