AM:61
Lifting a heavy box of files had injured Carla’s back. She sat hunched at her desk, feeling foolish, wondering if old age had finally caught up. Her daughters were grown, and though the men who pursued her did plenty to make her feel like a kid in college, she could see the graying around their temples, the odd areas of slackening skin that matched her own.
62:PM
They all went out together to the railroad tracks to see the funeral train roll by. Martha and Hazel were pushing each other because they were just kids, and they gained a distinct pleasure from standing next to the tracks without getting yelled at, a pleasure which could be best expressed in meanness. Martha pulled one of the pigtails that Hazel spent so long getting even with the other. So Hazel dug her fingers into Martha’s arm and Martha squealed and Carla hauled back and smacked the two of them so hard they nearly fell off the backside of the embankment. She looked back at them with an incredible anger that Hazel and Martha would not understand until they were much older.
AM:63
Olivia sees a butter knife on the banister atop the stairs. She fantasizes wildly about the ways in which it might plunge into the ones she loves.
The butter knife makes the entire room feel dangerous. An intruder might not have any desire to stab her until he reached the top of the stairs and felt the butter knife under his hand. Olivia cannot go on until she collects the butter knife and puts it in the sink, where it belongs.
64:PM
Ask yourself: If you were sitting on a girl’s couch, and you realized the couch smelled like urine, would your first impulse be to wonder if you were the one who created the urine? Would you feel a sudden sense of guilt, like you didn’t belong on the couch at all, and once she came back out of the bathroom, she would take a rolled-up newspaper and swat your ass until you slunk, whimpering, to her open hand? What we’re saying here is men are dogs.
AM:65
To clean a couch, one must first mix an enzyme cleaner with soap, and then use a clean towel or rag to scrub the soapy water into the couch. After a significant amount of cleaning, one then rinses the towel, refills the bucket with hot, clean water, and scrubs anew, removing soap and residue. Depending on the remaining visibility and odor of the stain, another pass may be necessary with soap and rag, water and rag. It may be necessary to pause between treatments, or to allow the soap mixture to soak into the material. What we’re saying here is our lives are furniture.
66:PM
“They’re gold flakes,” Wallace said, reaching to touch them on his back. “Genuine.”
Tess held her hand against the textured gold on Wallace’s tattoo. She drew her fingers back. “Are not,” she said.
“Indeed they are. The artist was fantastic. He literally fused the metal to my skin, and I have to get it retouched every five years.”
The gold leaf made a pattern of fish scales across his lower spine.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, turning his head halfway.
“Not as beautiful as a gold flake.”
He considered it. “Maybe not. It was a very special process.”
“Must have been,” Tess said. She felt sure she would die alone.
AM:67
Good morning, John Mayer Concert Tee! You seem to have weathered the past few days rather poorly. Your cuffs are split, you’re stained at the neck. The graceful visage of The One Who Will Play the Smooth Guitar is sullied by dirt scrub and bent into a permanent, unnatural shape. You are rigor mortis in clothing form, John Mayer Concert Tee. You accept the elements, the wearer and all his flaws, and your reward is a cramped place in the crack of a window, keeping out the morning sun. You understand what it means to suffer, and what it means to bestow grace. You understand the ditch and the sewage and the long night.
68:PM
The yoga instructor declared they were pushing toxins out of the body. As the sweat dripped from her face, Chastity licked it to see if it tasted any more toxic than usual. It did not, so she considered the possibility of airborne toxins, or toxins without a discernable taste, toxins that could seep from the body unannounced, and land on the floor, invisible to the naked eye, waiting to be picked up by bare feet, like a splinter, and re-absorbed.
AM:69
Why does the rain make us feel so romantic and strange? Maybe it’s the fact that we are unnatural spectators of it, from inside our homes, and it is a reminder that we have the power to live our whole lives like this, if we choose. It’s not the smell of fertile ground kicked up by raindrops, or the slick leaves, or the way we must amplify our voices to be heard over this larger presence. It’s the power of the rooftop that makes us want to fuck under it.
70:PM
Not a hundred feet from camp, Reginald found two stumps next to each other, like twins. He liked the look of them and sat on one, propping his rifle up against the other. It was early yet and the bugles hadn’t sounded, though dew had already wet the tall grass enough to soak the cuffs of his jeans. He didn’t have regulation wool like most of the other reenactors. He spent some time rolling up the jeans until he could see a line of hair from over his crew socks.
He tapped his pack of cigarettes. The others rolled their smokes by hand and lit them with antique lighters. Reginald was there because his friends convinced him to come. They said he could maybe meet some of the women who came to reenact war nurses. Olivia must have told them to say that, which embarrassed him. Most of the war nurses were fat, anyway. The fact annoyed Reginald more, though he was also fat and smoked too much.
He lit his cigarette with a lime-green lighter and thought about how he would save the furniture store.
AM:71
Pressing on in the winter makes more sense. There’s snow, and when you press on through the snow, you can feel it and sense the difficulty. During the summer, it’s dry land for months. Maybe a little ocean water, but that’s hardly pressing on. Hell, that’s a vacation.
72:PM
Before the storm, Hazel had washed the sheets and stretched them across the mattress while they were still damp. Sam moved from side to side with some discomfort.
“I feel like we wet the bed,” he said.
“I feel like a brand new bitch,” Hazel said. Her eyes were still closed. He didn’t know what to make of it. At that moment, he didn’t even want to touch her. He felt a distinct fear that she might either disappear or stay the same.
AM:73
June kept the windows open the first few weeks, but got annoyed at sweeping up all of the dead houseflies, closed the windows, and switched on the air. She still kept the shutters open for a while, but started closing them at night because she couldn’t gauge the tree cover under the dining room window, and she kept feeling like the neighbors were standing in their backyard, watching.