The Empire of the Dead by Tracy Daugherty Read Free Book Online Page A

pants. “Do you …” he said. “Excuse me, where is you-your …”
    His stutter appeared to enrage her. “Down the hall. To your left,” she said tersely.
    She didn’t have a hallway. He stood rooted, a disoriented, carnal clown. Then he remembered that, on each floor of this old building, three or four units shared a single bath. She meant the hallway outside her apartment.
    Architecture!
    He walked to the door.
    Institutional green tiles lined the bathroom walls. A toilet and a shower missing its curtain filled the miniscule space. Someone had left a plastic bag stuffed with pink soap and a hairnet hanging by a cord from the shower nozzle. The nozzle dripped black water. The toilet bowl was plugged with shit and enough paper to fill a Brooklyn phone book. The odor dampened his lust. Oh my god, he thought, recalling Kate’s outraged look, the firm set of her mouth, did she think I’d run in here to—?
    His vision blurred. His shirt stain seemed to spread, like the smell in the room. He tore off a piece of toilet paper and wiped his forehead. His stomach pitched. He took slow breaths until his pulse returned to normal.
    By the time he got back to Kate’s living room, rage coiled in the muscles of his arms, though he couldn’t locate its source. She stood in the kitchen where he’d left her, drying her hands on a towel. A sting of pepper in the air. The gumbo. His eyes watered. A smell of smoke. One of the candles had guttered.
    Kate wouldn’t look at him. “I’m sorry, Wally. Maybe it’s not possible to … I mean, for a man, a man who’s been lonely for a while, and a young woman—”
    â€œIt’s possible, Kate. We’ll do it, okay?” His words sounded harsh.He had no control. “It’s just that, I didn’t picture myself babysitting some young couple as they worked out their little soap opera …”
    Mistake, he thought. Erase. Erase.
    â€œBabysit?” Kate said.
    â€œYou’re right. I’m feeling sorry for myself. I shouldn’t …” Act your age, old fool. Tighten the screws. “I apologize.”
    Kate crossed her arms over her breasts. The dish towel hung from one of her hands and covered her torso, demurely. “I think you should go, Wally.”
    He made a formal bow. A bobbing punch-clown. “I’m sorry, Kate.”
    â€œI’m sorry, too.”
    â€œThank you for dinner.”
    She nodded.
    Only steps away from Kate’s he felt his shoe crack—a slapstick flapping of the worn right heel—as he crossed Seventh where, apparently, the new St. Vincent’s would be built. Bern went through shoes at an alarming rate: three pairs in the last six months. Shoddy craftsmanship, he thought. Then: Of course she doesn’t want me. I’m just an old curmudgeon.
    In the middle of the avenue, a crumpled Starbuck’s cup blew against his instep.
    His heart beat fast again. His hands smelled of salt and cayenne, and faintly of the flower he’d cut for Kate.
    The western sky was glassy violet with a smear of orange. From the shadows of the hospital a dirty, khaki-clad figure reeking of gin and onions lurched at a pair of girls. “Cigarette,” he said. “Fuckface. Fuckface.” The girls fell back against a wall. Bern thought of stepping in—but why? To do what? Assert himself? At his age? These girls were old enough to stroll around the city on their own, to cope with whatever the streets tossed up at them. One of the young ladies fished a cigarette from her purse.
    Bern started to head up Seventh toward a subway station. OnKate’s corner, a raucous party erupted out of a brownstone’s doorway, down the building’s concrete steps. Young people laughing and drinking beer from silver cans. Many of them appeared to be interns at St. Vincent’s—they wore wrinkled green medical smocks. A basket of blue paper slippers,