Vida Read Online Free

instead I try to sound adult and unaffected. “Actually, I’m looking to make a career change.”
    I can’t help focusing on her clothes. Tight low jeans. A ratty blue tank with BABYGIRL painted in shiny stones across her cupcake-size boobies.
    She wants to know about my love life.
    “Do you have a boyfriend, Sabrina?”
    I tell her it’s Sabina, not Sabrina, and I’m single, which sounds corny, like I’m on a dating show, and I wonder why Sierra is talking like she’s my social worker.
    “Were you a virgin when you were thirteen?”
    I’m trying not to embarrass us both, so I answer her as if I get asked that question at least once a day.
    “I was. Yes.”
    “I’m not. I’ve had sex with four guys already.”
    She goes on about how the guys were older, like eighteen. I’ve got one eye on the tots on the rug, wondering if they’ll register any part of this conversation.
    Another dumb question: I ask if she was in love with any of the guys, as if love is the reason everyone does the things they do.
    “No. I kind of love this guy who lives on the third floor, but he’s married. Besides, I think he likes my mom, because he hangs around here a lot when Lou is in the studio. Or at your house.”
    Nico thought it was strange that Lou would come over for lessons after midnight and that the one-hour lesson would extend to two or three. I explained that Lou had a packed recording schedule and his only available slots were late atnight, which suited me fine since I was a recent insomniac. Nico didn’t like that I was learning to play. I’d asked him to teach me himself a hundred times, but he always refused, so I had no choice but to find myself a teacher, and it happened that the guy who cuts my hair knew of Luscious Lou because his own wife took lessons from him.
    “You just don’t want me to learn,” I said.
    Nico shook his head. “You’re the one they say is unteachable.”
    This was a personal jab—Nico’s area of expertise— because I’d confided in him that as a kid, I had shit skills for music. The same teacher who deemed my brother a musical prodigy said I was hopeless, which I thought meant homeless, and then my mother had to explain the difference to me. In elementary school, I couldn’t string together three notes on the recorder. In sixth grade, I was told to quit the clarinet, and when I tried out for the school choir, I was told to leave it to the girls with smooth, far-reaching voices.
    By the time I linked up with Lou, Nico and I were already headed for trouble. But there were nights when I was in bed with Nico and I’d get up to answer the door and strum chords with Lou for hours while my man slept. I’d written lyrics for Nico to set to music, but he wouldn’t even look at them, so I gave them to Lou. One night, I had wet lashes, not unusual, because Nico kept me in a state of panic. Loulooked at my sheets of paper and said, “Lets turn those wet eyes into music,” and we spent the whole night drawing melodies over chords until it sounded like a real song.
    It always seemed like Lou didn’t want to go home and I never asked why, because people have their own reasons and God knows that for most of my life, home is the last place I wanted to be. Yet our lessons always felt like stolen time. When Lou left, I’d get back into bed with Nico. He’d feel me slip under the covers, reach for me, bend his head into my chest, curl into my torso for the length of the night. But in the morning his eyes would shift to derision and he’d say, “This is all wrong. We are all wrong.” And one day, he was gone.
    After dinner, Lou reads the boys a story and stays with them until they fall asleep in their little twin beds with Snoopy sheets and padded side rails. I used to have rails like that as a kid, but I still fell out of bed all the time, landing on the rug with a thud, and sometimes I waited a long time to see if either of my parents would come running to make sure I was okay but they