Love Minus Eighty Read Online Free PDF

space, there would be nowhere to go where Lorelei couldn’t follow. Better to go home. He ducked around Lorelei, stormed right through the solid-looking wall of frames, rudely shattering their illusion of solidity for a moment. If he’d been wearing a system, the fine for defiling their personhood would have ticked off immediately. As it was, he wasn’t sure if he could be identified and fined or not. He really didn’t care.
    “I can’t help feeling partly responsible for what happened.”
    Rob glanced back. Lorelei and her entourage were following three paces behind him.
    “I’m sorry. I can’t help what you feel.”
    “Will you please stop and talk to me for a minute?”
    Head down, Rob kept walking. “Didn’t we break up? I seem to recall we did.”
    “That doesn’t matter. None of this petty shit matters, after what happened.”
    “Amen to that.” Another hundred yards, and he’d hit the block he’d set up around the house eight days ago. Thank goodness for private property.
    “I’m sorry about what I did. I stopped airmailing your stuff as soon as I heard. I have it at home. Some of it.”
    “Toss it out. I don’t want it.”
    “Rob, please.”
    If she’d been there in person, she could have grabbed his shoulder and yanked him around to face her. But as things were, there was nothing she could do to stop him from climbing out of the canal and into his yard.
    Actually, if she had come in person—alone—he might have talked to her. Maybe she could have convinced him that throwing his stuff out the window had been some sort of temporary insanity. Rob still couldn’t believe she’d done it. Lorelei was not your typical person, but he’d never sensed cruelty in her before that night.
    Relief flooded him as he closed the back door.
    Rob’s father was in the kitchen, watching Lorelei out the window, his old handheld on the table. “I see you didn’t get far.”
    Rob’s mom was at the table, studiously chewing some invisible meal.
    “Made it to the Royers’ before she chased me back.” Rob eyed the three ancient barber chairs that stood in a row in the front room, in “the Business Room,” as Dad called it. They were empty at the moment, but a customer might push open the door and saddle up at any time of day, seven days a week,and Dad would power up the scissors. It was so simple, so beautifully simple. Dad carried on a pleasant conversation with his customer, and cut hair. He avoided politics and mean gossip, hiding behind a wall of polite “Uh-huh’s” if a customer brought up either, and went about his days in blissful simplicity. Before the accident, Rob had zero interest in carrying on the family business, but if there’d been anywhere near enough business, Rob would happily begin learning the trade today. Snip-snip, talk about last night’s boloball game.
    Dad was watching him stare longingly into the Business Room, probably with no clue why. He clapped Rob’s shoulder. “Come on, you could use a trim.”
    Before Rob could protest, Dad led him to the first chair—the one closest to his supplies, and to his Wall of Fame, plastered with hundreds of before-and-after photos of his regulars over the past thirty years.
    The familiar high-pitched
wheem
of the scissors, Dad’s fingers brushing his head, made Rob’s throat clench with emotion. Two years ago Rob had quietly begun getting his hair cut at a swanky shop in High Town, where you could see what your haircut would look like beforehand, rather than hope Dad got it even and didn’t shear off too much. Dad had never said a word about it, but now Rob could see what a betrayal it had been. He’d basically told his own father he was no good at what he did. What a thoughtless bastard he was.
    No more, though. No more selfishness.
    Not that he could afford haircuts in swanky salons in any case, now that he and Lorelei had broken up. The mirror allowed him to see through the doorway behind him, out the kitchen window into the