Stabs at Happiness by Todd Grimson Read Free Book Online Page A

slow motion reggae making some impression on her.
    She takes off her jacket up in her apartment and after considering taking a shower she lies down in her clothes, can’t sleep, gets up later and dons a navy-blue hoodie. She goes back out after washing her face and brushing her teeth, realizing today she does not have to go to work.
    In an automat two blocks away she finds
Meld43
, an older guy who has a blog, they’re friends she supposes, he has MS and doesn’t make an issue of it, if he broods on this or finds tragedy or meaning in suffering she can’t tell. His laptop is on while he drinks coffee, she joins him there after fetching a Mexican hot chocolate, turning off the music in her earbuds just as the riff for
Surf Goths
begins.
    Meld43 says, “This just says
Yes does not mean
.”
    Nikki waits, then says, “That’s it?”
    â€œYeah.” He looks her over. He’s not so bad looking for a dude in a wheelchair with an incurable degenerative disease. He takes his rimless glasses off.
    â€œHave you been to the doctor lately, where they have these illustrated faces on the wall — someone in pain from One through Ten?”
    She shakes her head.
    â€œTen looks pretty bad,” he says. “Nine is definitely uncomfortable, but Eight when pressed acts all stoic and says ‘It could be worse.’ Want a Vicodin?”
    â€œYeah. Thanks.”
    He’s taking three or four different kinds of pills, sorting them with shaky hands. The disease makes him subject to unpredictable symptoms including something called ‘electrical pain.’
    It’s cool of him to share narcotics.
    He asks, “Have you been up all night?”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œWhat’ve you been doing, NineOh? High on research chemicals again?”
    â€œEffects’re wearing off.”
    Nikki says nothing for a long time, then: “I fucked a cute emo boy.”
    â€œReally.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œHow was it?”
    â€œOh…well, it’s always awesome having sex with someone who’s beautiful, but…afterwards he was really clingy. He didn’t want me to leave. He kept saying ‘I just want to hold you!’ It went on and on. God. How many times am I going to have to play out this scene with a boy who supposedly wants emotionless sex, wants to be ‘used’, but then actually he ends up really wanting something incredibly traditional and boring, basically a girl to fuck and then hold all night long?”
    Nikki realizes, within a few moments, that she’s lying, confusing Justin Chen with someone a few weeks ago.
    â€œShit! That was some whole other dude. That was more like Shawn.”
    The look Meld43 gives her seems understanding or something, amused, left hand quivering while he waits for the medication to hit.
    Outside, in that world visible through the big window, the violet-gray light is becoming pervasively paler, more transparent, while all kinds of people are going to work, walking beneath barbaric splendor of superhigh buildings which extend into great holes in the sky.
    Nikki watches. She knows this kingdom, maybe.
    Or nobody does or ever will.

AMNESIA
    H E’S TOO ROUGH. She has other complaints as well. She doesn’t like his friends. He doesn’t make enough money. There is a bruise of many colors on the soft skin of her arm.
    The red of the Coca-Cola signs is the same all over the world.
    This face is completely different, yet its expression is the same. The change has come too quickly to see. It isn’t physical.
    Men with shovels are digging in the soil, making room for a length of clean gray pipe. The men are clad in dull-hued clothing. Coal gray. Khaki. Gunmetal blue. They have on scuffed day-glo orange hard hats.
    The clouds are gleaming white on top, where the sunlight strikes; the lower halves are shaded white merging into gray, difficult to distinguish from the neighboring blue of the sky. We do