Read Online Vanishing and Other Stories by Deborah Willis - Free Book Online

her.
    He gets out of his car without turning off the lights or the engine. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
    â€œYou didn’t. I’m old enough to know who I need to be scared of.”
    â€œI just want to talk to you.”
    â€œAre you a crazy person? Are you going to kill yourself and blame me for it?”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œYou’re probably going broke.” She crosses her arms. “That makes people behave badly.”
    â€œI just want to disappear. Can you do that?”
    â€œDon’t you ever sleep? Don’t you have a job?”
    â€œPlease, Miranda.”
    â€œIt’s not that simple. You need props and a rigged stage and dry ice for that kind of thing.”
    â€œI just want to know what it feels like.”
    â€œGo home.” She speaks as though she is used to men like him. “Go home to your wife or whoever buys you those nice clothes.”
    â€œMy wife is dead.”
    â€œOkay.” She looks up at the sky then closes her eyes. “I don’t care. Do you understand? I don’t care, because it’s not my job to care.”
    â€œBecause you’re the dealer and I’m the player?”
    â€œGood guess.”
    â€œBecause you’re the performer and I’m the audience.”
    â€œLeave me alone, Tom.”
    â€œI wasn’t joking about the two of us running off together. I wasn’t joking about taking your show on the road.”
    â€œYou want to lose it all?” She smiles the kind of smile she must once have used onstage, before juggling knives. “Some of us don’t have that luxury.”
    â€œWe should escape. We should be brave. You should have seen how brave my wife was.”
    â€œI have rent to pay. I have an ex-husband who owes me over four thousand dollars—but maybe that’s nothing to you.”
    â€œThis time we might be lucky.”
    â€œI have a son. Okay?” She runs her hands through her dark, wet hair. “And I have to be up in less than five hours to get him to school.”
    He hadn’t imagined a child, another life that filled her own. He looks at her exhausted face and sees, now, how poor his imagination had been.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he says. “You should go home.” But she doesn’t move. He steps closer to her and she doesn’t walk away. “Just tell me one thing.”
    â€œIt’s Mabel, all right? My name is Mabel.”
    â€œReally? It’s cute.”
    â€œIt’s terrible.”
    â€œI can see why you don’t like it.”
    She smiles, and he touches the hair that sticks to her forehead. She lets him brush it out of her eyes. He wraps his arms around hershoulders and she allows this. She leans into him, for one second, maybe two.
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    WHEN HE GETS HOME , he scrapes the algae off the glass. He distills and cools twenty gallons of water, and replenishes the tank. When he sprinkles food onto the water’s surface, the convict tang, damselfish, and flamefish swim up to it. Tom presses his palm to the glass and touches the place where, on the other side, the sea star has attached itself. Then he lies on the floor, on the spot where Kelly’s bed had been, as though he’s beside her. He watches the fish until he falls asleep, and he sleeps until the next afternoon.
    That’s when he finds the seven of hearts. It’s in his wallet, which had been empty before.

 
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t r a c e s
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    ALL I KNOW OF YOU is in traces: the musky smell of lavender and molasses in the house, his rushed phone calls when he thinks I’m not listening, the look on his face. Maybe if we met, I could explain my situation.
Explain my situation
. As if situations can be folded into the neat boxes of words, as if the word
situation
can define this. Define
this:
you are fucking (fabulous word, perfectly shaped box!) my husband. And for four months, you have occupied my