Alice Fantastic Read Online Free Page B

tried to read a sentence but it blurred.
    As I sipped my coffee, I watched Hammie bathing her- self. I pictured Indio’s beautiful body.
    I took my pajamas off and stood naked, staring into my closet.
    My bad leg, which had been shattered when I’d fallen in a manhole three years earlier, was aching.
    I didn’t have to wait long. A woman in a white coat brought me to a window. I looked through and saw Indio on a stretcher. Only his head was visible, the rest covered in a sheet. His face looked fine. There was some bruising on the right side but he just looked tired. Like he was napping after a nasty spill and would wake up, thrilled to find me there.
    I truly expected him to sit up, bang on the glass, and maybe ask me, in his singsongy voice, if I’d like to go have an adventure.
    â€œYes,” I said. “That’s him.”
    I wondered what the rest of him looked like. The parts covered by the sheet. I’d been told he’d broken his spine. But it didn’t show on his face.
    â€œGoodbye,” I said to him through the glass. The woman standing next to me, some sort of morgue worker, said nothing.
    I walked out into the cool spring morning. Traffic was bustling up First Avenue. The sky was a pale blue.
    I came home and sat heavily on the bed that took up most of the small living area. Hammie rubbed her gray head against my calves. I stared at my boots. They were sexy, knee-high boots. Indio had loved them.
    As I sat considering whether or not to go back to bed, the doorbell rang. I went to the window to look down and saw my mother standing on my stoop with a massive brown pit bull at her side.
    â€œMom,” I called down through the window. “What is it?”
    My mother lives a hundred miles north of New York City, in Woodstock, where she has a little wooden house and two acres on which she keeps rescued dogs that she tries to find homes for. Whenever she encounters a dog she doesn’t have room for, she turns up on my doorstep, unannounced, expecting me to foster the dog in question.
    â€œI have a present for you, sweetheart.” My mother was craning her neck and her still-youngish face looked exuberant, like a little kid who has just played a prank on her elders.
    â€œIndio is dead,” I said.
    â€œWhat?” My mother screwed her face up.
    â€œIndio fell off a bridge and died.”
    As my mother struggled with this information, one of my downstairs neighbors, Jeff, opened his window and looked up at me.
    â€œEloise, you’re not taking that monstrous dog into your apartment. It will kill you and eat your flesh.”
    â€œYes, Jeff, I know,” I said.
    Jeff likes to think about things like my being devoured by wild dogs. Maybe this is why I find him attractive.
    â€œJust come on up, Mom,” I said. I pulled my head back out of the window and hit the buzzer, opening the down- stairs door.
    â€œYou’re not serious about Indio,” my mother said as she came into my apartment, gently tugging on the massive brown dog’s leash. The pit bull seemed hesitant to cross my threshold. Looked timidly from my mother to me and, after much encouragement, finally came in.
    â€œYes. He’s dead. I had to identify his body,” I said without emotion.
    â€œOh Eloise.” My mother dropped the beast’s leash and threw her arms around me. I felt myself stiffen.
    My mother gave up on trying to get me to surrender to the hug and sat down on the bed. The pit bull looked around nervously, waiting for a cue from Mom, who patted the bed, indicating the dog should jump up there.
    â€œMom, I don’t even like dogs.”
    â€œEloise, tell me about Indio,” my mother said, willfully ignoring my statement. “How did this happen, when did you find out?”
    I gave her the facts.
    â€œI don’t like dogs, Mom,” I reiterated when I’d finished telling her about Indio. “I appreciate what you do to save them but