A Song in the Daylight. Paullina Simons

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      He wasn’t there.

      Granted, it was 1:20 and perhaps he had come and gone, but then it was 1:30, then 1:40 and he wasn’t there. Larissa bought some steak for dinner, potatoes, frozen corn, peanut butter—1:50—cereal, coffee, sugar, tea, dry dog food—1:55—and then reluctantly went to stand in the express line and listened to a heavy, sour woman (perhaps Fred’s spouse?) behind her say, “Looks like you have more than twelve items there, dearie.” And Larissa said, “All righty, I’ll play.” Normally, she wouldn’t have done it, but this is what happened when small inflammations festered into giant sores. “Let’s count together. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve—look at that! Exactly twelve.” Larissa gave the embarrassed woman a cold stare. “Unless of course, you want to count each of the steaks as a separate piece. But we might have to count your six English muffins individually, and then where would we be?”

      The woman mumbled something about the sign saying TWELVE OR LESS.

      “Yes, and I’ve got one of those. Twelve. See?” Harrumphing to the cashier, Larissa pushed her items down the conveyor belt.

      “Cash back?”

      “No,” Larissa barked to the register girl. “Just the receipt, please.”

      Still steaming, she bagged, paid and without a backward glance of smug contemptuous self-satisfaction pushed her cart outside. She was almost at her car when a voice behind her said, “Boy, you really showed her.”

      She whirled around, swirled around like a tornado on boots, and in front of her Kai stood, looking worn and pale, unshaven, scraggly, unwell and sad, holding a coffee and a brown paper bag in his hands.

      “Hey,” she said, her heart thumping, her voice shaking a little. Damn! Larissa hated that old witch even more for forcing her to be unlikeable when he was nearby. “Everything okay?” What to say? What to say! “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

      “Yeah … I had …” He bowed his head. “I know,” he said, without looking up. “You have time to grab a bite?”

      It was 2:07. Larissa had exactly seven minutes to grab a bite, and then she stood a thirty percent chance of being five minutes late to pick up Michelangelo. She wished that once, just once …

      “Hang on,” she said. “Let me call my friend.” While he waited, Larissa called Donna, whose kids were walkers, asking her to please keep Michelangelo for ten minutes because she was running “a tiny bit” behind. Though she and Larissa had spoken barely two words the whole year, Donna was gracious. She and her own kids were headed to the playground. Could she take Michelangelo with them? “Oh, he’d love that. Thank you so much. I owe you one …”

      Larissa turned to Kai. She stood dumbly in the parking lot, and her steak in the Jersey sun was going to reach room temperature, oh, in say, fifteen minutes, just long enough for her to get home and throw it out.

      “Did you already eat?” he said, holding his brown bag in his hands. “We can split my sushi if you want.”

      “No,” she said. “I’m okay.” It was unseemly to say she was starving. As if she had uncontrollable appetites. She stayed composed in front of him, the way she was with everyone, the line lady and Leroy notwithstanding.

      They had nowhere to go but her car. So they went and sat in her car.

      “Is everything okay?” she said, turning on the engine and staring ahead at her comforting tombstones. Was it her СКАЧАТЬ