Bright Shards of Someplace Else Read Free Page B

began dialing. She paced around the first floor, hearing snippets of his progress (“Can I speak to a manager?”) and debating about whether she needed another drink. She popped the cork from a small bottle of port and escaped her indecision. She returned to the boy and sat across from him; he was in the midst of a monologue:
    â€œYou could get into my notes page and erase the earlier records on my account so no one would know what you did. You could also do the opposite and rack up my bill. I think your job would be fun, Jim, for these reasons.” The boy’s voice, this time, sounded higher and oddly husky, like female smoker trying to baby talk. He spoke quickly and laughed a bit, a charmingly nervous sound that threaded through his words and made everything he said a sweet half-joke. “Oh, so it’s not fun … just in a call center. I guess if I were you I’d want to do something crazy now and again. But I’m already a bad gambler. So I shouldn’t propose stuff like that.” He paused and pulled the phone away from his ear and held it out at arm’s length. This struck Grace as a showboating gesture, as if he were a cyclist weaving through traffic no-handed. The voice on the phone—Jim—let loose a stream of corporate gibberish into open air, but the boy didn’t appear to be listening. He pulled the straw from his juice and gnawed on it. In a slow, smooth motion, he wound the phone back to his ear and said a few garbled and urgent words into the mouthpiece.
    Another long pause, and then “No, of course not … no more than five or six times, tops … As a matter of fact, yes … She plays volleyball? The sport of princesses!”
    The thread was lost on Grace, but she felt hypnotized by the boy’s tone, the widening of his eyes, the small, polished giggles, the cajoling followed by a sudden cold word, which crackled like ice dropped in a hot toddy. Andy was talking on the phone, but she felt his disjointed comments were making an appeal to her personally. For what, she couldn’t say, but she was starting to feel different—yes, her head was swimming, but that wasn’t different, not really—she felt, watching him, that he was, with his little-boy claw hands, ripping a hole in a heavy scrim that long lay between her and the rest of the world. She was, she felt, surfacing. But she was also getting the bends.
    The boy sat Indian-style on the couch cushions, his fluffed-up hair forming a perfect looping curl, like a bent horn, right on the top of his head. In another place and time a boy like him would be trussed up in velvets and dripping gold tassels and paraded through the town on a platform carried high by elders, and as he passed her on the street she would hope simply to catch his eye, or—better yet—to hear him speak. Or maybe she would trek to him, as he sat in the center of a do-nut of fog high on a precipice. Tell me, oh wise one …
    She laughed to herself; he was just a kid, whatever that meant. He laid down the phone and said, simply, “Done.”
    â€œYou did it.”
    â€œYup. Easy-peasy. It’s all about what you do and don’t say, and I know when to shut up and when to speak. It’s like a game.”
    â€œYou’re amazing. Just, wow.” The boy had lifted another burden off her as if unhooking a balloon from its bunch to sail away. A giddiness rose up in her, and she looked around for something to distract her from a manic laugh. On the side table, she spotted the mother’s list.
Eczema cream twice nightly. No liquids after nine. Make sure he uses floss and gets the uppers
and
the lowers
…
    Grace stood up and floated into the bathroom. The cream bore apiece of masking tape marked “Andy.” The tube was solid in her hand, fraught; it was one of the boy’s things. She returned and presented it to him on her outstretched palms.
    â€œYou’ve got to apply