A Map of Tulsa Read Online Free Page A

out there, I now was into it. Edith would show me. Unless Adrienne occupied a whole higher level, maybe. I had come back down onto the grass and was now testing the lock of a basement door—which opened onto a sturdy flight of steps. With the last part of the sandwich in my cheek, I retreated down these steps and wandered through the basement. I was alert to the creak of floorboards above me: the party went on up there, with me down here, walking on concrete.
    Every lightbulb had a little string, which I pulled, leaving them on behind me. It was endless, like an antique storehouse, with paths narrowly uncurled between banks of shrouded furniture. I found an English saddle, moldy but eloquently shaped, like a strenuous black tongue. I noted the boxes and boxes of wineglasses, and the velvet-lined strongboxes, organized with silver: From different grandparents, devolving here? I discovered a terribly realistic bear mask, made out of what felt like real fur, but with man-made underpinnings, cheeks and chin linedwith paisley handkerchief material. And the snout, looking back at me, was lambskin-soft, wrinkled like a glove, tipped with tortoiseshell nostrils.
    I put the mask to my face and began walking around like that. Now, this was right: two peepholes to look out from, and the rest furred, as Muppet-foolish as it was scary. I advanced toward a set of indoor stairs, to go up, determined to make a hit.
    But someone was coming. At the top, a door knocked open, and suddenly there were lots of voices tumbling down into the basement. I froze. I didn’t like getting caught down here. I didn’t want to take the mask off. “Hallarghhh,” I called, in a jesting, gargling voice.
    A troop of five or six people, including both Adrienne and Edith, clumped at the foot of the stairs. Adrienne cocked her head. “What’s that?” I decided to remove the mask. Adrienne remembered my name: “Jim.”
    She looked to Edith, since I was Edith’s charge. But Edith appeared doubtful. Adrienne was rippling with curiosity. “What’s that mask?”
    I turned it around and held it up to Adrienne’s face.
    She stood there, a slender bear. “You’re too tall for it,” I said.
    People wondered what was happening. Adrienne realized they were waiting. “We’re going to take some pills,” she told me. “Do you want to share one?”
    Chase was not among them, and neither was Cam. I had never taken drugs. “Sure,” I said.
    Although we were alone in the basement, we all shuffled into an empty side room for added privacy. Edith, whohad intuited so much, drew beside me, and would have counseled me on the drug we were taking. But I jerked away from her. They had the pills out on the table. “We’ll need a good knife,” said Edith, “in order to split Adrienne’s pill.” I was half ashamed to be obliging Adrienne to share, but didn’t want to beg off. “There’s a lot of silver down here,” I said, and rushed off to get something out of the chests I had discovered. What I happened on though was not a knife but a wicked pair of filigreed scissors, scoop-handled to be used by a fancy lady wearing lots of rings but then stubby in the blades—like a fat-lipped pelican.
    “The poultry shears will do it,” one boy said, randomly exultant when I brandished the scissors back in the room. People sort of applauded.
    But the pills were the powdery kind—like aspirin—and Edith said we should get something more like a box cutter or a straight razor. “Whatever,” Adrienne said. She held the pill we were going to share between her fingertips, clamped the scissors over it, and squeezed, holding the whole operation away from her body disdainfully. People inspected the results. Two good crumbs waited, though a significant fraction had been pulverized, and powder was exploded on the floor.
    “I’m sure that’s enough for me,” I put in.
    “You should snort it,” they said, in reference to the wasted powder. “Put it on your gums.”
    Adrienne