left.
That’s so great, Mona said and looked away.
It was a little freaky, Hannah said. I was running back to my hotel room at three in the morning with absolutely no one around. From the reception to my hotel, it was like I was theonly person in Venice. Just the clack of my high heels. And corner after corner of old rock and cement and brick. Nothing alive, not a blade of grass, and the little tickle of water, the little lap of water, and all the shutters shut fast, and a thin strip of sky with stars overhead. I was laughing because I was wearing this silver fox-fur stole and to a half-British wedding. I mean, I wasn’t even
trying
to be provocative.
Hannah heard Norm laugh in another part of the house. Florence ran into the living room as if running across the deck of a listing ship and collapsed onto Mona’s lap. She crossed her legs and cupped a hand to Mona’s ear and started whispering.
Excuse me, Hannah said and swayed out of the room. She started up the stairs. It felt like climbing an escalator that was slowly coming down. When she came out of the bathroom she couldn’t remember if she had flushed. God, she was drunk. Norm was there. Where have you been?
In the kitchen, he said, with Bernice.
Hannah looked at her feet. Can we
please
leave now?
I never get to see these people, Norm said. They’re my friends. I just want to enjoy myself.
So maybe you’d prefer it if
I
left.
If you have to leave, that’s fine by me.
She wasn’t expecting this. Norm reached into his pocket and pulled out the key to the house they were staying in. He handed it to her and went downstairs. He said something in the living room, which was greeted with laughter and cheering. Hannah walked into the master bedroom. She sat down on the queen-sized bed for a few minutes. Somebody outside rumbled past the house on a skateboard. An image of the boy her parents had adopted, laughing and falling backwards off a flipped-up skateboard, arms windmilling over his head, flaredin her mind, then faded. Zeus was eight years old when he came to live with her parents. Hannah was living at home as well. She hadn’t for years, but she’d just finished her BA and gone home for a few months to save some money. It was weird to see her parents looking after an eight-year-old. He was almost too unbearably cute, although what happened in the end was all wrong. Hannah always felt bad that, at the time, she’d never tried to do anything about it. He left when he was fifteen, without saying goodbye, and no one really knew where he was for a while. They thought he might have gone back to New Mexico, to look for his family, but then he called one day from Chicago. And that’s where he was living now, with his boyfriend, some older guy apparently, and working as a clown with kids in a hospital there, which she thought was pretty remarkable. Suddenly, she wanted to talk to Norm. She went back downstairs to the living room.
Mona’s husband was saying, It’s what Gertrude Stein told Hemingway
not
to be. Like Modigliani’s nudes. They were
inaccrochables
.
Modigliani was born in Venice, Hannah said, standing in the doorway. Where had she recently learned this?
We were
all
born in Venice, Roger said.
No, no, listen. His family was Jewish and they went bankrupt, she said. But there was this law, if the mother was about to give birth, the family was allowed to keep whatever they could pile onto the birthing bed. So Modigliani was born on a four-poster bed piled high with candelabras and clocks and silver spoons.
There was a dreamy silence. It’s true, she said, then Mona’s husband laughed briefly at something totally unrelated. It sounded like a cough. Mona swung around to scold him and spilled red wine on the carpet and ran to the kitchen to get acloth. Hannah sat down on the floor again and felt the wild horses of her own drunkenness move in dizzying circles.
How long was it before they were struggling to push their arms into the sleeves of their
That’s so great, Mona said and looked away.
It was a little freaky, Hannah said. I was running back to my hotel room at three in the morning with absolutely no one around. From the reception to my hotel, it was like I was theonly person in Venice. Just the clack of my high heels. And corner after corner of old rock and cement and brick. Nothing alive, not a blade of grass, and the little tickle of water, the little lap of water, and all the shutters shut fast, and a thin strip of sky with stars overhead. I was laughing because I was wearing this silver fox-fur stole and to a half-British wedding. I mean, I wasn’t even
trying
to be provocative.
Hannah heard Norm laugh in another part of the house. Florence ran into the living room as if running across the deck of a listing ship and collapsed onto Mona’s lap. She crossed her legs and cupped a hand to Mona’s ear and started whispering.
Excuse me, Hannah said and swayed out of the room. She started up the stairs. It felt like climbing an escalator that was slowly coming down. When she came out of the bathroom she couldn’t remember if she had flushed. God, she was drunk. Norm was there. Where have you been?
In the kitchen, he said, with Bernice.
Hannah looked at her feet. Can we
please
leave now?
I never get to see these people, Norm said. They’re my friends. I just want to enjoy myself.
So maybe you’d prefer it if
I
left.
If you have to leave, that’s fine by me.
She wasn’t expecting this. Norm reached into his pocket and pulled out the key to the house they were staying in. He handed it to her and went downstairs. He said something in the living room, which was greeted with laughter and cheering. Hannah walked into the master bedroom. She sat down on the queen-sized bed for a few minutes. Somebody outside rumbled past the house on a skateboard. An image of the boy her parents had adopted, laughing and falling backwards off a flipped-up skateboard, arms windmilling over his head, flaredin her mind, then faded. Zeus was eight years old when he came to live with her parents. Hannah was living at home as well. She hadn’t for years, but she’d just finished her BA and gone home for a few months to save some money. It was weird to see her parents looking after an eight-year-old. He was almost too unbearably cute, although what happened in the end was all wrong. Hannah always felt bad that, at the time, she’d never tried to do anything about it. He left when he was fifteen, without saying goodbye, and no one really knew where he was for a while. They thought he might have gone back to New Mexico, to look for his family, but then he called one day from Chicago. And that’s where he was living now, with his boyfriend, some older guy apparently, and working as a clown with kids in a hospital there, which she thought was pretty remarkable. Suddenly, she wanted to talk to Norm. She went back downstairs to the living room.
Mona’s husband was saying, It’s what Gertrude Stein told Hemingway
not
to be. Like Modigliani’s nudes. They were
inaccrochables
.
Modigliani was born in Venice, Hannah said, standing in the doorway. Where had she recently learned this?
We were
all
born in Venice, Roger said.
No, no, listen. His family was Jewish and they went bankrupt, she said. But there was this law, if the mother was about to give birth, the family was allowed to keep whatever they could pile onto the birthing bed. So Modigliani was born on a four-poster bed piled high with candelabras and clocks and silver spoons.
There was a dreamy silence. It’s true, she said, then Mona’s husband laughed briefly at something totally unrelated. It sounded like a cough. Mona swung around to scold him and spilled red wine on the carpet and ran to the kitchen to get acloth. Hannah sat down on the floor again and felt the wild horses of her own drunkenness move in dizzying circles.
How long was it before they were struggling to push their arms into the sleeves of their
Similar Books
