Into Thin Air Read Online Free PDF Page B

aspirin bottle. Tilting it toward her mouth, she spilled out two pills on her tongue. In the bathroom mirror, her skin looked translucent. She lifted up her hair. “Mood hair,” Jim called it, like those cheap rings that turned colors on your finger depending on your frame of mind. It was curlier some days than others, losing an inch with the curl. It seemed to get darker right before her period. He had loved it, had made her promise not to cut it, But the girl who had sat behind her in geometry had disagreed. “Don’t you ever comb your hair? We could send you a CARE package. A hairbrush or something. CARE. You need it.” Lee leaned over and ran the water in the sink, splashing it onto her face.
    It took her a while to get up the nerve to cut her hair, First she just snipped at the ends, a bit at a time. But that didn’t really make her hair look much different, and she wanted to feel unfindable. She hesitated for a minute, and then she grabbed her hair up into one heavy tail and simply sheared it off at her fist. Her face in the steamy bathroom mirror looked as pale as a piece of white paper. Her eyes were dull as slate, and her hair looked raggedly cut. She had no idea what to do with the hair; she couldn’t just leave it in the bathroom for the maid—a thing like a tail of hair would surely attract attention, She stuffed it into her purse, told herself she’d get rid of it someplace. She stared solemnly at her reflection again, thinking of Samson, his strength clipped short along with his hair; she remembered when she was a little girl, she had once become suddenly fascinated with voodoo. She wouldn’t clip her nails or cut her hair because she knew all someone had to do was get hold of a part of her and they could cast spells. “Transformation is inward,” her stepmother had once told her when Lee was walking out the door in a skirt so short she was sent home before she even made it through first period French, She touched her ragged hair shyly and went back to sleep.
    When she woke the first thing she saw was the TV. It didn’t matter that she didn’t once turn it on all that morning, that hours when the news was broadcast she tried to be sleeping or out. She swore she could hear the news anyway, she swore she could hear her name, coming through the papered wall from the people next door, mixed in with the game shows they had on, the comedies. Even on “I Love Lucy.” “Lucy, I dun’t want you or Lee coming to the club,” Ricky said, the words clipped and Cuban and so clear they were dazzling, She started, clicking on the set, finding the channel, but now Lucy and Ethel were dressed in a cow suit, lumbering into a makeshift mambo at Ricky’s club, while Ricky stared stupefied, and her name wasn’t being mentioned at all. Every time there were footsteps outside, she stiffened. When she left the room she imagined the cleaning lady pocketing clues, casually mentioning to someone that the woman in 4D had left so many long blond hairs all over everything that they ought to send her a cleaning bill.
    She began to feel better in the evening. She needed to eat something healthy, needed to get herself tough, And she needed to change hotels now. She walked right out past the bored hotel clerk, three blocks away to the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge. “Annie Peters,” she signed in, smiling at the clerk because she felt a little livelier, because Jim’s voice seemed to be fainter, somehow less alive. The woman at the desk was bored, wanting talk, a history she could pin down. “Where you from?” she said.
    â€œCalifornia,” said Lee. “Los Angeles.”
    The woman squinted. “You are not,” she said. “Why, you aren’t even as tan as I am, and I’m practically Casper the Ghost.” She pushed up the sleeve of the red blazer she wore, showing Lee her freckled arm.
    Lee reached for the key, again