Amy Inspired by Bethany Pierce Read Free Book Online Page A

bedbugs. Just as quickly, Eli moved from an object of Zoë’s affection to a potential recipient of her militant charity. How we should help him had become a frequent topic of conversation.
    There were many aspects of the Christian faith that Zoë found troubling but the injunction to love your neighbor appealed to her humanitarian sympathies. When she opened our apartment to someone she was more than hospitable, she was downright altruistic. She didn’t keep anything she could find a way to give or share. She had friends over for dinner and sent them out the door with the leftovers and the pots we’d cooked them in. She let people raid her closet for new outfits to wear to parties and never asked to have the clothes back. She gave her books away when she’d read them.
    Having taken the long view on material objects and having found them rather meaningless, she was always baffled when I harped about condensation rings on the coffee table or missing DVDs. They were only things after all. What was mine was hers and what was hers was for everyone else to use. Whenever one of her friends had a crisis, something of mine invariably went missing.
    She relayed the sordid tale of Eli’s bedbug plague while I was writing lesson plans, a project that required my full attention and left me ill-equipped for conversation much less decision-making. She wanted to know if he could stay at our place. He was a good guy, a Christian, very fun to be with, wouldn’t know how to be an intrusion if he tried, and besides it would only be for a few days, maybe a week—maybe over Christmas break to take care of the apartment for us—just until he could find a new place.
    Unwittingly, I said I didn’t mind.

    It was Saturday and almost the end of the semester. My To Must Do list had grown exponentially since Monday. I forced myself out of bed at six and headed straight for The Brewery, a pile of student essays in hand.
    The owner, Jimmy Barnes, had erected the popular shop from an old bar. The Brewery was so successful he had quickly made enough to open the T-shirt press in the adjoining building. Over the next decade, he systematically bought and renovated an entire section of the downtown strip. He did not own a car and preferred to walk the routes between his many businesses, leaning on the cane that counterbalanced the burden of his three hundred and fifty pounds. On campus he was as familiar and beloved a caricature as a school mascot.
    Despite the cheerful sunlight outside, the shop was dim, lowhanging Tiffany lamps casting cones of light on bowed, working heads. The bar could seat fifteen at a time. Jimmy had kept all the beer dispensers for decorative purposes, replacing the Corona and Bud Light labels with stickers for coffee liqueur flavors. The floors were finished with large black and white checkered tiles on which red and flower-print carpets lay here and there. Paintings from student artists decorated the walls, and the rich aroma of freshly ground coffee beans hung dense in the air.
    I ordered a black coffee and took a table in the far corner. I had promised myself I would plow through the last of the composition essays, but when I opened my folder I found Lonnie Weis’s story on top. I couldn’t resist.
    Rinaldi was an ambassador of the human race sent to negotiate peace with the enemy force of Zorgath. Roseanne was a daughter of a Zorgath lord and loved Rinaldi in return. Fortunately, the consummation of their love was made possible by her humanoid form.
    I was so busy trying to absorb the story despite the awkward syntax and the atrocious metaphors that I was halfway through Lonnie’s story before it hit me. Turning back to page three, I reread the description of Roseanne:
    She was tall, taller than most women but not so tall as to be unattractive but rather she was elegant. She had a cascading flame of red curly hair that billowed on her back. Her eyes were like two discs of blue, cloudless sky. And oh! the shape of her