Aftermirth Read Online Free Page B

by sleep apnea, which closed up his throat and suffocated him. His wife, who might have saved him, was sleeping on the sofa downstairs, having been driven there by his thunderous snores.
    As I read I could feel Elena’s solemn gaze on me. I met it reluctantly. I knew where this was headed.
    â€œHer name is Roberta,” Elena said. “She lives in Durham, North Carolina.”
    â€œAnd you want to go meet her.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd you want me to come with you.”
    She nodded. “Will you?”
    Her dark eyes entreated me. I looked away from them. “I don’t know, Elena. I’m trying to move on, you know?”
    â€œI am too,” she said, “but I’m stuck. I need to do this, Michael. And I can’t do it on my own.”
    â€œWhat about your cousin?”
    â€œEsteban thinks I’m loca. Maybe he’s right.” Her eyes were glistening suspiciously.
    Well what would you have done in my place, sat there and let her cry? Anyway, I owed her one—a fact I reminded myself of as I pulled onto her block of West 111th Street less than forty-eight hours later, grumpy and late. I’d had to get up at six, which has never been my finest hour, and in my befuddled, undercaffeinated state I’d forgotten Izzy’s food and had to double back and get it. He was riding shotgun with his head hanging out the window and his tongue flapping ecstatically in the wind, trailing a glistening rope of drool. As I drove up the block, looking for Elena’s building, it occurred to me to wonder whether she liked dogs. I hadn’t told her Izzy would be coming with us, and I decided right then that if she minded, the trip was off, because I wasn’t going without him. I’d been doubting the wisdom of this little expedition from the moment I’d agreed to it, and damned if I was going to spend eighteen-plus hours in a car with a person who didn’t have the sense to like—no, forget like—to love, to fawn slavishly all over my sweet, eminently lovable dog. I vowed that if she even so much as brushed his hair off the passenger seat, I was going to tell her to forget it. Anyone who was put off by a little dog hair on her clothes—or, for that matter, slobber or pee dribbles on the bedspread or stepping barefoot into the occasional pool of vomit on the rug—was not someone I wanted in my life, not for two days, not for two minutes. You see where I was going with this. By the time I reached Elena’s building I’d pretty much convinced myself she was a dog-hating bitch who could find her own way to Durham. If she hadn’t been standing on the curb waiting for me, I might have driven right past her building and back to Brooklyn.
    But there she was, looking lovely and a little anxious, and when she caught sight of Izzy she smiled, and when she saw that he was with me her smile got wider. I stopped the car, and she went to the window and let him whuffle her hand before bending down to say hello. “Nice to meet you too,” she said, when he licked her face. “And who would you be?”
    â€œThat’s Izzy,” I said.
    I popped the trunk and went to get her luggage, which consisted of a backpack that weighed next to nothing. The sight of our two small bags sitting in the cavernous space of the otherwise-empty trunk put a hollow ache in my gut. Jess would have brought a couple of anvil-filled suitcases, a computer bag, a cooler crammed with food and a purse the size of a beer tub and considered it traveling light. What the hell was I doing, going on a road trip with this backpack-toting woman I hardly knew?
    â€œLook, Elena—” I said, but before I could tell her I’d changed my mind, I saw her reach out with her thumb and wipe the gritters out of Izzy’s eyes, and then just as casually wipe her hand on her jeans.
    She turned and looked at me, brows raised. “Yes?”
    I sighed. “We should get