Read Online Paint It Black by Janet Fitch - Free Book Online

could cry just to look at them. His father’s were wide and strong and crooked, with hair on the backs of the fingers. Hands that could hold a shovel, flatten somebody’s nose. She could see Michael in the shape of the forehead and the straight thick eyebrows, but the father’s skin was rough—bad acne as a teen—and his gray hair grew wiry, not soft and dark. Still, they both had the same bony hero’s face, the square jaw, the stubborn sailor’s look.
    The father held his glass between his two big hands, as if trying to warm them. “He called me that last day.” His head hung limply over his knuckly hands, he looked like he was praying. “I didn’t get the message.” He pressed his heavy hand to his face.
    She couldn’t believe Michael had called his father, who never did shit for him. When he hadn’t called her. It sliced right through her, like the little egg slicer Gommer Ida used, a wire contraption that cut the white flesh and yellow heart into clean bare rounds. He had called this asshole, whom he hated, and not her? Was that what Cal came here to tell her? That in the end, she just hadn’t meant that much to him? Or was it the contrary, to prove he’d still been important. She could see Cal was waiting for her to say something, but she was such a bad actress, she never said her lines right, it was something perverse in her nature. And what was her line anyway? No, it’s not your fault, Cal? You were a bang-up dad. Always there when he needed you. That’s why he went and shot himself in the head. Yeah, if only you had been there.
When were you ever there, asshole? You left him all to me. All you people. What was I supposed to do, I’m not one of you. I didn’t know about how to deal with your son.
But he’d called the father he hated, in Kuala Lumpur. Not her.
    “I just got back to my hotel when the call came from the consulate,” Cal said, drinking his bourbon, rattling the ice. “I almost didn’t make it in time, they had to hold the plane in Singapore.”
    Josie’d never been to Kuala Lumpur, to Singapore or even San Francisco. Why was it supposed to be more tragic if they had to get on a plane? The way Meredith used to call him from South Africa or Beijing. The gods landing for a moment. “So what did you want to talk to me about, your travel arrangements?”
    He looked at her differently then, a narrower gaze. Revamping his impression. She wasn’t such a nice girl after all. He gazed down into his drink as if it was a crystal ball. “I just wanted to talk. You know, get to know each other.”
    She waited for him to say more. He obviously didn’t want to get to know her, there wasn’t that much to know. It had to be something else.
    “He talked about you, you know,” Cal said.
    He’d talked about her with Calvin Faraday? “Yeah? When was that?”
    “He called me sometimes. Just to shoot the bull.”
    He’d been talking to his father. Behind her back. What else? He could drive and he was talking to his dad, what the fuck else didn’t she know? It’s not like she would’ve minded, but why hide it from her? Or was this all just some kind of mind trip Cal Faraday was cooking up? “He never called you. I paid the bills, I know.”
    “He called collect. I didn’t mind. Hell, I was ecstatic he was talking to me again.”
    She exhaled deeply, tried to steady herself, sipped her rotten drink. “What’d he talk about?”
    “You. A lot about you. Said you were original. Smart. He loved you. I never heard him talk like that about a girl. About anyone for that matter.” Cal pressed his cold glass to the middle of his forehead, rolling it from side to side.
    If only she could believe it. People who loved you didn’t go off and kill themselves and leave you stranded by the side of the road like some junked car. They believed in their love. They believed that even if things didn’t go well, even if things looked like crap for a while, you could hang in there, love was worth hanging