The Animal Hour Read Free Page A

mean?”
    â€œI mean, I think you’ve made a mistake,” the black woman said. “This is definitely not your office.”
    Slowly, Nancy glanced around her, surveyed the place. Had she wandered into the wrong cubicle? “I’m … pretty sure this is the place,” she said more slowly. “Isn’t this Nancy Kincaid’s office?”
    I just can’t believe it’s you …
    The black woman stared at her for a long moment. The stare seemed dark. Deep. Empty.
    Oh, it all seems wrong somehow …
    â€œWell … yes,” the black woman said after a long moment. “Yes, it is Nancy Kincaid’s office.” And then she shook her head. Once. Slowly.
    â€œBut you’re not Nancy Kincaid.”

    T he phone rang. The baby started crying. The Shithead started pounding on the door.
    For a moment, Avis did not know which way to turn. She stood in the center of the bare white living room, a small, paralyzed figure under the ceiling’s naked bulb. Her hands were in the air, her fingers splayed. Her sweet, pale face seemed frozen.
    The phone rang again and again. The baby kept crying for her. The Shithead hammered the door hard and now he was shouting too.
    â€œAvis! Avis, I know you’re in there! Open the goddamned door, Avis! You’re my fucking wife, now open the goddamned door!”
    Avis put her hands to her hair—short curls of dirty-blonde hair. She blinked once behind the huge, square frames of her glasses.
    â€œAvis! I’m telling you! I know you’re there!”
    The baby’s crying , she thought. Get the baby.
    She could hear the rhythmic wails from the bedroom: “Aah! Aah! Aah!”
    The kitchenette phone shrilled in between. And wham! wham! wham! went the Shithead’s fist.
    â€œIt’s my baby too, Avis! You can’t keep me away from my own goddamned baby!”
    But Avis stood there, stunned, yet another moment. It had all happened too quickly for her.
    Just thirty seconds ago, she had been sitting in the empty room quietly. She had been perched on the canvas chair before the folding card table. She had been resting her hands on the keys of her portable Olivetti, staring at the page peeling off the roller. It was the last page of her report on Thirty Below , a thriller novel set here in New York City. She wrote reports like this for a living. She read novels and wrote synopses of them. Then she wrote her opinion on whether or not the novels’ plots would make good movies. She sent these reports to the office of Victory Pictures, so that the Victory executives could pretend that they had read the novels and had opinions. She was paid sixty dollars for each report.
    On this report, on this page, she had just typed: “This exciting urban thriller—reminiscent of Marathon Man —could be a good vehicle for Dustin Hoffman.” She had been sitting in the canvas chair, staring at that sentence.
    Dustin Hoffman , she had been thinking. A good vehicle for Dustin Hoffman. I don’t know how I’m going to pay my rent next month, and I’m writing about vehicles for Dustin Hoffman. How am I going to buy diapers for my baby, Dustin Hoffman? Tell me that, you stupid millionaire sitting by your pool someplace drinking champagne! My little baby doesn’t have good clothes to wear, Mr. Dusty, Mr. Dust-man, and if he were on fucking fire YOU WOULDN’T PISS ON HIM TO PUT HIM OUT AND MY LIFE IS SHIT, YOU MOVIE STAR ASSHOLE! What am I going to do?
    That is what she had been thinking. And her glasses had been beginning to fog with tears. And she had been thinking about how, if she hadn’t married the Shithead, she would have graduated from Kenyon this past year. And she would’ve come to New York and been a set designer instead of the wife of a starving actor. And she would not have allowed herself to get pregnant before her husband had even landed a paying role. And she would never have known