Read Online The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Grindle - Free Book Online Page A

week, for instance, I was slicing a red pepper, making neat thin strips with the very sharp carving knife I’d bought the day before, when she announced, ‘I never even saw a red pepper until after I was divorced,’ from so close behind me that she could have been sitting on my shoulder. When I whirled around and damn near gutted her, she didn’t even blink. She just picked up one of the pepper strips, and bit it in half. ‘I thought all peppers were green,’ she said. ‘And I never did see a romaine lettuce until I was twenty-one. Imagine.’
    The absence of romaine and red peppers. Divorce. Billy drops these clues about her former life like Hansel and Gretel leaving breadcrumbs. When I asked her once, by way of conversation, how she made a living, she shrugged and replied, ‘Oh you know, stuff.’ Then, a second later, she added, ‘For a while I used to be a nurse,’ like it was something she’d just remembered.
    Now she reappears in the kitchen and pours herself the last of the coffee. Then she opens the French windows so she can have a cigarette, which would probably give Signora Bardino a seizure if she knew about it. Despite her Sophia Loren accent and liberal use of the word bambina , Signora Bardino is still American enough that she wanted to know we didn’t smoke before she rented to us. We assured her, of course, in unison, that we didn’t. In my case it’s true. But in Billy’s it’s a downright lie.
    I’ve told her cigarettes will kill her. A few days after we moved in, I pointed out that they’ll strike her dead sure as a bullet or a speeding car. But Billy just smiled and pulled out her pink Elvis lighter. ‘My ex-husband bought this for me in Vegas,’ she said. ‘As a wedding present. A week after we graduated High School.’
    Now smoke hovers above Billy’s head and hangs in the damp morning air, mingling with the faint smell of diesel and mud that rises from the river a block away.
    â€˜Listen.’ She cocks her head and gestures to the apartment opposite, and I hear it too, the high-pitched whine of a child crying.
    We’ve heard it before, more than once. In fact, it’s become something of a feature of living here. In the mornings it’s usually a petulant shriek, the bratty yell of a second pastry denied, or toast thrown on the floor. But at night it’s different. At night the crying is deep and breathless, the jagged, frantic scream of nightmares.
    â€˜They fight,’ Billy says. ‘That’s what’s wrong with that kid.’
    She nods her head like an old woman as she speaks, punctuating the words with certainty, because we’ve heard that too. Along with the child’s howling, we’ve heard the ring of adult voices, the rising rhythms of sarcasm, and trills of matrimonial gripe that are so universal they don’t need translation. Walking across the courtyard, or sitting out on the balcony, we can even figure out, more or less, which names they call each other.
    The wail reaches a crescendo, and Billy stubs her cigarette out in the green tin ashtray she stole from the bar. ‘Kids,’ she says. ‘I tell you. They’re cute, but you know, whenever I felt tempted, I just thought what it would be like to have a vampire hanging from my tits.’ Then she goes to get dressed for a lecture on Perugino she doesn’t want to miss.
    A few minutes later, I stand on the balcony and watch as she comes out of our side of the building and walks across the court-yard. Halfway, she stops and looks up. Her hair ripples around her face, and from up here the baggy tweed coat she bought in the market at San Ambrogio looks like a tent. ‘Bar?’ she mouths, and I nod. Pierangelo has already told me he’ll be late tonight so there’s no reason not to join the others for a drink. I wave, and Billy waves back. Then she hoists her leather pack, skirts the