Read Online The Body in the Sleigh by Katherine Hall Page - Free Book Online Page B

resembled a klieg light trained on the red carpet. The simple act of opening and closing her lids set the full force of what had been a dull ache across her forehead free to pound her entire skull. She needed to get some Tylenol. Much Tylenol. And water. Her tongue somehow managed to feel smooth and sticky at the same time. It had lodged itself behind a molar, choking her slightly.
    She had the mother of all hangovers.
    Scenes from last night cartwheeled uneasily across her brain. Her eyes flew open. It was her room, thank God—and she was alone. Even better, fully clothed. She closed her eyes once more—in weariness now. The weariness that had been her constant companion for months. Last night all that alcohol hadn’t made the slightest dent in it, despite her best efforts. She was owed, she’d told herself as she’d pushed open the door of the bar down the street from the apartment.
    Someone had made a halfhearted attempt at seasonal decoration. Cardboard cutouts of wreaths and candy canes were tapedto the walls; a dusty tree with a single string of blinking lights partially blocked the hallway that led to the restroom—unisex, unfortunately. The seat was always up, and worse. MERRY XMAS was this week’s sprayed on the mirror behind the bar in what appeared to be shaving cream.
    Holiday cheer. What an oxymoron. She’d dredged the word—and the notion—from some long-ago cramming for an English test or maybe the SATs and felt a momentary glimmer of pride that she could still do so.
    She hadn’t had so much as a sip of beer since she’d discovered she was pregnant. Not that she’d ever been a big drinker, especially a beer drinker. After the repeated positives—and it had to be someone with a warped sense of humor at the “personal care” company who decided to color them blue, as in “the blues”—when people had pressed her to join in, she’d made herself a “vodka” and tonic in the kitchen, careful to pour away some alcohol from the bottle. When the bottle was empty, she bought a new one, replacing the entire contents with water, and picked up a couple of large containers of cranberry juice—might as well get some vitamin C. She wasn’t worried that anyone joining her would complain about a drink without much kick. The people who passed through the apartment were usually so strung out that they wouldn’t have noticed if she’d replaced the liquor with white vinegar.
    Maybe Bruce would have. Bruce noticed things like this. He’d even noticed her switch to what he called a “Cape Codder.”
    She hadn’t been drinking Cape Codders last night. No need for vitamins now. She’d opted for the house white (poured from a box). It had a witty clam-flat nose with a slightly frisky petroleum-product aftertaste. When somebody else was paying, she’d switched to tequila and, as the night wore on, the two had tasted much the same. At midnight, a guy wearing a Santa hat had appeared with buckets of chicken and got almost everybody singing Christmas carols. In the middle of “Jingle Bells” he’d startedcrying about his kids. They lived with his ex-wife, and the bitch had moved to Ohio. He wasn’t going to see them until the summer. An older woman at the end of the bar, who had been doing shots by herself all night, got up, put her arm around him, and walked him out the door. Someone started singing again. The one about grandma getting run over by a reindeer, the mean one. Miriam was glad when they moved on to “We Three Kings,” although that coincided with major breast-milk leakage and she missed most of it. She’d gone into the bathroom and used the pump, which she was carrying in her purse all the time these days. Lactation was not a problem. Getting rid of it was. She tried not to think about anything at all as she poured the fluid in the sink and watched it spiral down the drain.