A Patchwork Planet Read Online Free PDF

she can’t decide that!” Martine said.
    “She claims I do Opal more harm than good.”
    “You just get ahold of your lawyer!”
    “Right.”
    I actually didn’t have a lawyer, but it seemed like too much work to explain that. Instead I slouched in my seat and watched the scenery slog by: bald brick houses, pale squares of grass, bushes strung with Christmas lights that were just now winking on.
    “Anyway,” I said, “her husband is a lawyer. No doubt they have some kind of fraternity or something, some secret circle she can mobilize against me. Oh, Lord. I don’t know why I ever hooked up with such a woman.”
    “Well? Why did you?” Martine asked.
    “I believe it was her hairline,” I said.
    Martine laughed.
    “Seriously,” I said. “She had this sterling-silver barrette pulling her hair straight back on top so you could see her forehead. Her clean, shiny forehead. It kind of hypnotized me, you might say.”
    Martine swerved around a liquor truck that was parking at someone’s curb.
    “I’ve got to start viewing the whole picture more,” I said. “I can’t go on falling for people’s foreheads.”
    “With me, it’s mouths,” Martine said.
    “Really.”
    I began chewing on a thumbnail, incidentally covering my own mouth with my fist.
    “First time I met Everett, all I saw was his mouth. That curvy upper lip of his. Did I ask if he had a steady job, or whether he was the type who’d want to get married?”
    I said, “Married?” and tucked both fists between my knees.
    “Did I ask why he was still living with his mom, who dotes on him and serves him breakfast in bed and makes his truck payments for him when he can’t come up with the money?”
    “Geez, Pasko,” I said. “I never figured on you getting married, exactly.”
    “Why not?” she asked.
    “Well, I don’t know….”
    “You think I’m not old enough? I’m twenty-six and a half!”
    “Well, sure, you’re old enough, I guess.”
    “Or you think I’m not frilly and girly enough? Not pretty enough? What?”
    “Huh? No! Honest! I think you’re very, um …” It didn’t help that just then she sent me this crosspatch, unalluring scowl, but I said, “Very … attractive! Honest!”
    “Everett says I remind him of a ten-year-old boy.”
    Everett had a point—one of the few times I’d agreed with him. I said, “Hogwash.”
    “When I told him I wanted lingerie for Christmas, he asked if they made black lace training bras.”
    I started to grin but stopped myself.
    “Maybe we should both come up with some New Year’s resolutions,” Martine said. “Promise ourselves we won’t go on acting like such saps.”
    “Well, maybe so,” I said.
    But I guess she could tell from my voice that I didn’t have the heart for it. You get close to being thirty, and these resolutions start to seem kind of hopeless.
    I wished Natalie hadn’t felt called upon to remind me of my birthday.
    Mrs. Alford lived in Mount Washington, in a white clapboard Colonial that was fairly good-sized but shabby, like most of our clients’ houses. (Anybody rich would have hired full-time help, not just Rent-a-Back. And anybody poverty-stricken couldn’t afford even us.) She was watching from behind her storm door, with a cardigan clutched around her shoulders. A woman shaped like a pigeon: tidy little head and a deep, low-set pouch of a bosom. When we started up the steps she opened the door and called, “Good evening, Barnaby! Evening, Martine! Isn’t it nice you could come on such short notice!”
    “Oh, for you, anytime, Mrs. A.,” I told her. I walked past her into the foyer and stood waiting for instructions. Her house smelled of steam heat and brothy foods and just, well, oldness. A Christmas tree wouldn’t fool her grandchildren for an instant. But she was so cheerful and determined, peering up at us half blind and smiling brightly, her hair smoothly combed, her lipstick neatly applied. “The tree is in the attic, in a white box with a