Primitive People Read Online Free PDF Page A

it.”
    George stared into the mirror and sat so still his eyeballs jiggled. He tried not to wince as Kenny assaulted the front of his hair. Finally Kenny stepped back and admired his work and, as an afterthought, fired up his electric clippers and shaved a tiny Batman symbol on the back of George’s head. When he finished he held up a hand mirror, and though it took George some time to get the hang of two mirrors, Simone could tell the moment he saw, because his whole face lit up.
    “Excellent,” George said.
    Kenny made Maisie’s hair spike up on top and hang down in corkscrew curls—a kind of jellyfish effect. He kissed the children and Simone, and walked them out to the car.
    “Speaking of the joint,” he said, leaning down into the car, “or should I say the nuthouse, come hang out if you get time off for good behavior. I could use the company. Anyhow, I’ll see you around. This is not the largest town when it comes to the young and the hip. It’s stronger on the dead and the undead. The overbred and the restless.”
    Kenny paused and looked around, miming paranoia. In Haiti you learned to be aware of who might be standing nearby—or you learned, as Simone had, to be mindful of what you said. Clearly Emile was right: one must take the same precautions here.
    The mini-mall was deserted; a light rain had begun to fall. “Speaking of the undead,” Kenny said, “have you met Rosemary’s so-called friend and my so-called girlfriend, Shelly?”
    “I don’t think so,” Simone said.
    “You don’t think so?” Kenny rolled his eyes. “If you don’t know, you haven’t met her. Shelly’s a force of nature. She’s the entry under ‘Ballbreaker’ in the Guinness Book of World Records. I just sit back and watch her work. I learn from her, I mean it. I have mothers come in and try to stiff me, bad checks, they left their wallets home, but if I were Shelly they would never suggest it. I would be making a profit instead of barely clearing enough to pay some high-school chick to dust those fucking monkeys on the ceiling. Which, let me add, were Shelly’s brilliant decorating suggestion.”
    Mortifyingly, Simone realized that she, too, had forgotten to pay Kenny. She groped in her purse for Rosemary’s sixty dollars, but Kenny put his hand on hers and curled her fingers over the bills.
    “Forget it,” he said. “I know that scene. Believe me. You’re going to need it. This is exactly what I mean. Look how I’m running my business. But I may be the last guy left in the valley with a nonbionic human heart. Anyway, I wouldn’t want you thinking that all Americans are like that—that we’re all like your sleazebag robber baron boss and his artsy batshit wife.”
    Simone gestured with her head to remind Kenny that the children were listening. First he did a stagy double take, then winked at Maisie and George.
    “They’d be the first to agree,” he said. “Tell her, guys. Am I right?”

A FEW NIGHTS LATER, Rosemary began cooking veal scaloppine with lemon. “Sauté technique from another life,” she said, shaking the pan over the flame. She told Simone her friend Shelly was coming for dinner and asked her to set three places. The children were with their father; he’d picked them up at school.
    “Shelly’s poisonously bitchy,” said Rosemary. “But I adore her. Very Southern, very Old South—you have to breed for an edge like that. Her grandfather was a famous Memphis gynecologist who bred prize camellias for a hobby. He would name new species after his favorite patients. When you got down off the table, out of the stirrups, he’d hand you a white flower, a prize specimen of, let’s say”—Rosemary held an imaginary flower out to Simone—“Miss Simone.” Rosemary laughed. “Very gothic and icky. Definitely one of a kind.”
    But Shelly wasn’t so different from lots of American women Simone had met: pretty, delicate blondes with dewy skin and slicked-back, straight-from-the-shower hair,