Heart of Palm Read Online Free PDF

blooming. All of Utina was covered in it, in fact. Two miles away, at his mother Arla’s house, the jasmine had been snaking up across the spindly porch railings all spring, pushing against the downstairs windows, looking for entry. He needed to cut it back before it rotted the siding even more than it already was, but every time he mentioned it Arla objected. “Leave it,” she’d say. “It’s beautiful.”
    “It’s a nuisance,” he’d reply, but she’d swish her hands at him and not let him cut it.
    “It belongs here,” she’d say.
    At Frank’s house, too, the jasmine grew in thick clumps all around the yard, and the cloying scent was making its way inside this morning, even though he’d kept the windows closed and the air-conditioning running since late April, when the Florida heat had descended like a guillotine and settled in to make itself comfortable until, Frank was sure, at least November. He could remember Thanksgivings spent swimming in the Intracoastal Waterway behind his mother’s house, Christmases spent sitting on Arla’s porch in shorts and a T-shirt. Now he nudged Gooch to move over, then pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, thanking whatever God there was, once again, for the advent of air-conditioning. Without it, Frank was pretty sure life wouldn’t be worth living. At least not life in Utina.
    The red numbers on the clock glowed. Frank closed his eyes. A few more minutes. He tried to get back to the bleachers. The truck cab. Raindrops like diamonds on the windshield. But now came a new thought, a tiny nagging pull. The fryer. At Uncle Henry’s Bar & Grill. Had he turned it off when he left the restaurant last night? He’d never in his life forgotten to turn off the fryer, and why this possibility had suddenly occurred to him he could not say. But he’d definitely slid his hand along the side of the machine and thrown the switch, and then, as an added precaution, pulled the power cord from the outlet on the way out the door. He always did. Didn’t he? Oh, Jesus. He lay still, considered the implications of this.
    The alarm finally buzzed. As his feet hit the wooden floor, the phone began to ring, and Frank was momentarily confused by the two competing noises. He swatted at the alarm to turn it off, then reached across the bureau and picked up the phone. “Hello?” he said.
    It was Arla. He tensed, half-expecting her to report that the restaurant was indeed burning down. Given the proximity of Arla’s house to Uncle Henry’s, just a short walk through the woods, if the whole damn place burst into flames she’d be the first to know. But she made no mention of fire.
    “It’s your sister,” she said. “She’s at it again, Frank. She’s on a tear.” Arla exhaled, out of breath, and Frank could picture his mother clomping through the old house with the cordless phone in one hand and her wooden cane in the other. A sound like furniture being dragged came through the phone.
    “Good morning to you, too, Mom,” he said.
    “Sofia!” Arla yelled, not bothering to move the mouthpiece away from her face so that the effect was something like a freight train hurtling through Frank’s head. “She’s after the Steinway, Frank,” she said. “You better come.”
    He looked back over his shoulder at Gooch, who was now sitting up on the bed, all rumpled white fur and brown eyes. “Isn’t it a little early for this?” he said. He yawned. Gooch scratched his left ear, then stood, shook, and bounded off the bed toward the kitchen.
    “Yes, it is,” Arla said. “And you can try explaining that to her when you get here.” More furniture dragging. A clanging piano chord. “Sofia!” she said. “You’ll break your fool back!”
    The last, distant images of the dream with Elizabeth began to dissipate. “It’s time,” she said. “We’ve waited long enough.” Frank’s chest contracted again. He rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath, wondering if there was not, indeed,