OCR Text |
Show Motherlunge a novel 173 "Great," Pavia managed to say. I squeezed the phone between my shoulder and bent head, then turned my computer keyboard over and shook out the food crumbs with punishing vigor. My heart was thudding uncomfortably, but I told myself that there was nothing I could do right now except wait for her to stop crying, which she gradually did. "I've got to get back to work," she finally said. "Talk later, I guess." "We'll talk later," I replied. "And hey, good for Xavier," I added before she sniffled goodbye. "The Cheerios thing, I mean." I hung up the phone, and the little red light on the phone console went off. I saved the document I'd been working on-Developmental Immunotoxicity-and shoved my chair back from my desk. It was two in the afternoon, and I could tell I wasn't going to be able to find the right thing to say later to Pavia. What was wrong with me, then? Why did I always feel like something tipped over, poured out? I was like the cardboard canister held by the unsuspecting Morton Salt girl; my contents stung the ground in a granular line behind me. I stood up and looked over the maze of cubicle walls. Keyboards clattered. A phone rang and someone answered it. I had no idea where to go, but I pulled my backpack off the hook and left my office. Manifesting little imagination but predictable anxiety, I went over to Eli's house. Cassandra let me in. She was on the phone, working. While keeping up a low, monkish |