Life on the Preservation, US Edition Read Free Page B

Hill neighborhood. Wearing only boxer shorts, he was pouring steaming hot water into a single-cup Melitta coffee filter – like watching himself perform a familiar task, not quite there yet. His senses assembled themselves haltingly. The aroma of the coffee, Colombian roast fresh ground from Espresso Vivace, drew him forth. He lifted away the filter in its little plastic holder, still dripping, and set it atop a crusty pile of dishes in the sink. Almost fully present now, he added a dollop of heavy cream to his coffee, slopping some onto the counter. He set the carton down, his hand trembling. Staring at the hand, he clenched it into a tight, shaking fist, then flexed the fingers a couple of times. It seemed all right now, the tremor gone. Ian picked up his coffee mug and carried it into the other room.
    The hardwood floor was cold under his bare feet. He stopped abruptly. Three pill bottles stood on the bedside table with their caps removed. Ian closed his eyes, trying to remember, then opened them again. If he had taken the pills he wouldn’t be standing here. Yet he seemed to remember taking them, or was it the intention he remembered? He couldn’t distinguish.
    Ian’s heart began to beat rapidly. His breath shortened. He put his mug down and capped the bottles, deliberately not acknowledging the depleted quantities, moving fast, like a kid hiding his pornography before the door opened. He returned the bottles to the bathroom, catching a glimpse, when he slammed the mirrored cabinet, of his sweat-shiny face.
    Standing at the window with his coffee, he racked the blinds up, his breathing and heartbeat under control again. In the alley twenty feet below, his restored 1947 Indian Chief leaned on its kick-stand, front wheel with its distinctive wide-flaring fender cocked over. Not really his bike. His Dad had given him two parting gifts. He didn’t want either one but kept them both. That was three years ago. The other ‘gift’ was kind of a family heirloom: .38 Police Special. Fucking Dragnet gun. It had belonged to Ian’s grandfather, originally. Ian wrapped it in a towel, stuffed it in a shoebox and put it way back on the closet shelf. Out of easy reach and temptation. He knew it was there, though. Like the prescription bottles in the medicine cabinet.
    The sun, low-angled and rising, lit up the Chief’s brake cover and winked on dull, spotted chrome. The “magnificent machine” as his father used to refer to it, was looking tired; Ian rode the Chief but didn’t take care of it beyond the rare oil change. He knew approaching a vintage bike in this manner was tantamount to slow murder, but so what? For Ian, the Chief was basic transportation, and maybe a grudge on wheels.
    “Stupid,” he said, not meaning the bike.
    He thumbed Sarah’s speed-dial number on his cell. This was the thing he had dreaded. Sarah thought he was coming to see her, but that wasn’t going to happen. With any luck at all she would be asleep and he could leave a message, delay the inevitable break-up conversation. The phone began to ring in her dorm room at WSU, two hundred and eighty-five miles east, in Pullman, Washington. Except Ian suddenly had the eerie feeling it wasn’t ringing in Pullman. He had the even more eerie feeling Pullman didn’t even exist .
    While the phone rang through, Ian let the tension in his mind go slack – a meditative technique a therapist had taught him back in high school. It was the only useful thing he retained from six months of sessions. That guy had been waiting the whole time for Ian to break down, but Ian never did. And at night he was WHO and nobody could touch him or ever would.
    For a suspended moment between rings, raindrops appeared on the Chief’s red paint job, cracked leather seat, and chrome. Ian’s eyes widened and he threw his attention forward again. The slack disappeared, and so did the raindrops. It was a brilliantly sunny morning in Seattle. October fifth, 2012, I’m losing it, he