This Body Read Free Page A

stacks of black-and-white photographs of strangely focused street scenes,
their perspectives so off-balance that they made her stomach whirl. She replaced them facedown on the shelves.
    Behind a cabinet door was a TV, VCR, and stereo system. The cassette left in the VCR was a Quentin Tarantino film that Katharine
had never heard of — she had missed that too. Katharine wasn't really a fan of Tarantino's films — too violent, too bloody,
too strange — and watched them only because she wanted to know what Ben was watching, and only in video when she could use
the remote control to fast-forward.
    The artists on the CDs and tapes sounded familiar, and some she knew she had heard blaring from Ben's room. Ben had gone through
numerous musical styles and had been a fan of grunge, industrial, ska, hardcore, heavy metal, speed metal, death metal. Until
he stopped talking to her, she had been regaled with facts about various groups — who trashed their instruments, who taught
himself to play, who wrote their own songs. Marion was a classic-rock listener: Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Who, Led Zeppelin,
The Doobie Brothers. Sometimes Marion would come racing into the living room to pump up the volume on the stereo. “Oh, I just
love this song,” she would gush, and Katharine would find herself in a kind of time machine, seeing herself at the very same
age, gushing over the very same song.
    She felt a pinioning stab of homesickness. She fended it off.

    The kitchen table was stacked with mail and grocery bags with food still in them. One bag had an opened box of Frosted Flakes.
The eater had obviously just reached in and pulled out handfuls of the stuff, as flakes skittered across the bottom of the
bag when Katharine moved it.
    There wasn't much in the cupboards: some canned goods, condiments, and bottles of scotch, vermouth, and bitters. In another
cabinet were plastic vials of prescription medicines, antibiotics generally, but there were also a couple whose curative powers
remained a mystery to her. It didn't surprise her that TB would be a sickly person, but it surprised her that she would bother
with doctors.
Or is he her pusher? Amphetamines and depressants and such things
. The doctor's name on all the labels, some with expiration dates long past, was the same: Dr. Elliot Mantle, Beverly Hills.
She should probably remember that. Maybe she should start a list of the things she knew about Thisby — just in case someone
showed up: family, friends, boyfriends, and she had to be her.
Her dead ringer
. She could just imagine what type of boyfriend a person of her obvious habits would attract. It made her shudder.
    She pulled open drawers that rattled with useless inventory. The child did not seem to own a pen or a sheet of paper. She
found a stubby yellow pencil like the ones available at miniature golf or at the library —
no doubt, this was a golfing acquisition
— and ripped up a grocery bag into strips. She wrote awkwardly — her hand not responding well to commands — at the top of
one sheet, “Elliot Mantle — doctor — Beverly Hills — 555–8411.” She stacked the prescription labels neatly for future reference.
    The contents of the refrigerator were hardly more nourishing. There was beer, Coke, an empty carton of juice, five jars of
maraschino cherries (which she had always hated), and a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, the thought of which twitched her
stomach counterclockwise. She pitched everything out while gulping down a Coke, which made her throat tingle.
    Katharine stood in front of the opened refrigerator. She liked bare refrigerators, one of those small contentions with Philip
she had discovered early in their marriage. He loved them bulging with food and drink, a sign of wealth and prosperity. Of
course, he wasn't the one to discover two-month-old leftovers, growing black-and-green fungus and smelling of putrid decay
in their Tupperware containers.
    She closed the door, leaned over the sink, and threw