The Land of Steady Habits: A Novel by Ted Thompson Read Free Book Online

Penobscot Saloon, which stank of cigarettes and sour whiskey and whose jukebox rattled his floor every night until two, but that he’d love to see her, if only to give her something, a thank-you of sorts for the time she’d saved his life. But she didn’t write back to that or any of his subsequent notes. Her life must have been much easier, he figured, with him out of the picture. Donny’s room was now a single with two beds that could be dragged side-by-side to make a kind of honeymoon suite, and at hockey games she could ring the cowbell with abandon at every concussed opponent, and mostly she could spend time alone with her boyfriend without feeling like she was disappointing anyone. So you can imagine his surprise when she showed up at his door on a warm April night, holding a stack of his letters and the fat, creased spine of his copy of Middlemarch.
    “Why do you keep sending me these?” she said.
    He was packing, putting the few things he’d collected—books, mostly—into old liquor boxes. By the roar downstairs, he could tell it was somewhere in the one o’clock hour.
    “Please,” he said. “Come in.”
    His unmade bed was the only place to sit besides a laundry basket filled with books, so they both stood. She had a jacket over her party dress, and her ballet flats were speckled with mud.
    “Can I get you anything?” He had a Coke and some saltines on the windowsill.
    “Here,” she said, holding out the stack. “These are yours.”
    “I was hoping you’d come by.”
    “Take them.”
    “I wanted to say a proper good-bye.”
    She lowered her arms.
    “Where are you going?”
    “Home. I’m out of money.”
    “So, what, like permanently?”
    He shrugged and she plopped down on his bed, the book and the letters in her lap.
    “There are loans, you know.”
    He ignored that.
    “Can’t you just ask your dad?”
    Anders laughed.
    “But you have a life here.”
    He stopped laughing and looked at her. She had her hands balled in her lap on top of the book, and her toes were pointed together; she blew at a strand of hair that’d fallen across her face. Apparently she’d been drinking.
    “I can loan you money,” she said all of a sudden.
    Anders picked up the book from her lap and dropped it in the basket. “That’s ridiculous.”
    “I have it. It’s just sitting there in an account. My grandmother wanted me to use it for real estate but—”
    “Helene.”
    “Don’t leave.”
    He sighed and sat down on a box.
    “How much wine have you had tonight?”
    “That’s not fair.”
    “Your lips are purple.”
    “I’m trying to tell you something serious—”
    “Yeah, that you want me to stick around so you can feel pretty and special without ever having to answer a single letter.”
    “I couldn’t!”
    Anders squinted at her.
    “My boyfriend, Donald Fitzsimmons, also known as Fitzy, perhaps you’ve heard of him?”
    “Fitzy?”
    “It’s a nickname. It’s kind of new.”
    “Good, then let’s call Fitzy to come get you.”
    “You know, you’re a coward.”
    “What?”
    “Why don’t you ask me?”
    “Ask you what? ”
    “Anders, you’ve never asked me.”
    He watched her for a moment. When she was angry, her eyebrows looked as though they had been cinched with a drawstring.
    “Wait a second. You made it very clear. You wanted no confusion.”
    “I know.”
    “So don’t come in here and start accusing me.”
    “Just ask me.”
    “Ask you what? There’s nothing to ask!”
    She opened one of the letters and started reading. “ ‘I still think about you, you know—’ ”
    He reached for it. “Don’t do that. Please don’t do that.”
    “ ‘—obviously I do, and sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get a chance to—’ ”
    “Helene.”
    “ ‘—if I’ll ever get a chance to speak openly, and because I can only assume you’re reading these, I wanted you to know I saw you first. If that means anything. I know it’s stupid, and it probably makes me