Hardly Working Read Online Free Page A

you’re going to kill us.”
    â€œI don’t turn into a pumpkin until midnight,” I said. “That gives us twenty-two minutes to get toxic and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me. How was the conference?”
    â€œShitty, Dinah.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œNo, literally. It was all about what we’re going to do or not going to do with the planet’s crap. Excrement. I feel like I need a bath. You know who the biggest culprits are?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œCattle. The methane emissions from all the cow flop onthis planet are going to blow us from here to kingdom come.”
    â€œImagine it, Dinah,” shouted Joey from the kitchen, “all the way home in the car, I get to listen to a lecture about cow farts.”
    â€œIt must have been a gas,” I said.
    â€œHar, har,” he bellowed. I could hear him crashing around in my kitchen cupboards. “Dinah. You’ve got no glasses. Where are all your Waterford crystal wineglasses?”
    â€œThey were Wal-Mart, not Waterford and they got broken,” I said.
    It was a little embarrassing.
    â€œAll of them? Should I guess? Accidentally on purpose?” asked Joey.
    â€œThomas said it was okay to break things as long as nobody got hurt. Mike bought them years ago and I finally got around to breaking every last one. It felt great.”
    â€œOkey-dokey. We’ll drink out of the Nutella jars. Who wants Minnie Mouse and who wants Donald Duck? I get Dumbo.”
    We poured the drinks and toasted my thirtieth.
    Cleo sauntered over to my west-facing side window and gazed out. “Ooo. Your neighbor’s awake. Very, very awake.”
    I panicked. “Close the curtains, Cleo. If you’re going to be a peeping Tom, try to be subtle about it.”
    She whipped the curtains back across the glass and continued to spy through the crack in the middle. “God, what’s that he’s got with him? A black cat? Ooo. Hey. He’s taking off his shirt. Look at that bod. Fantastic. So toned. That man is so buff. This is better than Survivor. Take off the rest of it, honey, we’re waiting.” Cleo’s hot breath steamed up the window glass.
    Joey raced over to the window and tried to elbow Cleo out of the way. “Shove over. Let me see.”
    â€œYou gu-uuys,” I protested.
    Cleo’s face was flushed. “I don’t see how you can stay away from this window, Dinah? Does he always leave his blinds open? He is one hot hunk of man.”
    â€œHow would I know? He just moved in. And I try not to spend all my time glued to the window spying on my neighbors.”
    It was a lie.
    The new neighbor had moved in that summer. From the side window in my living room, I could look straight down into my neighbor’s ground-floor living room. His was a nineties house with floor-to-ceiling sliding doors that filled the lower north and east side of the house. A tiny L-shaped patio had been created outside the sliding doors, and beyond that, a row of bamboo had been planted to shield the windows from the street. Except that from my second-story side window, I could see everything. It was like looking into a fishbowl, perfectly situated for anonymous viewing of his living room as long as I kept the lights turned off and the curtains closed. It was an exercise in futility though because my neighbor was gay.
    The neighbor’s partner would show up sporadically, sometimes for the weekend, sometimes for a couple of days during midweek, and there would be small moments, never anything overt, but a hand on a hand, an occasional woeful hug, long intense talks in the living room, wild uncontrolled laughter bubbling up, the both of them so easy with each other, so completely relaxed, that there was no doubting how well matched they were. They were perfect soul mates. I envied and admired them. From my window, their relationship appeared to have everything. Then the partner, who was small and dark in