Wolf Point by Edward Falco Read Free Book Online Page B

though.”
    “Damn. I was looking forward to—” She looked at the counter. “Is that from mice?” she asked.
    “Afraid so.”
    “God,” she said. “I hate mice. I know it’s girly, but—You don’t think there’s rats?”
    “Just field mice, I’m sure,” T said. “They get in during winter.”
    Jenny looked suddenly and deeply unhappy.
    “Go make the beds,” T said. “I’ll clean up in here.” He knelt and opened the cabinets under the sink. “Look at this.” He pulled out a blue plastic pail overflowing with cleaning supplies. “We’re in business.”
    Jenny watched him quietly as he went about dampening a rag and wiping off the counters. She stood in the doorway piled down with bedding. “You don’t have to do that,” she said.
    He pushed the mouse droppings off the countertop and into the trash pail he had found under the sink. “I don’t mind,” he said, and then stopped when he realized she was standing with her arms full of bedding observing him as if amazed by his behavior and slightly wary, as if she were watching a large foreign animal in the kitchen and wasn’t at all sure it might not turn on her. He tried to reassure her. “I wasn’t going anyplace,” he said. “I’m having fun here.” He pointed toward the bedrooms. “Go. Go make the beds.”
    While she was busy in the bedrooms, T finished wiping down the counters and then dusted the furniture. He took the couch and chair cushions outside to bang them into each other and slap them with the handle of a broom he had found in theotherwise empty kitchen pantry, and then he went about sweeping the dusty floors. He liked cleaning. Something about the mindless, repetitive swirl of activity calmed him. Mornings, while the coffee brewed, he liked to wash the few plates and cups from the prior evening’s snacking. He liked the feel of warm water running over his hands while he turned a ceramic cup or plate, going over it with a soft, soapy sponge. He enjoyed doing things with an empty head, and cleaning was the right activity for that, requiring just enough attention to pass the time outside himself. And then, when he was done, there were results. Things were clean, and neat, and in order.
    In Salem, his house was immaculate. Day after day living there he had cleaned and recleaned and cleaned again. More than once he had found himself standing at the kitchen table with a dish rag in hand while he stared out the window at nothing but sky and the bulk of his thickly treed mountain, the one that rose up in the near distance and hovered endlessly unmoving over his house. His time in Salem had required him to tap a lifetime of resources. He philosophized. He told himself to live in the moment, to accept whatever it gave, to immerse himself in the experience. He tried to see things truly. He argued to himself that seeing things clearly and truly and acknowledging his situation would be the first step before he could figure out what to do next and how to move on. He was sure he would eventually move on, that his life would start up again, that it was only a matter of time. He read novels, classic and modern. He read poetry, mostly modern and contemporary.He listened to jazz almost constantly. He exercised. He was not the kind of man who was meant to live alone. Isolation was an agony to be endured, and he did pull-ups and push-ups and leg lifts. He bought a free standing gym and used it daily. He power-walked at least two miles every day, often several times that. He drank one to two glasses of wine a day, traveling north to Roanoke or south to Blacksburg to buy the best vintages. He played computer games: Myst and Doom and a dozen others, chess on the Internet, all the sports games on PlayStation 2. More than once he’d found himself at two or three in the morning working the controls of a computer game when his engagement in the virtual action suddenly ceased of its own accord and he saw himself, a man in his fifties up in the middle of