Read Online South of Elfrida by Holley Rubinsky - Free Book Online Page B

taken, okay, all right.” He’d made the mistake of showing her the online virtual world, Second Life , and his avatar, a muscular female bouncer in a lesbian bar. He doesn’t date much, so he thought it would be a hoot to hang out with clubbers of the opposite sex. The girls get into such extreme hair-pulling fights, it’s hysterically entertaining. Karen deems Second Life a waste of time. Get a real life, she tells him, as though hers is working so great.
    â€œCan you get out of it?” He means the hotel booking.
    â€œNada. Once you make the last confirming click, you kiss your moolah goodbye.”
    He feels himself relent. “Maybe if you show up in person, they’ll take pity on you.”
    She pays for the lunch at the register and waltzes back to collect her jacket. “You know what? You’re right. Let’s go. And they have such a great bar.”
    Stefan blinks, dismayed. That’s the other thing about her—she’s impulsive. He should have kept his mouth shut.
    Bisbee, a half-hour drive south of Tombstone, is situated ten miles north of the Mexican border. He kicks himself as they drive through a landscape of loss (he makes a note on a pad he keeps in his shirt pocket), a settlement of dented trailers, the fronds of one lone palm tree flailing in the wind; a truck with a flat tire, at the driver’s window a boy in a red T-shirt glowering; dust devils spinning across the road. She drinks a lot and invariably delivers maudlin monologues, critical of herself and her life. Then she will insinuate, in murmurs, her opinions about him, tiptoeing around the idea that he should get out of his dead-end job in the public records office. Yes, he does gripe, and there’s good reason—tedious people surround him. On the other hand, he has a pension to look forward to, and he’s not giving it up.
    Climbing the wide staircase to the posh hotel, built in the heyday of copper mining when grandees escorted lavishly embellished ladies, Stefan glances at Karen. Because she’s blond and has sensitive skin—thin-skinned, she says—her cheeks are red from the wind through the open car window. Before they enter the lobby, she turns to Stefan, places her hand on his arm, her eyes lit. “Just think how incredibly mind-blowing it would have been if Danny was the man I thought he was. It would have been a dream come true.”
    Stefan winces. From the lobby they turn toward the lounge, the decor plush green velvet, cherry wood, and nickel light fixtures. Believing that dreams come true is another annoying trait of hers. Despite her environmental work and all the losses to developers, she really believes in happy endings, believes the world can be a better place.
    They take stools at the black granite bar. She orders a double margarita. Maudlin is on its way. He readies himself for her boozy regrets.
    Back in his Phoenix apartment a week later, the sound of the freeway is a depressing, constant whine. His latest batch of poems has been rejected, this time by the publisher of a small press who ostensibly admires his work but can’t fit the poems into the existing schedule. It’s a blow, when people you trust start stepping sideways. More mail bangs through the slot. He rises from his computer to find a card from her. He opens it eagerly. In the envelope he finds a note and a cheque. The amount is puzzling. It includes the airfare, which he expected, but also a tip for his time. How wonderfully spiteful she is.
    Why not cash it? He had hell to go through. All that listening.
    The note says, in her angular penmanship:
    I will stay away from you now, knowing you think me exhausting to be around.
    I will pick you out of my brain, cell by cell, until you are the stranger you want to be. Giving you what you want, I relieve you from having a relationship with me.
    I banish you.
    Stefan is pierced to the heart. She is so arch, so precise when she’s angry, and so