Everything by Kevin Canty Read Free Book Online Page B

it yet.
    She laughed again, and again it was not a cheerful sound.
    I’m done with the earth, she said. Somebody else can save it. Somebody who’s going to be around. My kids can save the earth if they want to. Myself, I’m done. Let’s just go watch television.
    You hate television.
    * * *
    Not lately, she said. Lately it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
    And so they sat, side by side on the bachelor sofa, the big plush leather cool under them but gradually warming to their skin, and RL handed her the remote and got cold beer for both of them and the rain fell outside the windows as she flipped through sports, through models and model railroads and troubled faces, explosions in the sky and pictures of the very beer they were drinking, cars and chases, guns going off, earnest conversation about the flag, baseball, fighter jets shooting through the sky and always shopping shopping shopping, glossy pictures of more. She couldn’t settle on anything. RL thought she wanted all of it, the whole fake world, 120 channels of nothing and all of it inside her, a world without her, a world without end. Next to her and a thousand miles away. He had never felt this lonely. He wanted to make her happy. He wanted to make her safe. He wanted whatever he wanted, and he was going to get whatever he got.

*
    Only the one girl , Daniel said, and only twice. It was a drunk thing, that was all. It was really more like an accident than anything else. The fact that he was telling her was proof that she could trust him.
    Layla was down in the Angler keeping Edgar company, a slow Tuesday. The rain had stopped but the water was high and dirty still and nobody much came in. She was either going to Seattle in a couple of days or she was not. There was nobody to talk to, nobody to tell. She had made her bed and now she would have to lie in it.
    Hold still, Edgar said. Just like that.
    The lights were on in the store part, but there were no customers this late in the afternoon. They were in the office part withthe lights turned off and Edgar was making a sketch of her face. Lucky thing it was his left arm in the cast so he could still draw. Layla couldn’t see the light on her own face, of course, but she could see it on his and it was pretty light, soft and gray. Anybody would look good in a light like that, soft through clouds, big unlit windows.
    Tell me something, Layla said.
    Anything.
    Oh, never mind.
    What’s going on? he said. You look like you’re going to cry.
    Nothing
, she said. Everything is one hundred percent fine.
    Glad to hear it, Edgar said. He went on sketching. Sometimes Layla imagined herself in a larger life, a Russian life, a life that glittered and sparkled. In Seattle she was often reminded that she was just a girl from Montana, a hick from the sticks. She knew how to drink and she knew how to fish, but everybody else knew everything. Other times, she thought that Edgar might be discovered—he really was that good—and then he would be a famous painter and there would be pictures of her! Some connection to the glittery sparkly world. A rock band had already used one of Edgar’s paintings on the cover of its CD, though the band never went anywhere. An elemental sadness inside her that she thought champagne might cure. The wind shifted and fat raindrops spattered across the glass. Do this, do that, stand that way, stand still. A kind of furtive pleasure in being told what to do. Since the accident Edgar seemed half angry all the time, the cast constantly in his way. He was home too much and therest of the time in the shop and not out on the water, which he loved. RL loved the water, too, but not the clients so much. Edgar didn’t seem to mind the clients. Something animal and likable. Layla had seen the muscles of his back as he pulled at the oars, the way a body needs to be worked. He was easy on the water, easy at the oars, his long arms elegant. The boat moved without effort, it seemed without intention,