The Tell by Hester Kaplan Read Free Book Online Page B

he shut off the flame and noticed how the last sunlight hit the many bottles of wine Wilton brought each time he came for dinner, washing the wall in a thirsty red. Wilton gave them other gifts as well that he ordered online and had delivered to his porch by UPS—buttery steaks packed in huge Styrofoam boxes of dry ice, cheeses, glowing golden kiwis, cakes from Chicago, black bread from Poland. And most recently, along with the artichokes, a quartet of honeydew melons, one already soft in the box.
    Owen packed dinner up and walked to Brindle, taking his usual out-of-the-way detour through Fox Point, where he’d lived before he’d met Mira. The view from his third-floor apartment there had given him a slivered glimpse of the bay. There were times in that bleakest first year in Rhode Island when he’d felt he was drowning on land, and he counted on that spot of Narragansett Bay, black and streaked with red warnings from the Allens Avenue gas tanks, to keep him afloat. Every morning around five o’clock, the scent of baking Portuguese bread had woken him, making him intensely hungry. At the bottom of Wickenden Street, crowded with students and people out for a cheap dinner, a dim underpass led below the highway. Fifty yards of sidewalk were tacky with shit from the pigeons that perched and cooed on the steel beams. A truck roared above, shaking Owen. The Point Street Bridge in front of him was a structure beautiful in its dereliction. It was one of Mira’s favorite places—the epitome of Providence, she claimed. The city had been fixing the bridge forever, and the fact that she didn’t think they’d ever finish it delighted her. The bridge was the city’s private joke, and like the city itself, corrupt, possibly dangerous, and endearingly rusted. The hurricane barrier, Mira said, was the city’s single admission of vulnerability—and only then to the forces of nature. Orange-and-white traffic barrels and a regiment of cement barriers made the bridge appear amputated in midspan. The water caught every reflection so you felt as if you were floating above the city rather than standing at its base. On the other side of the bridge, past the fluorescently bright Hess station with its fortified cashier’s booth, past Planned Parenthood devoid of its daily protesters at this supper hour, and one block in, was Brindle with its front door wide open to the warm, deserted street, and across from it, an empty lot surrounded by chain-link fencing.
    Large windows on each of the two floors spread across Brindle’s brick façade. The building had once housed supplies for the costume jewelry industry. Later, it had stayed vacant for decades, except for the occasional squatter or rat. Mira’s father, in the family tradition of mindless acquisition, had bought it for reasons unknown to Mira, though she’d said it definitely wasn’t because he saw an art school in it or her future. Occasionally Mira would still find a sparkle or chip of ruby or sapphire glass between the wide wood planks. She collected them in a jar she kept on her desk.
    The foyer held a counter Owen had built out of plywood and given three coats of glossy white paint. Mira called it the snow bank. When she wasn’t running around, Joy, her assistant, sometimes sat there. Unclaimed items were always piled at one end: a greasy Red Sox cap, a mitten, shirts, socks, a gutted cell phone. Mira’s compact office was secreted behind a turn in the wall, and to the right was the gallery that ran the length of the building. The high ceiling was mapped with pipes and beams that had been painted a hundred times. The room was chaotic now with ladders, bulbs, tools, pieces of pottery, pictures, water bottles, the curling remains of a pizza Mira had ordered for the kids who’d stuck around to help her earlier. Diffuse circles of light fell on bare walls and on Mira, who was nailing something in a far corner. She