Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever Read Free Page A

shirts in her bureau, but in the top drawer I find only socks and underwear, most of which is plain. But a few pieces are surprising, and I am glad the garments are all just stuffed in. If everything had been folded and neat she might notice that someone had been in here, though she probably would figure it was only her parents, spot-checking for weed.
    There are a few lacy pieces, blacks and one red, not very risqué, really, just hard to imagine on Vicky. This thong with the leopard-print front, say, is almost unbearably cheesy, but if she were standing in front of a boy, as Sara stood in front of me last night, he would fall to his knees in worship—how could he not?—and maybe Vicky will not miss just a singlepair, if it is a black lacy and not the leopard print, of which there is only the one. I bring them to my nose—of course they only smell clean—then put them in my pocket and shut the drawer, thinking it is time to finish cleaning up and get going.
    I turn around and there’s Amanda, standing in Vicky’s doorway.
    I guess she took the whole afternoon off work, came home after her appointment. I wonder what the results were, and how long she has been here. Was she here this whole time, maybe taking a nap? She has been watching me, silently, and is still silent, though she seems about to speak right now.
    It is next Wednesday and my mother is saying, “Why aren’t you over at Danny’s?” and I’m telling her anything, or else I’m walking in to McCarren’s, taking a seat at the far end, and Sara’s ignoring me at first but then coming over, rolling her eyes, bringing a foaming beer for me, saying, “You’re here early for a change,” and I’m giving her that same old smile, the one that barely makes rent, the one that coasts into the station on fumes.
    It is not next Wednesday. It is still this moment and that will be true of every moment that follows, assuming this moment ever ends, which, if I am lucky, it won’t. Amanda filling the doorway, silent, us facing each other like friends or like family or like lovers: an eternity of silence and afternoon light. And she doesn’t even know about the cat yet. I will never escape this town.

ESTRELLAS Y RASCACIELOS
    T he anarchists were drinking victory shots and making toasts because even though they’d never met with success before they surely knew it when they saw it or it found them. Snapcase, his beard effulgent with spilled drink, was sure that school was out for ever . He’d tossed Jessica’s survey of art history, his own Norton Shakespeare, and somebody’s copy of Derrida’s The Gift of Death into the fire pit they had dug in the backyard. The shallow hole was surrounded by salvaged chairs and shaded by a blue canvas canopy they’d stolen from some resort because property was always already theft anyway, and plus they had really wanted that canopy. The books were doused with whiskey from a bottle of Ancient Age. Snapcase lit a hand-rolled cigarette and then tossed his still-burning match into the shallow pit. It went out in the air, so he lit another and placed it gingerly in a little poolof whiskey. It snuffed there. Someone said something about lighting three matches in a row. Somebody else said no, the expression was no three on a match. And how that expression had come from World War I, because if you lit three cigarettes off one match in your foxhole or trench the enemy in his foxhole or trench had three pins of light to triangulate your location and then he blew up everything or maybe just shot you and your two buddies.
    Knock off the history book shit, Snapcase said. Where were the history books anyway? His fire was still unlit. The other anarchists who’d been watching were disappointed. I have to be at work in an hour, one said. Snapcase went back into the house for the history books. He ran into David in the living room.
    But I like Nietzsche, David said, grabbing back his dog-eared copy of The Antichrist, which Snapcase had just