Thirst Read Online Free

break.”
    “Yeah, I heard of that.”
    “It has to be something with one of those big water mains. I saw on the news that they’re over seventy years old. There’s only so much patching up the county can do.”
    He stopped to listen to the air. There was no sound of the peepers in the trees. Just a thrum in his ears.
    “You have enough to drink in there?” he said.
    “Sure. I have a gallon of milk I just bought … I’ve got prune juice, not that anyone but me would drink it. I’ve got a little wine spritzer in case me and Mike Sr. feel like celebrating.”
    Eddie stared up at the sky.
    “Poor Mike Sr.,” she said. “He’s got bladder problems. Probably ready to piss himself by now. Oh, well. He’ll have to use a Big Gulp cup.”
    Eddie didn’t want to think of Laura peeing into a Big Gulp cup. Wherever she was stuck, it was closer to the city—farther south than he had been, running through that suburban no-man’s-land—and she could at least leave her car and get to a restaurant or grocery store or one of the gas stations.
    He tried to think of other things instead.
    In college, he’d taken an English seminar. Dammit, if he could only remember one thing, he’d remember that line from Dickens. It was about Wenman or something. Wemmick.
    That was the character’s name.
    The professor had been reading passages. He could still see him standing on the stage of the lecture hall. Eddie had been up high in the seats, alone.
    “Wemmick,” the professor had read, “had such a slit for a mouth that he didn’t so much eat his food as post it .” He’d pausedafter that and let the hall fill with shuffling. Fat and gray-bearded, the professor had been, with a pleased expression on his face. “The magic of literary description,” he’d said. “Close your eyes.” And Eddie had closed them. “Now. Picture Wemmick. Do you see him?” Eyes closed, Eddie had nodded. He had seen the man.
    “What color shirt is he wearing?” the professor trumpeted. “Does he have on pants? How thick is his hair?”
    Eddie hadn’t been able to answer. Each attribute he’d given—a red sweater, for instance, or a shining, bald head—was false; it was not Wemmick. In his mind, Wemmick’s shirt was both there and not there. Wemmick’s entire body—even his mouth, which could not have possibly looked like a post office slot—existed without dimension.
    When he pictured Laura stuck out there in traffic, the lanes had no depth, no beginning or end. The cars around her were both there and not there—a catastrophe and nothing.
    He went inside and lay down on the bed. His clock radio had a battery backup and was illuminated to 9:33. The numbers cast the room in dull blue. When he closed his eyes, he could see the boy in the woods so distinctly that he snapped them back open. It took Eddie a moment to recognize the room. The clock read 1:07.
    “Laura?” he called.
    He ran a palm over the sheet next to him and felt her absence there.
    In the kitchen, he saw through the window that there were no cars in his driveway and only Patty’s car next door. He tried the sink again, and again there was nothing. He sipped from the apple juice in the fridge and allowed his mind to continue buzzing.
    His neck was stiff, and he rubbed his thumb into it. Then he went outside into the warm night. She’d have come around from the east on the Beltway, up six miles on 295 from her office in the city. She’d have been on her way out around the same time he’d left his car.
    He walked back onto the street, the way he’d come through the neighborhood earlier. Someone had started a fire in a little pit and sparks popped in the air. As he got closer, he heard the murmur of voices. One of them laughed, and others joined in. They had a grill going. He could smell the meat. They were making burgers past one in the morning.
    He did not want to be called over. He did not want to be stopped and asked to have a beer with these people. He jogged up the