Everything by Kevin Canty Read Free Book Online

with you.
    How come?
    Well, she needs a place to stay. The night before and then after—she doesn’t want to drive all the way back up the valley in the dark. Plus, she has a follow-up the next day.
    No, he said, I understand that part. But why me?
    I’ll be honest with you, Dawn said—which was the noise she made when she was getting ready to uncork some whopper. She said, That last time, when she had all the trouble, she was just such a negative force, you know? All that negative energy—I just don’t have room for that in my life right now. I’m just barely keeping my head above water right now, Robert, I’m just worried and worried.
    But I’ll be OK with it.
    You don’t let these things affect you so much, Robert. You don’t feel them the same way.
    Thanks.
    * * *
    You know what I mean.
    He knew exactly what she meant: an insensitive oaf who trod through life on a path of other people’s feelings. That’s me! he thought. And also: Fuck you!
    But he didn’t say it.
    Which is how RL found himself staring out the window at a night full of rain in just-September, waiting for the headlights. He was sitting in his dining room alone. It was around eight o’clock. The rain had come on late in the evening and RL had not bothered to turn on the lights, so now he sat in twilight, listening to the rain. Layla was out someplace and soon she would be gone to Seattle again, back to college. He was at home in this blue light, dripping and dark. Alone in the dark. These last weeks had been among people, out running rivers with clients, meeting with prospective tenants for his rental houses—the public and RL the public servant. RL needed the quiet, the time alone. Soon Layla would be back in Seattle and he would get his quiet in spades.
    He knew he ought to get up and turn the lights on, just so it looked like somebody was home, but he didn’t.
    He didn’t stir until he heard her Toyota pickup rattle dead in the driveway. A faint feeling of being caught. This was not what he wanted Betsy to know about him, this sitting alone in the dark. A man of feeling, a man of action. It took him a minute to get going, reluctant.
    Hey, she said. How
are
you?
    * * *
    He had forgotten her accent, still faintly Tennessee. In the porch light, she looked beautiful. He had forgotten this, too: the delicate lines of her face, her dark smooth skin. She was tall, almost as tall as RL. In one hand she held a Mason jar of something clear and gripped the handles of a giant many-colored basket in the other, like she was running away from home. She rushed to embrace him, and the basket whacked him in the back.
    Look at you, she said. Sitting all by yourself in the dark.
    How are you?
    I don’t know, she said, and grinned. I don’t think I’m too good, but we’ll know more tomorrow.
    She came inside as ever with her basket and jar and several other bags and bundles. She moved through life in the middle of her own rummage sale, surrounded by rummage. Some of it was knitting, some of it was food.
    She handed the Mason jar to RL and said, I brought you moonshine whiskey.
    Excellent, he said. Am I going to die from this?
    If you drink the whole thing, you will. A shot or two won’t hurt you.
    They sat at the dining room table and RL brought them shot glasses and bottles of beer. Normally he preferred American trash beer in cans but Betsy would like this better, made locally with natural ingredients.
Fancy
beer.
    * * *
    Not too much for me, said Betsy as he poured her a shot. Not too much for you, either, if you know what’s good for you. This stuff will have you barking at the moon.
    Where’d you find it?
    I’m not supposed to say.
    They touched shot glasses and RL downed his clear whiskey in one take. It ran down his throat like gasoline jelly and set him to coughing, coughing hard enough so he had to stand up, let the air back in. Something, the whiskey or the lack of air, went to his head right away and he saw tiny rockets in his vision and