Beautiful Girls Read Online Free PDF Page B

But never mind him; what can she expect from a cyclops? Libby discovers deep in the recesses of her dresser drawer many wearable things—old tank tops and lacy bras with the tags still on. She’s running out of clothes again,but there’s still something for the morning.
    She stuffs her laundry into a backpack, all of it, including the bathing suits and the muumuu, and she takes it to the office, where she packs it up in one of Gautreaux’s Seagram’s boxes. She addresses the overnight packing slip to the hospital, calls the mailroom for a pickup, and ten minutes later a young man with a wire cart carries the box away.
    There is some problem with the elevators. Flashing lights, a bleating noise. Misbuttoning Bilox’s coat, Libby weakly considers the stairs, but then she spots the handsome kid who looks like Neil Lubin, who didn’t take her to the prom, as he rolls his empty wire cart down the hall. “Is there another way out?” she asks.
    “There’s always a way out,” he says slyly. “Freight elevator.”
    “Show me,” Libby says, hanging onto his sleeve. She’s bone-tired and wants a helping hand. Without thinking, she hoists herself onto Imelda’s desk and lowers herself into his wire cart. “I have a freaking headache,” she explains. He is as kind as he is good-looking. He finds her an aspirin and gives her a paper towel to blow her nose and deposits her outside the service entrance at 44th and Lexington, where a light rain mists their heads.
    The next day, the doctors make another attempt to wean her dad from the ventilator, but he struggles for breaths and his eyes dart wildly around the room. Libby stares anxiously at the monitor, which measures his vital signs, as if this will make his lungs work better. He starts mouthing words, and she stands there dumbly, trying to understand until finally she runs into the hall yelling, “He can’t do it! He can’t!”
    Now, exhausted, he sleeps. Libby sits beside him, patting his hand. She wears a cocktail dress, argyle knee socks and the large, shapeless sweatshirt with many zippered pockets. On her dad’s nightstand she notices a trick-or-treat bag decorated with goblins and witches. There’s a note attached that reads, “Libby, provisions for the long haul. How you doing?” Inside are a combination of sweets and health foods and multivitamins. Libby’s eyes tear up, and she is overwhelmed with love for the girlfriends and finds herself wishing they were her friends, wishing her dad could have another chance with one of them if he wanted it.
    A friendly nurse brings in the Seagram’s box and says, “Do you know what this is?” Before Libby can get out of the chair, the nurse tears off the cover of the box, and together they stare down at the dirty, faintly smelly laundry.
    “Mine,” Libby says.
    Libby grabs quarters from her purse and thenshifts through the trick-or-treat bag, stuffing one of her zippered pockets with a V-8 juice, another with homemade chocolate chip cookies and another with a bottle of multivitamins. The Seagram’s box is large and cumbersome, and she weaves unsteadily down the hall until she finds an abandoned wheelchair to place it on. Outside, she rolls the wheelchair across the street to the mini-mall and into the laundromat, past the long line of washers, all of which are in use. The attendant, an elderly man who jingles with coins, looks at her strangely and tells her to come back later. She leaves the Seagram’s box and wheels the chair back to the hospital.
    Later, when she returns, the air has changed. The darkening sky is a swirl of winter grays, like an old bruise. The same attendant pushes a mop and tells her he’s closing in five minutes. She sits on the folding table, as if her unmovable presence will make him soften. The cocktail dress rides up her thighs, exposing the bare skin above her argyle socks. She touches the stubbly hairs.
    The attendant sweeps lint into a pile and eyeballs her sitting on the folding