Country of Cold by Kevin Patterson Read Free Book Online

humming. I paused outside the door and then edged it open slowly. “What sort of apartment is this,” I remember wondering, in awe, “that comes with coffee-skinned amazons who bathe in your bathtub in the early morning?” And then our eyes met and we shrieked; she, rising up in the water and grabbing a back brush—
my
back brush—to serve as a club; me, slamming the door and leaping back. Through the suddenly latched, bolted, and leaned-against door, we established that she lived above me but that she didn’t have a bathtub, only a shower, and that she had come to an agreement with her friend Susan, who had lived here before me and who worked nights, that she could use the tub anytime she wished before 8 a.m.; she hadn’t realized Susan had left.
    I, ever the agreeable one, suggested she carry on as she had with Susan. She snorted loudly at that. But she finished her bath and left with a nod. A month would pass—of observation? assessment?—before I would hear splashing in the night again and soon we were friends.
    “Robert, your toast is getting cold,” she calls. “You’ll turn into a little squid if you don’t hurry up.”
    She has croissants from the bakery, grapefruit juice, the toast and cereal with fresh fruit waiting—clearly anobserver of the Most Important Meal dictum. She pours me coffee as I sit down. “Gabriella, this is great.”
    “Eat your food before it gets cold.”
    “Mmmmmggruph.”
    “Charlie has been getting worse lately,” she says absently, as she picks up her magazine again. Charlie is the building superintendent. He lives across the hall from me, is married to a woman we all call Saint Dorothy, and wears silk suits and shoes that gleam like good intentions. He plays the cornet, or did once, and sometimes you can hear “Moon River” drifting through the hallways with the visceral poignancy of late-night television and too many mai tais. This despite the fact that when sober he prosecutes the noise-abatement bylaws like his personal
jihad
.
    “Worse how?”
    “Last night I’m just getting ready to go to work and he knocks on the door and he wants to know if the apartment needs any domestic maintenance to be done. That’s what he said, ‘domestic maintenance.’ I said, ‘It looks to me like you’re more dressed to go meringue the night away than you are to be fixin’ taps.’ He bows to me and offers his arm and says, ‘Whatever señorita wishes.’ ‘Charlie,’ I say, ‘I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than go dancing wit’ you.’ He says, ‘Hard to get—that’s a Latin thing, isn’t it?’ ”
    “Leapin’ lizards.”
    “Men are beasts. All except my brother, Hector.”
    This is Gabriella’s construct of the world: at the centre lies Hector, herself, and, when she’s not off with some new dalliance, Felicinada. This is the limit of presumed good. In successive layers outward lie Carmen Miranda films, expensive outerwear, and her pastis. After that, pretty much everything is at least suspect. Way out in the stratosphere, even beyond her job at the Café Kiev and dental work, are men who use hair care products, stand too close, and never stop smiling even when they speak.
    The front door swings open. In walk the prodigal roommate and a man who wears a torn and spattered tuxedo. “Hi guys,” Felicinada says, then, nodding at the man in the mayonnaise stains, “this is Peter, he missed his train. He came up here last week for his cousin’s wedding and we’ve been hanging around ever since.” Peter is maybe twenty-eight. Peter is ignored. Gabriella continues reading her fashion magazine. Pointedly.
    “Hi, Gabriella,” Felicinada ventures. Something is said quickly in Spanish, in reply. There is a pause. Felicinada tightens her lips.
    “Nice to meet you, Peter,” I say.
    Felicinada smiles at me and leads Peter away from the door. “How are things?” she says to me. Peter takes up a station beside the window, hands stuck deep in his tuxedo