The Animal Hour by Andrew Klavan Page B

it?”
    â€œWell, yes.”
    â€œThen I feel great.”
    â€œWell, I ought to nag you. Drinking all the time. And Zachary with … all his things. And now this … this disappearing. I just don’t know.”
    Shaking his head, he turned from the window and faced her. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Propped his butt on the windowsill. He smiled down at the old woman with her old room around her. Fading into her faded delicacies , he thought. Becoming one with her chairs and their scrolls and cabrioles and palmettes. The lampstand statuary. The Persian rug. The silver candles on the carved mantelpiece of the fireplace. Bathed all of it in the sad autumn gold of the light through the elegant windows.
    â€œYou make me feel like a terrible old failure,” she said.
    â€œI’m warning you,” he told her. “I go through grandmothers like gravy.”
    â€œOh.” She waved him off feebly. “I’m sorry I ever took you two in.”
    â€œYeah, well … you’ve got that right.”
    â€œHmph.” She turned her head to one side and shot him a flirty moue. He snorted. The fleshy pouches around her eye sagged heavily. The skin of her cheek hung slack on the high bones. There was wild hair sprouting from her upper lip. The hair on her head was thin and yellow.
    She was old even then , he thought. Even sixteen/seventeen years ago. When his mother died, when he and Zach had gone to live with her. She must’ve been over seventy already. A quivery dowager, a doctor’s widow. He could remember her hands fluttering in the air before her face. These two grandsons she had suddenly acquired crashing and tumbling through the MacDougal Alley mews, and her voice trilling: “Oh boys! Oh! Boys! Boys!”
    â€œYou are sure he’s all right, Ollie, aren’t you?” she said suddenly.
    â€œPositive, kiddo.” He pushed off the window and went to her. “I saw him Friday. He was happy as a clam.”
    â€œAnd that’s happy.”
    â€œWhat, clams? It’s one laugh with them after another.”
    She reached a hand up to him for comfort. He pressed it between his two palms. Rubbed it to warm the cold, loose flesh. Bent to blow his hot breath over the brittle sticks of fingers.
    â€œStop worrying so much,” he whispered. “You know it’s not good for you.”
    â€œWell, I can’t help it,” said Nana sadly. “I’m a nervous person. I’ve always been a nervous person. What am I supposed to do? Not be a nervous person? That’s not very good advice.”
    â€œThere’s no talking to you, you wicked old witch.” He lay her hand gently back on the blanket. Hanging his own hands on his pockets again, he strolled farther into the room. “I’m telling you. He’s probably on assignment somewhere. Or maybe he’s off somewhere getting ready for the parade or something. He’s gonna be in that big parade tonight.”
    â€œWhat parade?”
    â€œTonight. The Halloween parade.”
    â€œOh. That.” She raised her eyebrows at the windows. “I thought that was only for … Well … You know.”
    â€œButt fuckers.”
    â€œYes. And those men who dress up as women.”
    â€œWell, it is mostly.” Perkins was behind her now, wandering toward the edge of the Persian rug. In his bulky sweater, with his long hair flopping around his eyes, with his hangover throbbing, he felt oversized and unkempt. All those appointments and furnishings, all petite and just-so around him. “But Zach’s magazine has a float this year or something. He’s gonna play King Death. He’s got a skull mask and everything.”
    â€œKing Death?”
    â€œHe was all excited about it when I saw him.” He circled past the low teakwood table. The framed portrait photos on it of himself and Zach. He glanced absently down the entrance to a long hallway.