Die a Little by Megan Abbott Read Free Book Online Page B

really like Bill to meet him. They'd get along like a house on fire, I know. Don't you think? Well, maybe not. Oh, here we are."
    And I remember this: a slow, slow turn of her head from me to the house. I remember it occurring in actual slow motion, dragged out, and her head turned and her lit, blazing eyes transforming instantly into coal weights, her face a slow, pale blur studded with heavy, inkblot eyes turning to the house, turning and turning off like a windup toy shutting down and shut... ting ... off.
    That night in my apartment, and other nights, too, burrowed under the covers, I watch the shadows on the wall and think of meeting men, meeting men like in movies, and meeting men like Alice and her mysterious friends seem to--seem to at least in Alice's stories--
    men met on buses between stops, in the frozen foods aisle, at Woolworth's when buying a spool of thread, at the newsstand, perusing Look, in hotel lobbies, at supper clubs, while hailing cabs or looking in shop windows. Men with smooth felt hats and pencil mustaches, men with Arrow shirts and shiny hair, men eager to rush ahead for the doors and to steady your arm as you step over a wet patch on the road, men with umbrellas just when you need them, men who hold you up with a firm grip as the bus lurches before you can reach a seat, men with flickering eyes who seem to know just which coat you are trying to reach off the rack in the coffee shop, men with smooth cheeks smelling of tangy lime aftershave who would order you a gin and soda before you even knew you wanted one.
    These men weren't like the men with whom I went to the pictures: Archie Temple, the chemistry teacher, who never got further than rubbing his rough lips halfheartedly against mine, or Fred Cantor, the insurance salesman who sold Bill his policy and took me to Little Bavaria once a month or so for long, cocktail-drenched dinners.
    While I seldom got past the first, small glass of sweet wine, Fred could go for hours, jollily imbibing and telling stories of his combat duty in the Pacific. Not always but often there would be an awkward, searching embrace in the front seat of Fred's burgundy Buick. A few beery kisses and Fred would get ideas, and before I knew it, he was Die a Little -- 35 --
    pressing my hair against the side door window as I tried to peel away from him.
    Where were the golden boys of my high school days, the boys with sweet breath and shy smiles, with proud gaits and long lashes, the boys who sat with you for hours in the booth at the local five-and-dime just hoping for a promise, a promise to go to a dance or listen to records with you at Dutton's Hi Fi or to share a paper plate at the church social?
    Though I knew these boys, held their sweet, damp hands in mine only a handful of years ago, they were now like sketches in a yellowed paperback, a photo album from many generations past.
    When we moved to Los Angeles to live near our godparents, we were only sixteen and nineteen. What we left behind remained a half-imagined reverie of half-opened adolescence, caught now forever between curiosity and harsh awakening.
    Die a Little -- 36 --
    [?]*[?]
    The thing about Lois...
    Alice's friend Lois Slattery has a kind of crooked face, one perpetually bloodshot eye just higher than the other, and that Pan-Cake makeup you often see on what Alice calls "girls on the make."
    She begins periodically appearing at Bill and Alice's, each time without warning. Somehow, I end up, over and over again, having conversations with her. Each time thinking, Poor Lois, in a few years, she'll have a slattern look to match her name.
    Her clothes are sometimes very expensive but never look like her own, are either too big or too small, or are well-cut and well-made but someone has stepped on the hem, or the collar has a cigarette burn on it. These flaws aren't, as I first thought, because Lois can only afford secondhand clothing. In fact, the garments are often new, bought that day and already with