The Parallel Apartments Read Free Page A

little. Something about her faintly yellowed canines.
    A fantastic memory of Gracie quietly flared. High school. They ran into each other in the hall between classes. That’s to say, they collided coming round a corner across from Mr. Chest’s chemistry classroom. They wound up in each other’s arms.
    Justine noticed with surprise that she was modestly turned on. The black leather couch beneath her, usually tacky and cold, began to feel cozy.
    Franklin got down on his knees, and, with his eyes still closed, spent several minutes arranging Justine in a way that made her feel like an ikebana project. For an instant she imagined Dr. M’Nabb at the end of the couch pumping her fists and weeping and waving a felt pennant: Jusss… tine! Jusss… tine! Jusss… tine!
    Across the room Marla moved her mouth in silence. Justine watched. Marla’s mouth formed lazy O’s, gibbous moons, invitational puckers. Justine imagined kissing her, her tongue slipping through the tough curved glass of the television and between Marla-Gracie’s lips.
    Justine bit into her own cut lip. It tingled and bled. Franklin got on top of her and went to work in a complicated, bebop-like rhythm. He said he’d read about the present variant in Cosmo, but Justine was sure Darling had taught him this oddball syncopation. Justine didn’t care. She began to buck back. Why had she been unconscious for so long? This was just fine. This was nice. Franklin had, after all, rescued her. She owed Franklin this at least once in a while. This was as good as love.
    Justine held her breath as the first spinal chill of an orgasm sparkled and then dissipated. She stared unblinking at Marla, who had now fully transformed into Justine’s old guidance counselor, her tie loose between her breasts and accidentally twisted a half turn so the label (Burberry) was visible, silently licking her lips and puckering in a silly, slatternly way. Your PSATs are a little low at least you have an interest in art under my guidance-counselor-newscaster’s desk I’m wearing brown suede kitten heels a half size too big come fuck me.
    Franklin worked steadily, occasionally pushing a thumb under Justine’s rib. Marla-Gracie winked into three dimensions. She thrust her hand out of the TV and offered it to Justine. But she couldn’t reach.
    â€œCome closer,” said Justine, without taking a breath.
    Marla-Gracie came closer. Justine’s eyes watered and her throat swelled and her lungs idled, waiting for the orgasm, waiting for the kiss. Justineclosed her eyes. She stuck out her tongue as far as she could, and Marla-Gracie sucked it in.
    Justine’s ears popped, her heart forced blood through the constricting arteries in her thighs, she opened her eyes to look in Marla-Gracie’s beautiful black eyes while they both came together.
    But she wasn’t there.
    Buildings instead, woolly smoke from one of them drifting blackly to the left.
    Franklin stopped moving. Justine bucked against him furiously, holding her breath an instant longer than she thought she could, sucking in air with a hollow shudder that burned her throat and dried her teeth, but it was too late. She trembled and buzzed from the missed orgasm. Franklin thrust one last time, came, withdrew, and sat at the end of the couch.
    They watched the smoke and agonies and news crawls for the rest of 2001 like everyone else.
    In spite of the condoms, Justine became pregnant. The pregnancy ended with the birth of their daughter, Valeria. Valeria lived for thirty-nine hours and two minutes, every instant of which she spent in miniature critical-care agony, until the late afternoon of June 8, 2002, when she smiled, once, and died.
    On April 14, 2004, Justine became pregnant again.
    She and Franklin were standing at either end of the woodblock island in the middle of their kitchen, exchanging humid sighs, pinched looks, and half sentences. Justine was sawing away at the