Read Online The Parallel Apartments by Bill Cotter - Free Book Online

decide whether to keep the baby. She would hunt down and confront her awful family and wring some truth from them. She would find Gracie Yin, seduce her, and then move to Houston with her to make art and have sex and be in love and work in a pharmacy. Or maybe waitress, where the real money was, until the collage commissions from her elegantly simple website started pouring in.
    But the moment was a disappointment. Austin seemed like a city now, stormy traffic, cloverleaf interchanges, strip development stretching so far out that the neighboring towns had been annexed and were now more likesuburbs, and an architecturally brisk skyline visible at ten miles. She did not feel welcome. The homesickness burn that had grown itchier as she drove south remained, unscratched, somewhere in her large intestine, even though she was “home.” Plus, she was lame: the rental car’s pedals had seemed like they did not care to leave New York and were fighting back, so hard were they to depress. Her accelerator foot buzzed, the attached ankle and calf shuddered, her knee creaked as though the cartilage had turned to oak. Justine had had to stop dozens of times to massage and baby her right side.
    Judging by his rosy, whiskerless cheeks, the younger man in line must have been at the junior-high-school end of adolescence. He was about seven feet tall. He kept bumping his head on the security camera over the check-in desk.
    â€œPelletier,” said the older man, who lisped slightly and wore old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses encumbered with heavy bifocal lenses. “We have a reservation. We’re here for the Ninth Annual Symposium on Cults and Extreme Clubs.”
    â€œOf course,” said the clerk, a young woman whose perfectly radial blond bangs complemented the many ounces of gold jewelry that encircled her neck and appendages. “I’m Amy, your Frito front-desk specialist team player. ’Kay. Member, leader, or scholar?”
    She adjusted her monitor with both hands; it creaked and she jangled.
    â€œUh, scholars?”
    â€œOkay… sorry, but only cult leaders get a 10 percent price break on the room. Scholars, historians, gawkers, cult members, and the deprogrammed pay full price.”
    â€œWhat about friends and families of victims?”
    â€œThere’s a schedule of CultAnon meetings taped to the waffle machine, there behind you.”
    â€œYeah, well, Jimbo here,” said Mr. Pelletier, indicating his son with a gesture similar to a game-show hostess calling attention to a shiny Frigidaire, “his sixth-grade teacher was Manfred Truwt.”
    The clerk looked up at him and smiled. “Hello,” she said, waving.
    â€œâ€™Lo,” Jimbo said, waving back.
    â€œPretty exciting,” she said, blushing lightly and touching her bangs, perhaps checking them for radial symmetry. “Was Manfred weird? Like didhe mesmerize you and the other kids with unignorable charisma and get you to do his yard work?”
    Jimbo mumbled and turned a color akin to salsa.
    â€œJimbo’s shy,” said Mr. Pelletier. “Look, which way’s Palmer Auditorium?”
    â€œSee that highway?” said Amy, pointing out of the tinted windows of the lobby at a roaring overpass not thirty feet away. “I-35. Go south—thataway—and then…”
    Amy incanted directions that included roads Justine was familiar with. It soothed her to hear their names, even though there was nothing comforting about the memories of events to which the streets themselves once bore witness.
    â€œâ€¦but you’ll have to pay for parking, in cash, so be ready. Okay, let’s get you situated. That’ll be $32.99 a night.”
    Thirty-two ninety-nine, thought Justine. That’s twenty bucks less than they told me on the phone.
    The clerk gave each of the Pelletiers a key and a smile.
    â€œAgain, I’m Amy, if you need anything.”
    â€œAnd you’ve got our