Malus Domestica Read Online Free PDF Page A

him.
    The Australian sheepdog licked his chops, regarding her with one icy blue eye.
    Miguel’s Pizzeria was dimly-lit and claustrophobic, with clumps of ropes and climbing gear hanging from the ceiling, and stacks of shoeboxes by the door. A half-dozen booths filled the room, all of them empty.
    Robin went to the counter, a glass case containing mementos and historical knick-knacks, but nobody was there. A tip jar and a charity jar stood by the register, and A4-printed photographs postered the wall behind the counter.
    The photos were of semi-famous people posing in their climbing accoutrements with the owners of the restaurant, and panoramic shots of the mountains around the valley. She thought she recognized Les Stroud of the TV show Survivorman in one picture, and maybe Aron Ralston in another, his prosthetic arm around Miguel’s shoulder.
    A man came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a bar towel. He was a dark, ruddy sienna and looked like he could handle himself in a fight—but he was wearing eyeshadow, a silk do-rag covered in purple paisley, and under his apron was an eggplant halter top embroidered with curlicues.
    Eyeing the camera in her hand, he tucked the towel into his back pocket and leaned invitingly on the counter. “You a bit early for lunch.” The nametag on his apron said JOEL.
    “That’s okay,” Robin told him. A glass-fronted mini-cooler stood on a counter behind Joel. She pointed at cans of Monster coffee inside. “I’ll have one of those. I’ll stick around and wait for lunch time, if that’s cool with you.”
    Joel regarded her with a tilted head, rolling a toothpick around and around his mouth. “You look supers-familiar. Where do I know you from?”
    His weary tone and his delicate mannerisms were somehow masculine, yet…at the same time stunningly effeminate. He smelled like citrus and coconuts, strong enough to even overpower the burnt-bread smell of pizza crust coming out of the kitchen.
    “I have a YouTube channel.” She indicated the camera as he took a coffee out of the cooler and put it on the counter. “Called ‘MalusDomestica’. Maybe you’ve seen it?”
    Joel rang up the coffee and gave her the total, then inhaled and said, wagging a finger, “No, no, I think…I think I mighta went to school with you. Where you go to school at? You go to high school in Blackfield?”
    “Yes, I did.” She swiped her debit card and put in her PIN. “Do you have wi-fi here?”
    “We sure do.”
    Joel printed out her receipt, operating the register in a bored, almost automatic way, not even looking at his hand as he tugged an inkpen out of his apron pocket, clicked the end, and gave it to her. “The password is on the receipt.”
    “Thanks.”
    Sliding into a booth, Robin took a Macbook out of her messenger bag and turned it on. She hooked up to the wi-fi with the password on the receipt (sardines) and went to YouTube, where she signed in and started uploading the week’s latest video to the MalusDomestica channel.
    While it processed, she perused the thumbnails of the videos already posted. Almost three hundred vlog videos, most of them no more than twenty minutes long, a few stretching into a half-hour. Her face peeked out from most of them, as if the webpage were a prison for memories, for tiny past-versions of herself, as if she continuously shed prior selves and kept them around as trophies. A packrat cicada, a collector-snake dragging around a suitcase full of old skins.
    She enjoyed browsing through the grid of tiny pictures, each one representing a day, a week, a month of her life—seeing all those chunks of time, those pieces of creative effort, fulfilled her, made her feel accomplished. Three million, seven hundred and twenty-two thousand, six hundred and fifty-nine subscribers. 3,722,659 viewers’ worth of video-monetization ad revenue and MalusDomestica T-shirt sales.
    Their patronage was what funded her travels, was what put food in her mouth, clothes on her