A Room on Lorelei Street Read Online Free

now,” Opal says, squinting. “I can see it in your eyes. You have an old soul.” There is a long pause. Silence. Not even the panther clock seems to make a sound. Zoe turns around once more, taking a last look at the room, seeing details she missed before, like the braided rug at the end of the bed and a life-size stone bulldog tucked under the table by the front door. She hears her thick rubber-soled waitress shoes squeak on the floor as she turns and then remembers that this was how she imagined it. Polished wooden floors. That much she knew.
    â€œWill you be taking the room, Zoe?” Opal asks.
    Zoe pulls her car keys from her pocket. She looks everywhere but into Opal’s eyes. She aches for the room, but a weight, a whisper, pulls at her…. What about Mama…what about Mama? She reaches down and brushes the head of the stone bulldog. “I’ll have to think on it,” she says, and she leaves not caring that, for the first time ever, she will be late for work.

Five
    Zoe stops the car at the curb and turns off the ignition, but she doesn’t get out. It was a busy night at the diner and she is tired, more tired than she should be after a short shift. Instead of thinking on it as she promised Opal, she had tried to concentrate on other things, like orders of chicken-fried steak or peach cobbler, even school and Mrs. Garrett. All through her shift she battled to keep the room out of her head—the room she couldn’t possibly take—but instead the battle escalated into a raging war.
    â€œYou okay?” Murray asked her when a plate of fries and a patty melt crashed from her arm to the floor.
    â€œYes,” she said, but even as she helped clean up the mess, all she could see was a clock on a brass panther’s belly, ticking away seconds, months, and years.
    No peace is in sight, but she desperately needs some. She kicks off her shoes, rolls down the window of the Thunderbird and leans her seat back. She can’t go into the house. She still needs a few moments alone. Time.
    It’s a hot September night, but heat has never bothered Zoe. She hears Mr. Kalowatz’s sprinklers hissing next door, and from across the street a faint drone from the Fensters’ TV drifts through their screen door. It is so still, so calm, she thinks, and she drinks it in. Periodically a tree frog starts up a wave of chirping and then quiets again. And that she soaks in, too. All those things outside of herself that seem to have order. She lets them seep in.
    For a moment she forgets and is able to fall into the stillness. The gentle harmony of sounds cradles her, rocks her, and in the darkness, her tired faded house seems almost beautiful. She rubs her stocking feet together to push away the soreness and looks out the window into the glittered sky.
    The angels threw glitter up there just for you, Zoe, Daddy had told her. They celebrated almost as much as I did the day you were born. Every time you look up there you remember how special you are—so special the angels threw a big party.
    She rests her head on the ledge of the window and scans the billions of blinking stars sprinkled all the way down to the horizon. A party, she thinks. “I must have been pretty special, Daddy,” she whispers. The Hendersons’ dog two houses down begins barking, which starts a domino effect, and distant dogs throughout the neighborhood join in, until the sprinklers, the reruns of M*A*S*H, and even the shrill tree frog are a background rhythm. She smiles at how quickly calm can turn to chaos. Mr. Henderson comes out his door and yells for his dog to shut up, and soon the dog’s silence begins a reverse domino effect. The crescendo subsides, and the calm returns. It’s all connected in strange, mysterious ways, she guesses…the sprinklers, the M*A*S*H reruns, the tree frog, the dogs, even Mr. Henderson…all connected in ways they can’t ever know, ways only she can