Eleven Twenty-Three by Jason Hornsby Read Free Book Online Page B

it’s my mother and
I’m clueless every time I’m around her. She’s the Queen of
Displacement and I’m the Prince of Apathy.”
    “Your mother hates your father, Layne.
You know this. I’m not being a bitch, but you’d think she would be
overjoyed at the fact that the man who left her and her son alone
and destitute would suffer an untimely death. Um, like, wouldn’t
you?”
    “It’s complicated, Tara.”
    “It always is,” she mutters. “So anyway, what
do you think of that dream I had earlier?”
    “It was…pretty intense?”
    “Do you think it means something? Do you
think it was precognitive somehow?”
    I ignore her questions and grab the remote
from off the floor next to the bed. I turn on the TV and switch it
to the station guide on Channel 99. I reset my watch—which until
now has been set to the all-country-inclusive Beijing time—to the
exact hour, minute, and second that is displayed on the television
screen. Then I flip through the channels until I find a random news
broadcast. A semi-Spanish female reporter is describing some kind
of poor weather making its way down to us in Florida, and she jokes
uneasily that it may be “a wet and cold Christmas season” before I
mute the channel and turn back to Tara.
    “It was just a dream,” I say carefully,
feeling like the topic was long ago exhausted. “It’s been a long
day. Honestly, I’m more impressed with the fact that you could
narrate it to me than I am the dream itself. You’re getting pretty
good at that lucid dreaming thing of yours. In this time
zone, anyway.”
    “It would be interesting to live and
experience the life and dreams of one of your closest friends for a
day,” she says, slipping her watch on and checking it against the
alarm clock to make sure she has the right time. “View yourself
through someone else’s judging eyes; be repulsed by yourself; fall
in love with your enemies; talk trash behind your own back with
your best friend; see someone else’s fantasies; grow aroused from
their darkest wet dreams; feel the terror of their nightmares. It
would be fascinating.”
    “To be able to see yourself the way others
secretly do?” I repeat, lighting a cigarette. “Like most of us need
any more reason to kill ourselves.”
    On the silent television: a sexy field
journalist reporting from in front of a police station; funeral
protests; a stretcher being loaded into the back of an ambulance;
soundless clips of black women sobbing on camera; and a reporter
mouthing quiet dreadful closure to the world. At one point, I think
I see the word “soon” flash across the screen, but I’m probably
just tired.
    The news story ends. The next segment, this
one on Britney Spears’ latest trip to the dentist, lasts almost ten
minutes.
    Tara finishes her routine and lights a
cigarette. She turns to me, waiting for something.
    “We shouldn’t smoke anymore, sweetie,” I say.
“It’ll make us look older.”
    “Not so far,” Tara says, inhaling deeply. “I
think we look okay.”
    “You ever think we’re overly shallow and
obsessed with appearance?”
    “Isn’t that the American way?”
    “Yes, but aren’t we American expatriates?” I
ask.
    “Not anymore, we’re not,” she says. “By the
way, Layne, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
    And so it begins.
    “What do you want to talk to me about?” I ask
tonelessly.
    Tara doesn’t respond for a long time. Then
she says, “We should get married.”
    I involuntarily release a sigh and look down
at the floor. I turn the TV off and wait for the argument.
    “Or maybe not, if that bullshit sigh of yours
is indicative of anything,” Tara mutters. “We’ll just go on as we
have been for the past three years.”
    “Which is how, exactly, Tara?”
    “Layne, when you lost your job and the
prospect of teaching in China for a year arose, what did I do? Did
I complain? Did I overanalyze the idea and shake my head no? Did I
force you into some kind of commitment