Diary by Chuck Palahniuk Read Free Book Online Page B

He brings his camera and a bag full of lenses and film.
    Angel, you might remember, he lives in Ocean Park. Here's a hint: You sealed off his kitchen. He says the way you write your
m
's, with the first hump larger than the second, that proves you value your own opinion above public opinion. How you do your lowercase
h
's, with the last stroke cutting back underneath the hump, shows you're never willing to compromise. It's graphology, and it's a bona fide science, Angel says. After seeing these words in his missing kitchen, he asked to see some other houses.
    Just for the record, he says the way you make your lowercase
g
's and
y
's, with the bottom loop pulling to the left, that shows you're very attached to your mother.
    And Misty told him, he got that part right.
    Angel and her, they drove to Pleasant Beach, and a woman opened the front door. She looked at them, her head tilted back so her eyes looked down her nose, her chin pushed forward and her lips pressed together thin, with the muscle at each corner of her jaw, each masseter muscle clenched into a little fist, and she said, “Is Peter Wilmot too lazy to show his face here?”
    That little muscle from her lower lip to her chin, the mentalis, it was so tense her chin looked pitted with a million tiny dimples, and she said, “My husband hasn't stopped gargling since this morning.”
    The mentalis, the corrugator, all those little muscles of the face, those are the first things you learn in art school anatomy. After that, you can tell a fake smile because the risorius and platysma muscles pull the lower lip down and out, squaring it and exposing the lower teeth.
    Just for the record, knowing when people are only pretending to like you isn't such a great skill to have.
    In her kitchen, the yellow wallpaper peels back from a hole near the floor. The floor's yellow tile is covered in newspapers and white plaster dust. Next to the hole's a shopping bag bulging with scraps of busted plasterboard. Ribbons of torn yellow wallpaper curl out of the bag. Yellow dotted with little orange sunflowers.
    The woman stood next to the hole, her arms folded across her chest. She nodded at the hole and said, “It's right in there.”
    Steelworkers, Misty told her, they'll tie a branch to the highest peak of a new skyscraper or bridge to celebrate the fact that no one has died during construction. Or to bring prosperity to the new building. It's called “tree topping.” A quaint tradition.
    They're full of irrational superstitions, building contractors.
    Misty told the homeowner not to worry.
    Her corrugator muscle pulls her eyebrows together above her nose. Her levator labii superioris pulls her upper lip up into a sneer and flares her nostrils. Her depressor labii inferioris pulls her bottom lip down to show her lower teeth, and she says, “It's you who should be worried.”
    Inside the hole, the dark little room's lined on three sides with yellow built-in bench seats, sort of a restaurant booth with no table. It's what the homeowner calls a breakfast nook. The yellow is yellow vinyl and the walls above the benches are yellow wallpaper. Scrawled across all this is the black spray paint, and Angel moves her hand along the wall where it says:
    “. . . save our world by killing this army of invaders . . .”
    It's Peter's black spray paint, broken sentences and squiggles. Doodles. The paint loops across the framed art, the lace pillows, the yellow vinyl bench seats. On the floor are empty cans with Peter's black handprints, his spiraling fingerprints in paint, they're still clutching each can.
    The spray-painted words loop across the little framed pictures of flowers and birds. The black words trail over the little lace throw pillows. The words run around the room in every direction, across the tiled floor, over the ceiling.
    Angel says, “Give me your hand.” And he balls Misty's fingers together into a fist with just her index finger sticking out straight. He puts her fingertip