Lust, Loathing and a Little Lip Gloss Read Online Free PDF Page A

place it would come with strings attached. By not convincing Oscar to sell at market, Scott was giving up on at least $20,000 of commission. Men don’t make those kinds of sacrifices because they want to make amends for the past. Those kinds of sacrifices are only made when men think they will be repaid with power or sex.”
    “Well, obviously.” I spun around to face him. “That’s what makes my possible inability to buy this house all the more painful. How fabulous would it have been if I had been able to cheat Scott out of a huge commission and then turn around and reject him? Do you have any idea how much I wanted to inflict that kind of pain and suffering on that bastard? He used my distress over my father’s death as a way to worm his way into my life and then he screwed me over in every way you can think of. Do you know that he sold a diamond pendant my father gave me to a pawnshop just to keep some bookie from breaking his legs? And the bookie’s name was Vinny! Everybody knows you’re not supposed to borrow money from bookies named Vinny! He was not only a bastard, but he was a stupid bastard!”
    Anatoly opened his mouth to respond, but then abruptly closed it when the paramedics reappeared. They were carrying Oscar on the stretcher and his body was covered in a white sheet. With his face hidden, the corpse took on an anonymity that scared me. The body being carried down the stairs could have been anybody. In fact, my father’s body had looked just like that when they put a sheet over him and carried him out of my parents’ house twelve years ago.
    That isn’t my father, I reminded myself. I pulled up the image of Oscar’s countenance and held it in my mind as Anatoly and I watched the stretcher go out the door. This was the body of a stranger who had been foolish enough to rearrange all his heavy furniture despite his age and reportedly bad health. No wonder he had a stroke.
    My eyes moved to the couch. When I had first seen it all, I could think of was how unstylish it was. But I hadn’t thought about its mass.
    I walked over to the armrest and threw all my weight into trying to push it forward. It moved, but only a half of an inch.
    “What are you doing?” Anatoly asked.
    “I couldn’t move this,” I said slowly. “Not by myself.”
    “So don’t,” Anatoly wisely suggested.
    “I won’t, but Oscar did. He had to have had help.”
    “Excuse me.” Sergeant Pepper was standing in the doorway looking bored and irritated. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you both to leave the house.”
    “Why?” I asked.
    “Because it’s not yours,” he said. “If you stay you’ll be trespassing.”
    With that statement my potential loss hit me with renewed force. I had already fallen in love with this place. I wanted it, and I wasn’t good at walking away from things that I wanted.

3
One of the unfortunate side effects of my medication is that it hinders my ability to act crazy.
— The Lighter Side of Death
    “HE DIED OF A HEART ATTACK. WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?” DENA REACHED around the wood pole that held the yellow oversize umbrella above our outside table and handed me back the obituary that I had brought along for her to look at during our lunch date at MarketBar. She took a moment to peel off her fitted leather blazer before continuing. “You know you’re just obsessing over this to distract yourself from the fact that you might not get the house.”
    “Bite your tongue,” I muttered, even though I knew she was partially right. It’s not that Oscar’s death hadn’t actually affected me. It had. I had seen Oscar’s pale, dead face in my dreams on more than one occasion since I’d found him. The cameo, the smell, the photographs…it all came together to create a scene that was as harsh as it was ominous. But I had seen worse and I had learned how to tuck my fears away into the dark corners of my mind that I rarely explored. But the house…that house had dominated my thoughts