Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting Read Free Book Online Page A

protest, “Don’t spill, ze suit, ze suit,” but CT gently moves Gustav’s head back downward, the way a parent might guide the cheek of a child who has just had a nightmare back down to the pillow.
    “How can I wear a leather suit that does not carry the stains of wine and blood?” asks CT, and Gustav does not answer; of course it was rhetorical, and the bloody wine pouring over their green night-vision bodies looks completely black. I feel more powerful than ever, like a superhero who has shadow-juice as one of her many weapons. I streak their bodies with the unseen.
    When my phone rings there’s about a fourth of the bottle left. I tap the opening at CT’s mouth and drizzle the rest of it inside until he makes a happy noise.
    My phone’s screen is so green that beneath the goggles it seems interactive. I speak to it for some time before realizing that I need to open the phone in order to answer the call. Luckily it’s just Sister, who calls again and again and again until I answer. Once, when I had a few squares of acid beneath my eyelids, I finally distinguished the source of the music but then mistook the phone for a fetal orb—not an orb from the beginning of time but a baby orb, one that has only been alive for a few million years—so I sang children’s songs to it and told it bedtime stories hoping that its musical electronic crying would please, please stop. I later got distracted by CT leading me to a hammock that had been stretched over top a hot tub at his request by the really expensive hotel’s staff, but the next morning I saw that I had eighty-seven missed calls, all from Sister.
    “Hello,” I say. I am unsure of the duration of time it takes me to complete the word. The bat blood wine—at least our particular serving, I am beginning to realize—has another complication to its chemical makeup besides alcohol and blood.
    “Oh Lord. Are you on drugs right now? I can call you back later, when it wears off. This is important.” I can hear sliding window blinds in the background and I know that she is staring out at the sky with a deep frown on her face. Even though the sound is distorted (it sounds like the opening of the world’s largest tin can) another part of my brain knows those blinds well enough to recognize the sound they make even when it’s camouflaged by drugs.
    “I’m fine,” I say. “Just sleepy. Just terribly awake.” I hear Sister’s nervous fingers tapping on the glass of the windowpane, or maybe someone knocking on a really thick foam door. “Sister?” I ask, because it is so quiet except for the rustling of the bats and the gentle sounds of Gustav’s mouth that I can’t remember whether the conversation has ended and she has already hung up or not.
    “Listen,” she says. “I want the rest of your share of Mother’s estate money. All of the little that’s left. I want you to sign your half over to me. CT is rich and you don’t need it. The real reason I call you all the time and ask for money is because I’m not in good health and you’ve been paying my doctor’s bills. Sometimes I need medications badly and quickly but I feel like I have to ask you every damn time I use some of your money from the trust, and you’re usually impossible to get a hold of. How can I put this delicately? I want you to give me the money so I don’t have to talk to you ever again.”
    The electronic vacuum cleaners, perhaps detecting CT’s new emission on the floor, all rush over to CT and Gustav, encircling them. It’s very cute, like the two of them are surrounded by a hungry brood of flat Maltese puppies. “Mine sweet bitter fruit,” Gustav is saying to CT, licking the stains of wine on CT’s suit of leather.
    “Sister,” I say worriedly, “you are hurt? Your health is failing? We shall heal you together! We shall sail through the air like spores from a fern of renewal, a pollen containing life and promise, a seedling that blossoms into substance where before there