You Don't Love Me Yet Read Free Page B

bodies into contact at elbow and shoulder.
    “I’m in trouble,” said Matthew.
    “What trouble?”
    “I quit on Tuesday. Dr. Marian was so pissed she won’t even let me into my locker. Shelf is dying of ennui and nobody will admit it.”
    “Who’s Shelf?”
    “The kangaroo. You remember.”
    Lucinda and Matthew had sworn not to speak on the telephone. The ten days since their breakup had passed without those chance encounters for which, heart tripping, she’d braced at the entry to each of his regular haunts, the Back Door Bakery, Hard Times Pizza, Netty’s. Their abandoned intimacy dwelled like a rumor between them, independent and charged.
    Lucinda put her hand into Matthew’s hair. He leaned his skull into her hand. Lucinda spotted a tiny nesting of dandruff grains in the blazing red cup of his ear, as usual.
    “You’ll be back in a week,” she said.
    “I don’t know this time.”
    “Did you leave something important in your locker?”
    “More I’m worried about Shelf.”
    “Shelf’s probably just a little depressed.”
    “Shelf’s fucking inconsolable.”
    “You see aspects of yourself in the kangaroo,” Lucinda said gently. “But you’re not dying.”
    “I might be suffocating slowly, who knows, it’s hard to tell. Like all of us. We’re turning thirty and we haven’t done anything. Look at Bedwin. He can’t even feed himself, and he’s our genius.”
    “The song’s good.”
    “It’s not a song yet,” said Matthew. “He hasn’t got any lyrics, he told me.”
    Inside the kitchen, Bedwin choked, wolfing his food. A kettle rattled on its burner. Denise went on puttering at the stove and refrigerator, allowing them privacy.
    “Anyone can write lyrics,” suggested Lucinda.
    “Anyone can be in a lame band, anyone can scoop up the hair shed by a depressed molting kangaroo, anyone can wipe the tears from the infected eyes of a bandicoot, anyone can put a monkey in handcuffs,” said Matthew savagely. “For that matter, anyone can answer telephones in fucking Falmouth’s stupid pretend gallery, or work in a porn store—”
    “Denise doesn’t work in a porn store,” whispered Lucinda. “Keep your voice down.”
    “Masturbation boutique, whatever it is.”
    Lucinda saw she’d roiled Matthew by touching his hair, by breaching the distance. If he’d been the one to speak consolingly she’d surely now be in his role. Abjection and solace switched between them as lightly and easily as electric current.
    “Bedwin’s the only one of us who actually lives for his art,” said Matthew, more evenly. “And see where it gets him.”
    “Maybe you really should quit the zoo.”
    “I can’t abandon Shelf.”
    “Is Shelf a male or a female kangaroo?”
    “A flyer.”
    “What’s a flyer?” Lucinda, suddenly in the grip of an absurd jealousy, felt certain she knew the answer.
    “That’s the word for a female. A lady kangaroo.”
    “Of course,” she said bitterly.
    Denise and Bedwin emerged from the kitchen. Matthew and Lucinda fumbled apart on the couch.
    “What about one of those beers?” said Lucinda.
    “Sure.” Denise grabbed one from the fridge. Lucinda twisted off the beer’s cap and pulled a long sip from its neck. Matthew frowned, turned his back to the band. They reclaimed their instruments and, at Denise’s prompting, encored “Tree of Death,” probably their favorite among their songs if they were honest with themselves. Bedwin, restored by the sandwich, managed a plinking, gnarled solo. Matthew lowered his voice to a whisper during the bridge, seducing an audience that wasn’t there.
    Outside, a moonless night had fallen on the terraced apartments of Landa Street and Kenilworth Avenue, shadow swarming the concrete steps, bushed with jade plants, that wended up from the silence of parked cars, so distant from the blacktop heat and scurry of wheels on Silver Lake and Hyperion. Beyond the band’s windows something four-footed crashed in the under leaves, daring