Gutshot Read Online Free PDF Page B

apartment was just as I had left it. The sheets, stretched over the mattress on the floor, blended into the white carpet and bare white walls to lend a clean, institutional feel to the whole. The kitchen area, demarcated from the other space only by a change in flooring and flanked by white laminate countertops, was functional and airless. Taken all together, the place was immaculate—one room, but room enough for me. I plugged the television in and opened the windows. It was comforting to remember that I could keep a complete inventory of my items in such a small space. My books were stacked high in all four corners, with more on the card table. I moistened a paper towel and wiped dust from the counters.
    She stood by the door, slouched under her two backpacks. Instead of carrying one on each arm, she wore one on her back and the second strapped to her chest, the overstuffed pack resting on her belly. They had a counterbalancing effect, holding her upright and steady under their equal weight.
    “Take a load off. Want some water?”
    “If you don’t have any beer,” she said awkwardly, as if she had read about people saying such things but had never tried it out until now. I had to remind myself that I hadn’t coerced her into following me, that she had gone willingly with me to the cab and into my home without so much as noting the street names.
    I took two glasses from the cabinet and rinsed them out before filling them from the tap. “Put your things anywhere.”
    Leaning, she let her arms fall forward. The pack slipped off her chest and hit the floor hard. She righted herself and deposited the second behind her in the same manner, almost going down with it. “It’s nice to stand,” she said.
    “Dusty in here,” I said, more to the dust than to her.
    “How long have you been away?” she asked, sniffing the glass of tap water I gave her. It was unclear to me if she was detecting odors in the water or the glass itself.
    “Sorry, no ice.”
    We drank our water in silence. There was something metallic about it, though I may have invented the flavor to understand what she was feeling. Empathy, I found, was a good and valuable skill and I tried to practice it at least once a day. While we drank, I glanced down to see if her name might be printed on her bag. She craned her neck to observe the junk mail piled by the door.
    “I’m only around here half the year,” I said, sweeping the mail from the counter and dumping it in the trash. “Otherwise I’m in Texas with my brother.”
    “Your brother’s in Texas.” She seemed very tired all of a sudden.
    “That’s right. The state and I take turns caring for him.”
    “What do you do?” she asked. “Out here, I mean.”
    “I read and go to movies, and take classes at the community center. Business typing, supply chain dynamics, things like that.”
    Her eyes were lidded to the point that it seemed possible she was asleep on her feet. “Cool,” she said. “Cool.”
    “Do you want to lie down?”
    “I don’t want to take up any space.” She had edged herself into a corner and crossed her arms before her as if to prove her point, the empty glass pressed against her upper arm. She looked at the bed, placed in the center of the room like a low altar.
    “Go on. I’ll leave you alone.”
    I rinsed out her glass in the sink. She was asleep before she got horizontal. I nudged her bags into a pile next to the door and went to clean up.
    The bathroom was as I left it, with its tinctures lined up in the cabinet. I chose two of the little bottles for later.
    The shower sputtered rusty. The human stink of the bus had gotten into my skin and hair, the inner folds of my nose and ears. I could sense it seeping into my bloodstream. I had become the bodily equivalent of a pair of wet jeans. It was fine that she was ruining my sheets. I considered the alternative: allowing that monster on the bus to take her away, to fingerbang her in the back of some Camaro he called