Read Online One Hundred Days of Rain by Carellin Brooks - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Carellin Brooks
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into sudden brightness.
I thought a bullâs eye would be too obvious, she tells anyone who asks.
Her pal Trouble parks, walks, orders harshly, lifts the café cup trembling to her lips. Trouble has problems as always. She has scant time for Trouble, still more than anyone else from what Trouble tells her. Something foamy in the depths of the cup, a smear across Troubleâs upper lip.
Later that night, having seen Trouble off, she waits for a ride from Nurse. They are still dating, in curious suspended fashion. Curious only to her maybe. She has lost her faith, if she ever had it. Imagining that she could understand anyone else, what theyâre thinking or will do next. Just as dangerous, throwing up her hands in this way, as she has reason to know, but the alternative not to be contemplated, the dark nights without even a television for company.
Hours ago the dark descended, or rather the orange-tinted not-dark that the city offers. Down the lanes red tail lights explode sudden flowers. Nurse slides the big vehicle from street to street like a dealer handling cards.
They come to rest, engine off: Nurse leaves her. Immediately she is surrounded by the sound of rain. The vehicle a blind for the hunting of rain. Pattering, smattering, tinkling, trickling. Pale rain shadows puddle overhead, on the arching glass. They gather and streak across, shadowing the broad plastic expanse of the dash with their trails. As soon as seen, gone again. As if protesting this, rain kicks. It tickles the roof, pounds miniscule fists, drums tiny heels on the body of the car. Streaming, rain drops at last, its weight insupportable. In the back, the bicycles steam. Her coat emits its fetid smell of damp.
The next morning, a message from her lawyer. M, surprise, has been calling the lawyer, demanding replies: each response to cost hundreds of dollars, as she knows from experience. The lawyer is too smart for M though. She doesnât respond and then reports. This is what happened. Let me know if your instructions change. If only everyone would act like this, do exactly as she tells them.
59.
On the weekdays, scanty showers, driblets, interspersed with peekaboo sun or sullen cloud. On the weekends, rain, sudden and torrential. All-encompassing. Week after week and month after month this pattern continues.
Itâs easy, someone says. Thereâs all this traffic. Monday to Friday. Then it stops.
The explanation canât be right but the pattern imposes its own truth, or logic. Saturday comes, a torrent. Water pouring between buildings, the hollow drowning fall of it. In the morning she lies in bed listening to rain. Itâs early, there are no noises to get in the way. The very occasional swish of a car pursuing its blind blunt way down the hidden street outside, at the front. The water a cascade, a cavalcade, a call to arms, a march. It depresses one, the very regularity of it. The inevitability. You will get wet again. Yes you will, no matter if you buy cute rubbers and a bright mackintosh. No matter where you store your umbrella. Despite the magazines that exhort you to this new colour or kicky print. Dots.
Lying there she imagines that the deluge comes from somewhere closer than cloud, a discarded hose pouring. Loosed hydrant in the sky. The little trees on the windowsill skewed. Cascade on the glass. Rain continues inevitable.
60.
November. She attends a criminal trial where her fate is to be decided. The accused. She wears the same clothes she wore on the day she apparently viciously assaulted M: the skirt, the little sweater, the wedge heels. Even the pearls.
Do you accept. Has it been proven that. Two days of this, increasingly removed. The details of this trial are sealed, their publication banned. In vain she argues against this.
Her sonâs father attends both days. He slouches in the visitorâs gallery wearing an uncouth T-shirt. At the recess he walks her to lunch. Outside it is always raining,
I thought a bullâs eye would be too obvious, she tells anyone who asks.
Her pal Trouble parks, walks, orders harshly, lifts the café cup trembling to her lips. Trouble has problems as always. She has scant time for Trouble, still more than anyone else from what Trouble tells her. Something foamy in the depths of the cup, a smear across Troubleâs upper lip.
Later that night, having seen Trouble off, she waits for a ride from Nurse. They are still dating, in curious suspended fashion. Curious only to her maybe. She has lost her faith, if she ever had it. Imagining that she could understand anyone else, what theyâre thinking or will do next. Just as dangerous, throwing up her hands in this way, as she has reason to know, but the alternative not to be contemplated, the dark nights without even a television for company.
Hours ago the dark descended, or rather the orange-tinted not-dark that the city offers. Down the lanes red tail lights explode sudden flowers. Nurse slides the big vehicle from street to street like a dealer handling cards.
They come to rest, engine off: Nurse leaves her. Immediately she is surrounded by the sound of rain. The vehicle a blind for the hunting of rain. Pattering, smattering, tinkling, trickling. Pale rain shadows puddle overhead, on the arching glass. They gather and streak across, shadowing the broad plastic expanse of the dash with their trails. As soon as seen, gone again. As if protesting this, rain kicks. It tickles the roof, pounds miniscule fists, drums tiny heels on the body of the car. Streaming, rain drops at last, its weight insupportable. In the back, the bicycles steam. Her coat emits its fetid smell of damp.
The next morning, a message from her lawyer. M, surprise, has been calling the lawyer, demanding replies: each response to cost hundreds of dollars, as she knows from experience. The lawyer is too smart for M though. She doesnât respond and then reports. This is what happened. Let me know if your instructions change. If only everyone would act like this, do exactly as she tells them.
59.
On the weekdays, scanty showers, driblets, interspersed with peekaboo sun or sullen cloud. On the weekends, rain, sudden and torrential. All-encompassing. Week after week and month after month this pattern continues.
Itâs easy, someone says. Thereâs all this traffic. Monday to Friday. Then it stops.
The explanation canât be right but the pattern imposes its own truth, or logic. Saturday comes, a torrent. Water pouring between buildings, the hollow drowning fall of it. In the morning she lies in bed listening to rain. Itâs early, there are no noises to get in the way. The very occasional swish of a car pursuing its blind blunt way down the hidden street outside, at the front. The water a cascade, a cavalcade, a call to arms, a march. It depresses one, the very regularity of it. The inevitability. You will get wet again. Yes you will, no matter if you buy cute rubbers and a bright mackintosh. No matter where you store your umbrella. Despite the magazines that exhort you to this new colour or kicky print. Dots.
Lying there she imagines that the deluge comes from somewhere closer than cloud, a discarded hose pouring. Loosed hydrant in the sky. The little trees on the windowsill skewed. Cascade on the glass. Rain continues inevitable.
60.
November. She attends a criminal trial where her fate is to be decided. The accused. She wears the same clothes she wore on the day she apparently viciously assaulted M: the skirt, the little sweater, the wedge heels. Even the pearls.
Do you accept. Has it been proven that. Two days of this, increasingly removed. The details of this trial are sealed, their publication banned. In vain she argues against this.
Her sonâs father attends both days. He slouches in the visitorâs gallery wearing an uncouth T-shirt. At the recess he walks her to lunch. Outside it is always raining,
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