Read Online In the Land of Birdfishes by Rebecca Silver Slayter - Free Book Online

can I get a room?”
    He shrugged. “Nobody’s open before June 14. Any place open now is booked.”
    “But
you’re
open.” I wanted to snatch the game from his hand. He had a slack, sullen face, and I knew that behind his lowered lids, his eyes would have that dull, empty look all kids’ eyes seemed to have these days. I felt my heart rate become faster till I could hear the pressure of blood in my ears and throat.
    “But we’re booked.”
    “Booked until when? Can I get a room tomorrow?”
    He shrugged again. “Don’t know. I’m just watching the desk for Ivan. Ivan said no rooms.”
    “What do I do?” I asked. He hadn’t looked at me yet and my voice sounded too high, too thin.
    “Lady,” he said. “Lady, lady, lady.”
    “I’m looking for my sister,” I said softly, my voice anemic, my voice a bony hand reaching.
    “So stay with her,” he said.
    I didn’t mean to start crying. I never cried in public. But I did and it was then he put down his game and looked at me. At first I thought he was disgusted, embarrassed because I was old and a woman and maybe I reminded him of his mother, but he just stared at me and I stared back. He had long, dark, wet-looking eyelashes around his pale eyes, the eyes of a startled, lovely girl.
    “Ivan will be back soon,” he said at last. “You wait there.” And there was no chair where he pointed, only a flight of stairs, so I nodded and wiped my face and stood by the stairs to wait for Ivan.
    An hour passed while I stood by the stairs. Not one person came in or went out the front doors, and the boy didn’t raise his eyes from the game in his hands. Eventually I sat down on the bottom step, and the boy said nothing. The room was so dim that I struggled to keep my eyes open. It was warm and airless and lit only by a narrow barred window facing the street and a piano lamp on the glossy desk shielding the boy. I couldn’t tell if the wallpaper was pink or brown, but a headache had begun pounding behind my eyes, and I slowly came to feel as if the walls were the colour of the inside of my head and its pain. Finally I stood up.
    “Listen, kid,” I said to the boy, “are you from this town?”
    He set the game down on the desk and it made a series of tinny sounds. “No,” he said, “but Ivan is.”
    “I can’t wait for Ivan,” I said. “I’ve got to find my sister. Listen, kid, I have to tell you something and you may not be ready to hear it.”
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “I have to tell you that it is rude to play with that thing when someone is talking to you. You’ve got a job here, do you understand that? It might not seem very important to you, and it isn’t really a very important job. It’s kind of a stupid job. But when somebody is here for a reason that is important, like if somebody is here to find their sister, you’ve got to do better than this.”
    He blinked and then the door swung open. “That’s Ivan,” he said, glancing at the door.
    Before I turned, I leaned over the desk and said, “The whole point is to look at people and listen to them. The whole point of the whole thing is to not be staring at some goddamn video game.”
    “Like life, you mean?”
    I wondered if he put gel in his hair to make it into those little points, if he was so stupid he thought that was the kind of thing he should spend his time on, or if he was just so dirty, his hair found its own way to looking stupid.
    “Like life,” I said and looked at Ivan, who crossed the room with a sigh. He was a dark-haired, heavy-set man whose features seemed to have retreated from his wide cheeks and jaw to crowd the centre of his face. His eyes were so close together they almost crossed as they stared at me.
    “You need a room?” Ivan asked.
    “Yes,” I said.
    Ivan unhooked a key from a line of nails behind the desk and handed it to me. “Taz, get her credit card. It’s a no-smoking room. No pets either.”
    Then Ivan climbed the stairs, and only after he