Leftovers: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

her arched line went up a little too high creating a surprised look. She smeared some brownish eye shadow onto her lids and then tried her best with black eyeliner and mascara. Vivian quickly rouged her cheeks, applied a layer of red lipstick and then took a breath. She gazed into the mirror and what stared back at her looked like a startled circus raccoon.
    Suddenly she perked up and sniffed the air.
    “Oh no,” she slurred. “The roast!” She could smell it burning.
    She stumbled out of the bathroom in her towel and grabbed the staircase railing for support as she almost tripped running down it.
    Vivian spun around into the kitchen and discovered it was engulfed in smoke. She opened the oven door causing more to billow out into her face. Coughing, she turned off the Wedgewood, grabbed two potholders, dragged the roast out of the oven and threw it up onto the top of the stove.
    “Darn it!”
    Still wrapped in just a towel and barefoot she picked up the charred beyond recognition smoldering pan of meat and carried it to the back kitchen door and hip checked it open. She managed to slip through but the door slammed shut behind her.
    Vivian felt water, stopped and looked up to the sky. “So
now
it decides to rain?”
    The droplets made the roast sizzle and pop in the hot pan as she ran over to the trashcan. She kicked it knocking the lid off and dumped the roast in. Just faintly she could hear the phone ringing in the house as the light rain began to pour.
    “Shoot!”
    She ran to the back door and tried to open it but it had self-locked behind her. Vivian dropped the pan, tightened the towel around her body and then scurried down the drive to the front of the house.
    “Ow, ooh, eeh, ouch!” she cried as she stepped on pebbles and stones.
    She flew around the corner of the house, up the cracked cement walkway, which had now turned into a river of water and dirt and grabbed the front doorknob. She turned it and nothing happened. She grasped onto it harder, turned it again and butted her shoulder into the door and still, it didn’t budge.
    “Damn it!”
    The heavens opened up and the rain became torrential. To the right of the front door was a solid picture window, but to the left, the dining room window had two, pane over pane sliders. She stood on her tippy-toes and strained to open the first one but it was locked. She tried the second one and it too was locked. Just then a car drove by the house and when its headlights hit Vivian, she spun around as if she were in a police lineup and screamed.
    Desperate to get into the house, she ran back along the drive and noticed the kitchen window above the sink was ajar but too high for her to reach. She made her way over to the side of the garage and dragged back a huge wooden ladder. At this point her feet and legs were covered in mud as the kitchen phone continued to ring.
    Vivian lifted one end of the ladder and banged it up against the house next to the window. She wiped her soaked and stringy hair away from her face and climbed the rungs. She managed to push the small window open wider, grabbed onto the sill and shimmied her body in.
    Inside, she had to worm her way across the sink of dirty dishes, pots and pans but her towel was caught on the ladder. She fell to the floor stark naked with the phone still ringing.
    “Ahhh,” she squealed.
    Vivian got to her feet and grabbed a potholder to cover her crotch and then realized how ridiculous that was considering she was completely alone in the house. She threw it down as the phone rang once more. She ran to the kitchen extension and picked it up.
    “Hello?” she answered completely out of breath. “Hello!”
    All she heard was a dial tone. She dropped the receiver and slid down the kitchen wall next to the open oven. Exhausted, scraped and bruised, naked and drugged, and with her make-up running, Vivian looked like a second rate Hollywood starlet starring in a B-horror movie called
The