Read Online Transits by Jaime Forsythe - Free Book Online Page B

“Are you OK?”
    Andy notices the mattress and pillow pushed into the corner of the room. “You're sleeping here?”
    â€œYeah. For now. Where are you?”
    â€œAt my mom's.”
    â€œOh, good. That's good.” Lila steps in high-heeled sandals around a rack on wheels, stroking each individual jellybean-coloured cashmere sweater with the nozzle of the hose.
    There is a pause before Lila continues. “It's just such a heartbreaking kind of luck, isn't it? No one was hurt, but I have a hard time thinking about some of the stuff I'll never see again.”
    â€œI wanted to ask you something.”
    â€œReally?” Lila drops her voice into a mysterious tone. “Andy… are you trying to tell me you need a three-piece vintage suit?”
    Andy is growing frustrated with his own confusion. Does he need a suit? Surely not. Clothes. He lost a lot of clothes. He's been wearing the same outfit since the fire: jeans, sneakers, plaid shirt, white socks,black cotton boxer-briefs. He has washed these things in his mother's monstrous machine a few times. Well, at least once. The longer he wears the same clothes, the softer they become, the more they take on his shape. He knows his mother wants to say something about this, but she doesn't.
    â€œThis is going to sound strange,” he says.
    Lila's hose pauses in mid-air, puffing.
    â€œI've been having trouble remembering stuff. Since the fire. It's like I try to dig something out of my memory, and I can't reach it.”
    â€œDo you write a lot down?” Lila's response is immediate, diagnostic, as if she is a doctor of strangeness.
    Andy thinks of his coil-bound dayplanner and its clear boxes. All his drawings. “Yes.”
    â€œBecause I had this diary. Completely handwritten, nothing saved on a computer. I'm a fool. Anyway, I know it's gone. Up in smoke and all that. But I have this weird feeling that somebody has it. Someone may as well have ripped me up into bits and scattered little pieces of me all over the city. I have this paranoid feeling that everyone knows all my stupid little secrets.” It had never occurred to Andy that Lila might be a person with secrets.
    It's the fur collar on top of a pile that sends him back. Andy is sure he has seen a girl, a modern dancer, wear that exact piece. She stood in his kitchen during a party. Going to get another drink, his limbs felt pleasantly watery, and he focused on the squiggling lines etched into the surface of the refrigerator, like an unlabeled map. The modern dancer was talking to him about Ecuador, shaking the ice cubes in her glass, and her fur collar smelled like lavender and Andy was filled to the brim with ideas. He did not want to sleep with her. He just wanted the suggestion of her limbs making arcs in the air. He wanted to take that image and run.
    â€œAndy?” Lila is repeating his name. He is not sure how many times she has said it.
    â€œThis place makes me remember things for some reason,” he says.
    â€œI don't think I've even seen you in here before.”
    â€œI know.” He points to a green fedora. “Like that hat. I think my father may have worn one like it. But he died when I was little. So maybe I've seen pictures?”
    â€œEveryone gets that in here. Everyone says certain dresses smell like their grandmother. But how can everyone's grandmother smell the same? It's the mothballs or something. I don't know. My grandmother smelled like Vicks and plum sauce. Andy, do you realize how long we shared a wall while we lived in that building?”
    Andy looks at her. Thinks of the sound of Lila clomping around on those heels of hers. Flimsy walls. Shoebox diorama. “In grade four, you made a shoebox diorama of the pioneers,” he says. “Is that right?”
    â€œHmm…”
    â€œThere was a log cabin made out of cut up cigars?”
    â€œOh yeah!” Lila nods, hands on her hips. “I totally forgot about that. My