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After a while, her breathing settles and slows. I can tell when she falls asleep—she gets heavier against me.
I’ve been holding back a sneeze for a while now, inhaling deeply and squeezing my eyes shut. As soon as I can, I ease out from beside her and slip down the stairs.
West’s grandma sits with a mug at the table, knitting. A wall-mounted TV flashes a muted newscast. A radio plays oldies, while a crackling noise pours out of what I think might be a police scanner.
Bright pink letters across the front of her long white sleep shirt say “San Francisco.”
Her arms are pale, the flesh loose and veined with red fireworks.
“She asleep?”
“Yeah.”
“Tough kid.”
I guess she is. She kind of has to be.
“You want some coffee?” Joan asks.
“Is it decaf, or …?”
“I don’t drink decaf.”
“No, I’m good. I was just going to duck into the bathroom for a second.”
The toilet seat is freezing. There’s a hole in the plaster above the head end of the tub, positioned so I imagine someone creating it with the back of their skull. Tapping until they dented the sheetrock, pounding until the plaster crumbled.
I sneeze three times on the toilet.
“You have a cold?” she asks when I come out.
“Allergies.”
“You need Sudafed or something?”
“Any kind of antihistamine would be great.”
She gets up carefully, the movements of a woman who’s no longer comfortable in her body. A minute later, she’s back with a bottle of generic allergy medicine and a glass of water.
“Thanks.” I take the pills, then sneeze again.
She pours herself more coffee and sits.
“You and West are close,” she says.
My head is full of snot. It’s too late for me to feel clever, too dark outside for bullshit. “We were.”
“He left Frankie with you.”
“He doesn’t want me here.”
She gives me a pitying look. “Doesn’t want to want you here, more like it.”
We’re quiet. The kitchen fills with the crackling murmuring gibberish of the scanner and the love-co
mplaint of some long-ago vocalist on the radio.
“He tell you how long it’s been since he let me get a look at his face?” Joan asks.
