Love Minus Eighty Read Online Free PDF Page A

roamed the house to keep his father company, ten years after his mother’s death. Rob kept expecting his father to move on, to find Mom gone one day. It hadn’t happened yet.
    He decided to go back to bed. Maybe tomorrow.
    Dad, looking gaunt and raccoon-eyed, brought dinner. If Rob could have eaten anything—a roll, a forkful of baked beans—he would have, just to bring a shade of relief to Dad’s eyes. The last thing Rob wanted was for his dad to suffer along with him. Dad had enough to deal with; he didn’t need a second ghost roaming his house. But Rob couldn’t eat, and didn’t know how else to release Dad from sharing his misery. Maybe he should try harder to get out of the house during the day, to give Dad some relief from his presence, from the constant reminder that a woman was dead because of his son.
    Maybe it would have been better for everyone if Rob had been over the legal limit, and sent to prison. He winced, recalling the DA’s ferocity at the inquest, her outrage that he was going to get away with it. Should he have been allowed to walk, simply because he hadn’t been
quite
intoxicated? He hadn’t felt drunk at the time, but surely the drinks hadaffected him. He was still surprised he’d passed. Three vodka martinis seemed like a hell of a lot of alcohol, even if spread over a few hours.
    Seeing that Rob wasn’t going to eat, his dad sat on the edge of the bed. “So how are you feeling?”
    “I’ll be okay. I just need a few weeks.”
    Dad considered this and nodded, somewhat skeptically. “I’ve got to say, you don’t seem to be getting better.”
    Rob muttered something that was incoherent, even to him, then a long silence stretched, and Rob couldn’t seem to find the energy to break it.
    “Why don’t you go out, get some fresh air?” his dad said.
    Rob opened his mouth to say he wasn’t up to it, but his father cut him off.
    “Even if you don’t feel like it, you should go.” He used that calm yet piercing tone that insisted Rob hear him. “You may have to go through the motions for a while, you know?”
    Here was something he could do to ease his father’s suffering: Go Through the Motions. He grabbed his jacket from the closet.
    He went out the back door to avoid neighbors who might want to chat, his chin tucked against a chilly breeze. He crossed their small dirt-and-weeds backyard, vaulted a low concrete wall into the gray-water recycling canal that ran behind the houses, and headed toward the abandoned mall. He could lean up against the wall for a few hours, read the graffiti.
    Each step was an effort. All he wanted was to be back in bed, memorizing salutations in foreign languages.
    The Backmans’ dog barked as he passed behind their house. He eyed the cluster of ancient, cracked solar panels set along the edge of the canal behind the Royers’ house.
    The sun felt unnaturally bright, and when he glanced up, itstung his eyes. Better if he were in Low Town with its muted daylight, the buildings hugging the sidewalks. There was too much open space in the burbs.
    “Rob?”
    Rob flinched at the sound of Lorelei’s voice. He spun, foolishly expecting her to be standing there in the flesh. Instead her screen was there, large enough that her face was actual size. Several hundred smaller screens flitted behind her.
    “You’ve got to be kidding. Get the fuck away from me.” He turned his back. It burned his skin to have all those eyes looking at him, judging him, in all likelihood firing comments back and forth about how utterly consumed with guilt he looked.
    “Rob, I just came to say I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ve been trying to contact you. Haven’t you seen my messages?”
    Yeah, he’d been eagerly reading all of his friends’ and exes’ messages.
Sorry you killed someone. Feel better soon.
He turned to face her. “Thank you. I appreciate your concern, I really do. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone.” He looked toward the mall. It was semipublic