The Fires by Rene Steinke Read Free Book Online Page B

I thought I’d never be able to teach them anything else, and knew that I had to quit.
    Jo punched at the adding machine, pursed her lips, and let the paper ribbon out and curl. She turned to me and slapped her hand down on the blotter. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d lost your mind? When did it happen?” I supposed she must have heard through the grapevine about my last night at the Paradise.
    I broke open a roll of quarters for the change box. “So I got drunk,” I said. “Big deal.”
    “Stinking drunk.” Her eyes flashed furiously. “You know well and good,” she said, “that it was stupid to go there by yourself.
    Why didn’t you call me?” She blinked quickly several times as if she couldn’t see. “I know you’re upset, but you can’t…”
    I stared at the painting of the clown, and the red ball of his nose hurt my eyes.
    “And what were you doing with those two men? You know, you’re lucky Mark saw you there. He would have taken care of you if you hadn’t left.” Mark was David’s best friend. I barely 40 / RENÉ STEINKE
    remembered seeing him now, with his grasshopper eyes and green drippy tie. “How’d you get home anyway?”
    “I walked.”
    “You walked?”
    I knew how my drinking like that disgusted her. “Look,” I told her, “I was just in a funny mood.”
    She bit her bottom lip. “You know, if I had your looks, I’d—I wouldn’t go wasting them. Why won’t you go out with Mark?
    He’s the best thing to hit your pavement in a long time.” Jo still thought one of the local boys could rescue me. I pictured the ruddy skin above Mark’s collar, his barrel chest and too-broad shoulders.
    “I’m not interested,” I said. “As soon as things calm down, I’m going to leave anyway. I just have to decide where I want to go.”
    She gave me a wan smile and sighed. “Not before David and I buy our house, I hope.” The color rose in her cheeks.
    “You’re sure now?” I said. She had been wavering lately about whether or not to marry him.
    “I think so,” she said, walking over to the glass trophy case on the wall, where little gold men held balls the size of buttons and there were photographs of Mr. Linden as a teenaged basketball player, his impossibly long skinny legs sticking out from his loose shorts like long clappers hanging from bells. “You’d never know this was him,” she said. “Hard to believe that penny-pincher was ever this good-looking.” She reached down to tuck her heel back into her flat shoe.
    “It’s the aura of the basketball,” I said. “Some kind of orange halo for you, isn’t it? How many of them did you date? Seven?”
    “Eight,” she said, fondling a trophy. “But they were losing.
    David said they needed me to boost their spirits,” she said, laughing.
    She went over to the window and flipped the switch for the THE FIRES / 41
    neon VACANCY sign. Usually she stayed for a chat, but she was going to meet David later at the Big Wheel Restaurant. “You’re in for a slow night, I can tell.”
    “I’m looking forward to the peace and quiet,” I said.
    She tilted her head and clicked her tongue sarcastically. “Right.”
    A fter my father died when I was fifteen, my mother’s eyes would tear up whenever I said I was going to Jo’s, or leaving for school, and when I came back home, she’d be sitting in a hard-backed chair near the door, mending the same plaid skirt it looked as if she’d just picked up, her eyelids puffy over her small, tense irises.
    One Friday night I’d asked permission to go to a party on the lake, and I was looking forward to it because there were going to be boys from out of town there, and one in particular with rangy arms and sandy hair, whom I’d met at the bowling alley the week before. I came into the kitchen, where she stood near the stove. “There’s a party at Lake Eliza tonight,” I said.
    She had her back to me and was stirring something. She turned around, holding the dripping spoon like a