Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver [89]
On her way up Yesler, Taylor passes her own apartment, which resides in a long brown box of a building with twenty identical doors in the front, spaced every twenty feet or so like boxcars. The apartment is gloomy, with battle-scarred linoleum and precariously thin walls and neighbors on both sides who shout a lot in what sounds like Chinese; sometimes Taylor gets the feeling the two sets of neighbors are shouting at each other, using her apartment as a conduit for curses or strange instructions. But it’s a roof over their heads, for now, and she’s feeling more optimistic about finances. It took only about two-thirds of the $1,200 Alice gave her to pay the first month, get the lights on and move in. The rest she hid away inside a plastic cube on her night table that has family photos smiling on all six sides—Jax and Turtle back home in the Retarded Desert; Jax wearing his swimsuit and a paper bag over his head; a very old snapshot of Alice shelling out lima beans; that kind of thing. Taylor figures that’s the last household object on earth a burglar would steal. Barbie is still with them, and was partly responsible for their winding up here; she insists the Pacific Northwest is on the verge of becoming very popular. She also agreed to use some of her loot to help cover expenses. For the time being, Barbie looks after Turtle in the daytime, and starting this week, Taylor is making eight dollars an hour.
She has decided she likes this city, which seems like Tucson’s opposite, a place where no one will ever think to look for them. Bodies of water lie along every side, and snowy, triangular mountains crouch on the horizon, helping her to orient her mind’s compass needle as she winds through unfamiliar city streets. Several times each day she has to drive the van across the lake on one of the floating bridges that bob like a long, narrow barge. Apparently they couldn’t anchor them, as is usual with bridge construction, because the lakes are too silty and deep to sink concrete roots into. Taylor got this information and a world of other facts from Kevin, a fellow Handi-Van driver who has asked Taylor seven or eight times if she would like to go out with him. Kevin doesn’t exactly float her boat; he’s a pinkish young man whose jeans always appear brand new and never quite fit him. Kevin’s main outside interest seems to be the pale mustache he is trying to grow. He talks in radio code even when he’s off duty. In spite of all this, Taylor is about to relent. It’s been so long since she had any fun she’s afraid she’ll forget how. The next time she talks to Jax, she wouldn’t mind telling him she was dating someone. She makes her decision while she is helping the woman who has forgotten color find her way to the fire-engine-red door of the hospital: this Saturday, Taylor and Turtle will go somewhere with Kevin. If he didn’t have Turtle in mind, that’s his tough luck. He can go along with the idea, or he can turn himself around and 10–27.
Barbie and Turtle are out on the tiny patio behind the kitchen when Taylor gets home from work. Barbie has on a pink bikini and is lying on a bedspread, working on her tan. She looks like some kind of exotic bird tragically trapped in a rotten cage. Taylor slides open the stubborn glass door and drags out one of the falling-apart kitchen chairs, reminding herself to borrow a screwdriver and some screws from the garage at work. The late-afternoon light seems too weak to penetrate human skin, but it’s the first time they’ve seen the sun in two rainy weeks, and Barbie claims she can’t miss her window of opportunity. She says her tan is an important element of her personal identity.