• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Tinker looked pained at the suggestion.

—I don’t mind drinking alone, I said.

Tinker put the shaker back.

—I’ll try not to be too late.

—Capital, said Eve.

Tinker gave Evey a kiss on the cheek. As he walked to the door she looked out over the city. The door closed. She didn’t look back.

I took a sip of my martini. It was well diluted with the melted ice. You could barely taste the gin. It wasn’t going to be much help.

—You look good, I said finally.

Eve eyed me patiently.

—Katey. You know I can’t stand that sort of crap. Especially from you.

—I’m just saying that you look better than when I saw you last.

—It’s the boys in the basement. Every day it’s bacon with breakfast and soup with lunch. Canapés with cocktails and cake with coffee.

—I’m jealous.

—Sure. The Prodigal Son and all that. But pretty soon you feel like you’re the fatted calf.

With some difficulty she sat upright. She reached out two fingers and picked up a small white pill that was almost invisible on the surface of the table.

—I’m gonna find me Jesus one of these days, she said, then she washed the medicine down with her tepid gin.

—Would you like another? she asked.

—If you’re having one.

She leaned on the table to push herself up.

—I can get it, I said.

She gave a wry smile.

—The doctor encourages me to exercise.

Plucking the shaker off of its stand, she worked her way toward the bar. She dragged her left foot behind her the way a kid drags a suitcase down the street.

She picked up ice cubes with a set of tongs one by one and dropped them in the fuselage. She glugged out the gin inexactly and then measured the vermouth to the drop. There was a mirror over the bar and as she stirred the drink she studied her face with a certain grim satisfaction.

They say that vampires cast no reflection. Maybe the accident had made Eve some sort of haunting spirit with the opposite property: She was invisible to herself now except for on the surface of a mirror.

She capped the shaker and gave it a lazy toggle as she limped back to her seat. After filling her glass she shoved the shaker across the table toward me.

—How are you and Tinker getting along, I asked after filling my glass.

—I’m not up for small talk, Katey.

—Is that small talk?

—Small enough.

I gestured vaguely to the apartment.

—At least, it looks like he’s taking good care of you.

—You break it, you’ve bought it. Right?

She took a fullmouthed swallow and then looked at me more directly.

—I don’t suppose you’d just go home? I’m perfectly fine. And in fifteen minutes I’ll be sound asleep.

By way of illustration, she waggled her glass.

—I’ve got nothing better to do, I said. I’ll stick around long enough to help you to your room.

She waved a hand in the air as if to say: Stay if you stay, go if you go. She took another belt and lay back on the couch. I looked down into my glass.

—Why don’t you read me something, she said. That’s what Tinker would do.

—Would you like that?

—At first it drove me crazy. It was like he didn’t have the courage to converse. But it’s grown on me.

—All right. What do you want me to read?

—It doesn’t matter.

There were eight books stacked on the cocktail table in descending order of size. With dust jackets designed in glossy evocative colors, they looked like a stack of neatly wrapped Christmas presents.

I picked up the book on top. None of the pages were dog-eared, so I started at the beginning.

“Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow,” said Mrs. Ramsay.

“But you’ll have to be up with the lark,” she added.

To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night’s darkness and a day’s sail

—Oh stop, Eve said. It’s dreadful. What is it?

—Virginia Woolf.

—Ugh. Tinker brought home all these novels by women as if that’s what I needed to get me back on my feet. He’s surrounded my bed with them. It’s as if he’s planning