Death Will Help You Leave Him Read Online Free PDF Page A

her hairline, working my way from left to right. I could always do anything with Laura. Sex didn’t embarrass her one bit. And if you’ve met anyone more uninhibited than a bipolar on an upswing and off her meds, you’re even farther from Kansas than I am.
    “So what’s he like?” I murmured, spitting out a curly strand. She twitched her head away, though her hips against my groin sent me a different message.
    “Oh, you know.”
    “No, I don’t,” I said.
    “You didn’t use to talk this much,” she said peevishly. “What is this, the Inquisition?”
    “Hardly.” I burrowed down toward the foot of the bed, keeping my hands on her and stroking as I went. “Would the Inquisition do this? Or this? Or this? Jeez, Laura, you went magenta all the way.”
    “Ow!” She jerked away.
    “What did I do?” I had only pressed the palms of my hands against her thighs. They’d always been soft and satiny in spite of her thinness, and I knew them well. “Did I hurt you? Let me look.” I flipped the quilt back.
    “No!” She tried to pull it back over her, but I was stronger. In the dusty afternoon light, I could see her creamy thighs were marred by some nasty-looking bruises. A couple were the blue-black of recent marks, but the rest, in various stages of discoloration, swirled green and yellow and lavender against the pale surrounding skin. I might have imagined it, but I thought I saw finger marks.
    “But is it art?” Okay, I get flippant when I’m stuck.
    She blew air out through her nostrils and made a soft sound in her throat. For a second, I thought I’d succeeded in amusing her. But she pulled her legs away and sat up. Arms around her knees, she drew herself up into a defensive ball. Even depressed, the Laura I knew did not go small. With horror, I saw a tear roll down her right cheek. But Laura never cried. Well, yeah, during a major depressive episode. This was not that. This was not good at all.
    “Dammit, Laura.” I sputtered, thinking of half a dozen things to say and rejecting them all.
    She gave me a lopsided grin with absolutely no attitude in it. This was pathetic. I felt like crying myself.
    “It’s okay,” she said.
    “No, it’s not!” I shot back. “Does he hurt you?” I might have been jumping to conclusions. I’d had some strenuous and even kinky sex with Laura myself. But this looked like abuse. It made me very angry.
    Her beautiful voice got wispy without going up the scale at all.
    “I can’t help it, Bruce. I’m in love with him. I know he’s not good for me, but I can’t leave.”

Chapter Three
    “I can’t believe you talked me into this,” I bellowed over the clamor of the train.
    Jimmy and I swayed as we hovered over Barbara in classic New York subway straphanger position.
    “Who, me?” Jimmy knew damn well I didn’t mean him. “I’m a stranger in a strange land myself.”
    “No way would I venture into the wilds of Brooklyn without you guys,” Barbara screamed. “I need Jimmy to cover my back when I brave Catholic rituals. And Jimmy needs you for moral support. Anyhow, we’re doing it for Luz.”
    Luz sat across the aisle of the subway car, wedged up against a guy in floppy gangsta pants. His body language suggested he had his Walkman ratcheted all the way up on a heavy mega bass beat. She saw us conferring and raised her eyebrows in inquiry. Barbara shook her head and patted the air with her hand:
Nothing, never mind, don’t worry.
    We were on our way to Frankie’s wake.
    Barbara beckoned me to bend over so she could get her lips close to my ear. It didn’t stop her from yelling, the way people do on their cell phones.
    “Bruce, have you ever been to a wake?”
    “Not a wake,” Jimmy corrected, “it’s a viewing.”
    “Same thing nowadays,” I said. “They don’t make funerals like they used to.” Except in the movies, I’d never been to the kind of wake the word evoked. This one would be held in a nice, sanitized funeral home, not the front