2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino Read Free Book Online Page A

machine clicks on. Even her recorded voice unmoors him. He coughs for the first few minutes of his message. He says, “A Good Morning is what you used to call an egg cracked into a beer, right?” Drinking at barely noon will not refute her claim that he spends too much time at the club. “It’s almost Christmas,” he tries. His voice is not the one he wants. He shores it up before he speaks again, searching the room for anything helpful: the citation, Gus’s unfinished plane, Sonny’s crisp, folded bedsheets. There was a joke years ago that had her howling, but he can only remember the punch line.
    He says, “You know damn well I can’t read.”

12:30 P.M.
    W ould it be okay for Sarina to come to the dinner they discussed that morning, over the pie, in the flurries, at the place?
    Georgie says yes into the phone as if she has been waiting all morning for Sarina to call.
    “What can I bring?” Sarina says. “You sure don’t need pie.”
    “Yourself,” she says. “Only yourself.”
    “Who will be there? How many people, I mean?” Sarina stutters. “So I know what to bring.”
    “Me, Bella, and her new girlfriend, Claudia. Pepper, get down! That’s my cat. She jumped on the table. When I’m on the phone she thinks I’m talking to her.”
    “Bella and her girlfriend …” Sarina reminds her.
    “She’s like a furry human being. It’s true what they say.”
    “It is,” Sarina says.
    “So true.” Georgie sighs.
    “Is that all then? Those are the only people coming?”
    “Bella, Claudia, Ben and Annie of course, Michael. He just bought a ridiculous car.”
    Of course, Ben and Annie! Because married people are always together! Sarina wants to retract her acceptance, the phone call, this day, like the cord to her vacuum that rewinds with a powerful
thwip
! How had she forgotten the pleasure of a carpet sucked clean? Vacuuming is how she’d prefer to spend the evening. Then a few hours at her easel. “So great,”Sarina says, not specifying what would be great: a new car, seeing everyone, pie …
    “Everyone will be thrilled to see you. What changed your mind?”
    Everyone. Sarina hears the bell that signals the end of lunch. Through the window, she watches her students return dully to the yard. She injects her voice with an improbable amount of positivity. “I wanted to be in the company of adults.”
    “I’ll help you find some.” Georgie laughs, no doubt holding a fistful of roots, orbited by an adoring, whimsically colored cat. She is the kind of woman who is endlessly in from the garden where she has been cutting chives. “When was the last time we all saw each other? It’s sad if you let yourself think about it.”
    “So sad,” Sarina says.
    “You will call if you are running late?”
    “Of course!” She hangs up the phone.
    In the yard children from several grades seem to be playing a game called Everyone Is Dying and There Is Chaos. One of them, an official-looking boy, barks orders, while someone else yells “Mark” over and over. “I’m dead,” a little girl says, before another voice corrects her: “You’re not dead if you’re talking.” Through it all a kindergartener keeps up an impressive, enduring wail.
    The game heightens as several kids scream contradictory directions.
Mark! Mark! Mark! Mark!
    Unless they really are dying, Sarina thinks, not rising from her desk.

1:00 P.M.
    M adeleine sulks through the backyards of the row homes that border Saint Anthony’s, past the market dotted with shoppers, to where Beauty Land sits, painted an unnatural pink, on a stretch of paved lot.
    Darla Henshaw, junior hairdresser and default receptionist, is on the phone warning a client they can squeeze her in but the shampooers are already backed up. “Be ready to wait is what I’m telling you.”
    Madeleine hands Darla the piece of paper. Darla reads it as, in her ear, the client has her say. Darla says she gets it, it’s hard all around, then hangs up. “Christ, Madeleine,