The Illumination_ A Novel - Kevin Brockmeier [27]
He got back up and forwarded to the next song on the CD, but stopped it before the lyrics began, just as the guitar was interrupting the organ. He switched trays and played a few seconds of a classic R&B song, If you ever change your mind, / About leaving, leaving me behind, and then a few seconds of a pop tune the two of them had always loved, With you in that dress, my thoughts, I confess, / Verge on dirty, and then the opening lines of an old jazz standard, A tinkling piano in the next apartment, / Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant. He saw how they had all been transformed into something much smaller and grayer. It seemed that every song he knew had been hollowed out, scraped clean of its associations, and refilled with memories of Patricia: the smell of her shampoo; the way she rested her hand on his lap; the sound of her gasping his name as the ice took the wheels of the car, then repeating it as they flipped over and spun toward the concrete pillar. It was all too unfair.
When the doorbell rang, he left his crutches lying on the floor and hobbled over to the foyer. It would be a UPS driver delivering a package, he presumed, or maybe a neighborhood activist canvassing the block with a petition, someone he could send away with a thank-you and a signature, but when he opened the door, the face that greeted him belonged to the girl from the bus shelter, the willowy one with the burn rings on her arms and legs, Melissa Wallumrod.
He said her name. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I bet you can figure it out if you really try.”
“Yes, well, about that, I didn’t know who you were myself until this morning. That was my editor’s initiative.”
“Your editor’s initiative got me kicked out of my house.” She was carrying a green canvas duffel bag that was padded out like a bolster. She swung it onto her feet. “My parents made me pack up and leave.”
“I see. How did you find me?”
She took the front section of the newspaper out of her back pocket and read from the caption beneath the picture. “Melissa Wallumrod dot dot dot bodily mutilation dot dot dot. Here we are: ‘Gazette Staff Photo, Jason Williford.’ You’re in the phone book. After that, it was a piece of cake.” She looked him up and down—his head cocked, his arms tucked close to his sides, one knee slightly raised—and said, “So, Flamingo, are you going to let me in or what?” Then she shouldered past him, disrupting his balance. A thrill of pain flashed through his leg as his foot struck the floor. By the time he caught up with the girl, she had already dropped her duffel bag on the carpet and set herself on the arm of the couch, apprehensively, experimentally, like a cat seeking a high place from which to avoid being startled.
“Make yourself at home, why don’t you.”
“I intend to.”
And she meant it.
He asked her the obvious question. “What are you doing here?”
“I need a place to stay,” she confessed. Apparently, she had decided that his house would do. Nothing he said could dissuade her. Maybe if she apologized to her parents … he was certain they would … “Ha. Obviously you don’t know Tom and Doris.” Why didn’t she try one of her friends? “Um, hello? I guess you missed the paper this morning. I’m a bad influence—‘the girl who practices bodily mutilation near Allsopp Park.’ ” But why on earth should he allow her into his home? Didn’t she think that was asking too much? “Hmm, I don’t know, let’s see. Maybe because you’re the one who came prying into my life and stirred everything up. Can you honestly tell me you don’t bear some responsibility for that?” Well, then, what made her so sure she could trust him?
She scoffed. “Please. Look at you. You’re in even worse shape than I am.”
Finally, out of exhaustion, and because she had played on his highly reactive sense of culpability, he gave in.