The Best People in the World by Justin Tussing Page B

shot?”
    He rolled the cuffs of his pants up, revealing shins crossed with black scabs and red welts.
    â€œOuch,” said Alice.
    â€œI woke up in the middle of the night to see that water coming up. The stove shorted out. POP! Blue sparks. I didn’t know if the TV had gone yet. So I waited while the water came up. I didn’t want to step in at the same moment the TV went. ZAP! Killed by television. It was coming up five inches an hour. I waited till I couldn’t wait any longer and I floated out of there.”
    â€œYou floated out of your house?”
    â€œLike a water bug. I had a duffel bag under each arm.”
    â€œI hope your house is okay.”
    Shiloh made a chopping motion with his hand, a gesture that divorced himself from the house. Maybe there had never been a house, he seemed to indicate.
    â€œI was fortunate to have had an awful childhood,” said Shiloh. “Short of everything else, it’s probably the best way to teach a person optimism.” He rapped on the bench with a knuckle.
    â€œWhat made it awful?” asked Alice.
    â€œMy hateful father, of course!”
    â€œAh,” said Alice. A perfect puckered sound.
    â€œA scoundrel. A family man. A millionaire. A poet. That’s my father. You won’t hear me say his name. All I have to do is open my mouth and there’d be a Cadillac full of lawyers waiting to drag me off to court.”
    The name Shiloh Tanager meant nothing to Alice. She had never seen his damp little home or one of his paranoia boxes. It also seemed to Alice that she’d never spoken to a person less interested in her. For some reason she found this reassuring.
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    Alice showed me the growing evidence that she’d picked the perfect roommate. Here was the door that no longer squeaked, the window that slid in its sash. Gone was the wiggly chair, the sink’s drip. All of a sudden the light came on when she opened the refrigerator and the milk didn’t freeze when it got pushed against the back wall. Dishes left in the sink miraculously put themselves away. But for the toolbox and stack of clothes beside the sofa, he was like the cobbler’s elves.
    She kept waiting to thank him, but their paths never seemed to cross. She couldn’t just leave a note. A note suggested that she didn’t want to see him. And while she didn’t necessarily want to see him, she didn’t need it to be so established. Her invitation had been an invitation to compromise, but where was the compromise? She was supposed to be doing him a favor, not the other way around. This wasn’t what she’d expected.
    One night she decided to wait up for him. That would allow them to put things in perspective. It would establish some boundaries. He couldn’t just come and go as he pleased, like some wild animal. She would express her gratitude and then they would straighten this stuff out. Midnight came and went. At three in the morning, he still hadn’t returned. How had this happened? Just when she’d gotten over worrying about herself, she had to worry for everyone else. Maybe teaching wasn’t the best fit for her. She worried for all of her students. Parents’ night had been a disaster as she found herself worrying about thesesad, hopeful parents. And grading. Grading was really the worst of it. If she gave the students the grade they had earned, it just confirmed their deepest fears, but if she didn’t, if she gave them the grade that they hoped for, well, it wasn’t realistic. And eventually all of these grades were compiled and then the report cards had to go out and those poor parents and their poor student children. She’d tried to express this to her sister when they got together over her Christmas break, but her sister wouldn’t hear any of it. “Fuck your brains out,” had been her advice. Her younger sister. Which was absolutely no surprise at all. The dentist had a brother in