Read Online Stacking in Rivertown by Barbara Bell - Free Book Online Page A

trying to compose my letter to Jeremy.
    Dear Jeremy.
    No.
    Dearest.
    Oh, God, how can you lie like a rug in a suicide letter?
    It’ll come to me.
    After my workout Wednesday morning, I drive to the hospital where Jeremy and I had our synchronicity thing. I show my Clarisse Broder ID and ask to see the records of my stay five years ago.
    It takes awhile.
    The receptionist returns with a wad of papers newly printed out. I find what I’m looking for about five pages back. I read the diagnosis.
    “Knife wound. Lower-left side.”
    This chit could eat you alive. I’ve grown attached to my appendectomy.
    After that, I drive to the garage where I’ve parked the Taurus. I open the back and pack in the loaded shotgun and a box of shells. I keep checking to make sure that my scar is on the left side. Maybe I’ve been wrong about it all these years.
    Thursday comes with me all messed in the head about the interview with
Time
. I don’t know why I bother.
    “You write a lot about your childhood.”
    “Not
my
childhood,” I say.
    “Off the record, how did you get that rash?”
    And here I was thinking it was going away real nice. I become self-conscious. “It’s something I ate.”
    “Tell me about
your
childhood.”
    I shift around. “Like what?”
    “Where were you born?”
    I think fast. “Ohio” is all I can come up with on the spur of the moment.
    “Where in Ohio?”
    I don’t know a thing about Ohio, so I say, “I forget.” My lying capabilities waned after the age of five.
    “You forget?”
    “Yeah,” I say, on a roll. “Too traumatic. My therapist says I’m not supposed to talk about it. Just thinking about it gives me a rash.”
    “It’s always that way with artists, isn’t it?”
    “What, the rash?”
    “The sensitivity, the dark underbelly of life.”
    Honey, what I could tell you about the dark underbelly. Some of those dark underbellies are well-known public figures.
    Ben and I were at the reception the night of my fake appendectomy because of the Senator. At Ben’s, he asked for me special, always having me in manacles and bent over. Ben would make an appearance at public functions every now and then to give certain clients a scare, to hold a little sway. I guess that’s why Ben never had any problems with the cops.
    But the cop at the hospital, when I was still restrained and half out of my mind with a hunger for smack, that cop kept asking me about Ben.
    “I’m Ekker’s girl,” I said over and over.
    “Some people say you aren’t,” he said. “On the street, some people say you’re Ben’s girl.”
    “What difference does it make?” I said. “I had an appendectomy.”
    He frowned.
    Detective Bates. That was his name.
    “Did you know this girl?” He showed me a picture that made me want to throw up. I didn’t look at her face. I didn’t want to see it.
    “No! I don’t know her. Shit!” I fought the straps. “I had an appendectomy. I fell down the stairs.”
    He left me his card. “I’d be careful, if I were you,” he said. “You’re in water over your head.”
    As though I could do anything at all about the water I was in.
    Detective Bates showed up a couple more times, wanting to show me the pictures, but I refused to look. He stopped coming.
    Which is really weird because on Friday after I return home from doing my hours of laps and holding my breath, there he is standing on my doorstep. I park the Porsche and meet him at the front door.
    He’s not much taller than me and must be twice my weight, but he carries it funny for a man. He looks padded all over, like someone has taped pillows front, back, and sides, from shoulders to waist. He’s got the round face of a choirboy with the angelic part having disintegrated in bits. I guess because of carrying around too many pictures like the ones he tried to show me at the hospital.
    “Mrs. Boone,” he says, holding out his hand. His clothes look like he balls them up in the bottom of his closet for a month or so