Wherever Nina Lies by Lynn Weingarten Read Free Book Online

straws, through a room where a dozen people are spray painting the walls.
    Blue Cheese keeps going and I follow. We go down a long hallway, through a wooden door and down a very, very long flight of stairs in the dark with no railing. I’m grateful for his clammy hand now, glad just to have something to hold on to. When we get to the bottom, he reaches his arm up and a second later the basement is illuminated by the faint glow of a single bare lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. We are the only people down here. It’s bizarrely quiet. The air is cool and damp.
    “You could start down here,” he says. I look around at the cement walls and exposed pipes. The floor is littered with cigarette butts and old beer cans and empty Pepsi bottles. There’s a sagging beige couch in one corner with a pillow and blanket on it, the blanket is covered in dark spots, mold maybe.
    I realize he’s still holding my hand. He tugs it. “No, down here, ” he says. I look up. The wiry muscles in his arm twitch. His lips are wet, like he’s been drooling. He looks down at his crotch, and then back up at me.
    He tries to reach for my other hand and I back away. “What are you doing?” I say.
    “You’re lonely.” He’s walking forward. “And I get it. But you’re not finding what you need because you don’t even know what you’re really looking for.” He reaches out and puts one hand on my waist. “Maybe I can help you figure it out.”
    “ This is why you brought me down here?” He steps in closer.
    “There’s nothing else down here,” I say. “Is there.” But this isn’t really a question.
    And he just shrugs. “That stuff I sold to Attic was all there was.” And then he smiles a bizarrely sweet smile. “Sorry.” Then he reaches his hand out and puts it on my ass and for a second I’m overcome with such sadness that I don’t even stop him.
    But that second passes, and my brain catches up with my body. And I think I’m about to be sick. What am I doing down here? What am I supposed to do now? What the hell am I supposed to do now? I don’t know, so I just do what I always do when I have no idea what to do next: I close my eyes and I picture my sister, who was never scared of anything or anyone. And I think, what would Nina do in this situation? And it’s easy to figure this one out.
    I bring my knee up as hard as I can between Blue Cheese’s legs.
    He opens his mouth into an O and for a second he is too shocked to make any noise at all. And then his eyes fill up with tears and he just starts screaming his head off.
    “Thanks for your help,” I say calmly. I run up the stairs then and I don’t look back.

Seven
    I ’m back upstairs, part of the party now, and my heart is pounding. I take my phone out of my pocket, call Amanda. Voice mail. I hang up. Now what?
    I walk back the way I came, through the spray paint room, through the kitchen, through the room with the girl on her swing.
    I feel someone watching me. For a disgusting second I think maybe Blue Cheese is following me and I tighten my hands into fists in preparation, but when I turn around he’s not there. I hear the crashing sound of another wall falling. More cheers. I walk through people, bumping into elbows and arms. I don’t try and get out of the way. I climb the stairs and then up another flight and I’m in a hallway I haven’t been in before. My eyes burn. It’s hard to breathe up here.
    Two shirtless guys in painter’s overalls are walking toward me, each with a giant canvas bag over his shoulder. “Geeet your hammers here people, hammers, bowling balls, chunks of scrap metal. Geeeet your hammers!” When they get closer I can see that one of the guys has demolition crew written in paint on the front of his overalls. Demolition Crew stops right in front of me. “And for you, m’lady,” he says. He hands me a giant sledgehammer. I stare at it in my hand. “See?” says the other guy. “It fits you perfectly.” I tighten my fist