Light Lifting by Alexander Macleod Read Free Book Online Page B

done.
    She comes back. Sleepy drool. The open slot of my Christmas boxers. Wetness around Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
    Are we good? she says.
    Yeah. Only one live one.
    I guess that’s progress.
    Can’t go on forever.
    No.
    She touches her fingertips to her forehead and runs them from the hairline over her eyelids and down to her cheeks.
    Tired.
    I know.
    I’m going to go up now. Don’t you stay too long. Big day tomorrow.
    Yes.
    Night.
    It’s going to be okay.
    I know.
    Good night.

    If you blow up an adult louse three hundred times, you can see its claws. Black and white shots in all the brochures and pamphlets. Textured stills taken with a good camera and a microscope. The things I have learned in the last three weeks. Websites. A book from the library: Rats, Lice, and History by Hans Zinsser, written in 1934. What he tells me: “As far as we can ascertain, since man has existed, the louse has been his inseparable companion.” Aristotle believed they came from nothing, that lice were the only creatures in life that ‘generated spontaneously.’ Part of our bodies, he thought, proceeding directly from us. Born out of human sweat. He couldn’t get close enough. Couldn’t imagine their cycle. But look now. Obvious when you magnify. Females and their eggs. Sticky, water resistant sacs glued to a thread. Three pairs of pinchers for each adult. Tight and knife sharp. Worse than a lobster. Look at the stills. Each of the six legs wrapped around a single strand of hair. Or digging into the scalp. They drink your blood. Found one in a 5,000-year-old Egyptian tomb. Still there. Holding onto the carefully braided hair of a mummified little girl.

    The present tense. Everything happens here. A guy banging on the front door of the university house she shares with four other girls. Late on a Friday night. My first time in this place. One of her roommates moaning in the next room. Our beds less than a foot apart, separated by drywall and air. Give it to me, the girl on the other side says. Coos up high like a bird. Give it to me.
    We are her unintended audience. Quiet. Rolled eyes and suppressed giggles. Oh, the ecstasy, she whispers to me. Back of her hand on her forehead. Half-open mouth. The ecstasy. We laugh. Move in silence.
    The knocking comes loud and fast. Shakes us up. Somebody with a purpose in the middle of the night. He screams her name. Hammers on the aluminum door frame. Her name first, then the strike. Knuckles on the windows. Glass rattling near its breaking point. Hear the ping. We are nineteen years old. Four or five in the morning. What was his name? The guy banging on the windows that night? The guy calling for you?
    He howls for five minutes. Gets tired. Goes away. We think he’s played out, but no.
    I know you’re in there.
    Banging. Hard cracking in his voice.
    I’m sorry, he says. I just want to talk. I screwed it up. I know. I’m sorry.
    I know you’re there.
    Two seconds of nothing, then he turns.
    I swear to fucking God.
    Hard strike. Something rattles loose in the frame.
    If there’s anybody else in there with you.
    Bang.
    His shoulder and a running start. Slamming himself against the door. Feel the give in the walls. Deep tremor moving through the house.
    I’m coming in. I told you I’m sorry. There better not be anybody there.
    The roommate shouts, I’m going to call the cops.
    I move to get up, push the covers away. I am taller than I am now.
    I’ll talk to him, I say. He needs to move on before the police show up and it gets ugly.
    Pants and shoes. Fumbling for a shirt. Her hand on my arm pulling me back down. A shushing finger. Something extra, left over from another episode.
    Stay, she whispers.
    Come on. He’s just a drunk. He’ll move along.
    She shakes her head.
    What?
    Nothing. Just stay and be quiet. He’ll give up.
    Origins. A pretty girl in a bar. Notice her Clash T-shirt. Combat Rock. Probably