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Show Motherlunge a novel 184. sneakers-had his Walkman headphones hanging around his neck, tinny alt-rock music flowing out soothingly as if on a balmy wind. I could see my way across the subway car to my own reflection in the window as we lurched along in the dark. The gritty glamour of one's image in a big city window has always worked for me, I'm embarrassed to say. ^ Anonymous and advertorialized-I can tell you now that it's the treatment of self I like best, the only one that moves me. Pavia was sitting on the front stoop when I got home; she must have left work early, too. She held X. on her knees, facing out, and he was responding to the early evening stimuli-sun in the trees, smells in the air, car sounds of the after-work commute on a moderately busy street-with a looped series of gags and sighs. General was sitting beside them, head up and sniffing regally. I slid my backpack off and lowered myself down on the steps beside Pavia. "How , are you doing?" "Better and worse." She kissed the back of X.'s head on the slot-shaped patch of scalp, the place where the hair gets rubbed off. "Worse because I can start to imagine how it feels, to be really on your own." She kissed X.'s head again on the same spot. "Better because it's always just me, anyway. You know what I mean?" She turned her head and looked at me squarely. "You do," she said finally, diagnostically. "You're alone anyway, in the end. I mean, everybody is." She looked away, and jounced X. up and down on her knees. From the side, Pavia and X. had the same eyelashes, the same cheeks and lips; they were two sides of the same |