The Other Traitor by Sharon Potts Read Free Book Online Page B

for anyone. He was free to start over.
    He reached into the heap of clothes in his closet and pulled out a pair of worn jeans and a stretched-out crew neck sweater that Sephora hated. He dressed quickly, grabbed his army-surplus jacket, and took the stairs down the nine flights to the lobby.
    Sephora was gone.
    What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

CHAPTER 7
    Stronger. He was already feeling stronger. Just a little, but it was a start. Goodbye job. Goodbye Sephora. But Essie was a tougher nut to crack. He had taken one step forward with her, but it felt like he had fallen back two. Maybe his grandmother could get him on track.
    Most of the slush had been cleared off the sidewalks from yesterday’s storm and Julian walked through the West Village passing hip new restaurants and yuppie bars, double-parked BMWs, doormen flagging down taxis in front of renovated luxury apartment buildings like his. It was like he was seeing his neighborhood for the first time. Damn. Why had it taken him so long to realize he didn’t belong here?
    He walked farther and farther from this phony place, stepping over a ‘Happy New Year’ tiara, a crushed gold horn, and silver streamers, crossing Houston Street into the Lower East Side and the rich, spicy smells of his childhood. Rusted fire escapes clung to old tenement buildings like vines. Some of the restaurants had been here for a hundred years—Yonah Shimmel’s Knishes, Russ & Daughters Appetizers, Katz’s Deli. His grandmother’s world.
    He turned south and went down the familiar streets. Her apartment building was just as it had always been. Brick and solid, with bay windows overlooking the front courtyard where Julian used to throw a rubber ball against the wall when he was a kid.
    The outer door was oak, abraded and darkened with age. Julian ran his finger over the buzzers on the adjacent wall. The name beside Apt. 4B was barely legible. The paper it was written on had probably been there for the last sixty or seventy years. Aaron Lowe, it still said, even though he’d been dead thirty years, since shortly before Julian was born.
    He pressed the buzzer and waited, knowing it sometimes took her awhile to get to the intercom.
    “Yes?” her sweet scratchy voice said. “Who’s there?”
    “It’s me, Nana.” And for the first time in a long while, he was where he belonged.
     
    A comforting staleness, reminding him of the Musée de la Vie Romantique in Paris, hit Julian when his grandmother opened the door to her apartment. She had to hold her head back to look up at him. Her dark eyes were clouded by cataracts and her short chaotic hair looked like silver tinsel.
    “Hi, Nana.” He took in her quirky outfit, typical for her—leopard-print pants, a red sweater that was way too big, and earrings with clusters of magenta stones. She was so tiny that he had to stoop all the way over to kiss her soft crepe-skinned cheek. She smelled citrusy, like she always did. How could his mother speak about this woman as though she was the devil?
    “I think you’re growing and I’m shrinking,” Nana said. “At this rate, in another ten years you’ll be a giant and I’ll be no bigger than a mouse.”
    Julian laughed. His grandmother was in her nineties, but she liked to joke about the future as though she was going to be around forever. And he wished she could be. The thought of a world without Mariasha Lowe left him with a hollow feeling inside.
    “How does that song go?” she said. “If I knew you were coming I’d have baked you a birthday cake.”
    “Sorry. I should have called. But you never have to do anything special for me.”
    “I can still make you something to eat. It’s almost lunchtime.”
    “I’m good. I had a couple of bananas.” He took of his army jacket and hooked it on the coat rack.
    “How about some nice French toast or macaroni and cheese?”
    His childhood favorites. “Thank you, Nana, but I’m not really hungry. Can we talk?”
    “Of