Read Online When Watched by Leopoldine Core - Free Book Online

morphing. First, all of the stone floral ornaments were torn from the facade and then, after months of misguided upscaling, the building wound up looking like a pizza chain with pretensions. Cheap wrought-iron handrails led to a yellow wood door that was often greasy with oil. “It’s very Epcot,” Frances had sneered the first time she came over. “Sort of a suburban take on urban.”
    Peanut considered how she might appear waiting on her stoop, bent over her marble notebook, legs crossed, big tortoise sunglasses between forward-falling hair. She smacked a mosquito on her calf.
    Â â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢Â 
    Frances pulled up to the curb in her olive pickup truck, one arm out the window. She had a skinny, creased face and center-parted Jesusy hair that she kept dirty to darken the gray. “Hey,” she said, her voice tender and smug at once.
    In the car, Peanut smiled madly. The two held each other and made out greedily for a bit. Then Frances looked nervously out the window, adjusting her black horn-rimmed glasses.
    â€œOh, come on.” Peanut rolled her eyes. “Relax.” Her voice had a fluty underwater quality, a subtle echo chamber.
    â€œYou come on. You’re a sweet little bunny and I’m this gnarly old man. I mean if someone wanted to murder one of us to make a point, they would murder me.”
    Peanut pointed to a couple of old women sitting on a stoop across the street. They were staring. “Those two absolutely want to murder you. Look at them.” She chuckled. “It’s like they don’t even care that we can see them.”
    â€œThey want us to see. They want us to know what they think of us.”
    â€œRight.” Peanut tipped her head onto Frances’s shoulder. “That I’m some victim.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œWell you’re the old pervert, right? But I’m considered this, like,
idiot child
with daddy issues. Even your friends treat me like that.”
    â€œLike you have daddy issues?”
    â€œLike I’m an idiot. They don’t really,” Peanut paused, “
engage
me. I mean, the level of inquiry is
low
. Like, if we get dinner, they pretend to be talking to both of us, but they’re making eye contact with you the whole time. And then you and whoever just wind up prompting each other’s monologues. It reminds me of being at dinner parties with my parents as a kid. Back when I was three feet tall and really was invisible unless I was being bad.”
    â€œGod. You have to tell me when you feel like that.” Frances pinched Peanut’s midsection affectionately. It was a measuring pinch. A butcher’s pinch.
    â€œOkay.” Peanut sat up in her seat and remembered that she was angry at Frances. “Or maybe I just shouldn’t go. I mean out with you and your friends. I’m not interested in winning anyone’s approval.” She opened a greasy paper bag full of broken cookies and scones from the bakery where she worked. “You want?” She put the open bag between their seats.
    â€œNo. I’m starting to look like a skeleton with a watermelon around its waist,” Frances smirked and then dug her hand into the bag, lifting out a crumbly cookie half.
    Peanut laughed and poked Frances’s hip. “I like it.”
    â€œIt? That’s great. So it exists.”
    â€œOh darling, stop. Anyway, I only took this stuff because it was free. I’m actually pretty revolted by sweets at this point.” Peanut began rummaging through her straw bag and pulled out a CD book covered with peeling stickers. She flipped through the plastic pages.
    â€œCan we not listen to the Smiths,” Frances said, steering back onto the road.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œHis voice is so endless and droning. It just makes me sad.”
    â€œThat’s the whole point.”
    â€œWell, it doesn’t speak to my sadness, it
produces
sadness.”Frances