Real Life & Liars Read Online Free PDF Page B

to a wedding, then bought her a necklace? She spooked like a show horse.”
    “As I said”—Mira continues to twine and untwine that strand of hair—“we don’t all have your luck, dear.”
    Footsteps on the stairs interrupt them, just as Katya finishes with the vegetables. She turns to see her father, in brown-corduroy pants and a god-awful salmon pink polo shirt, hair like he lost a fight with a live wire. “Katya!” he cries theatrically, and runs down the rest of the stairs. He reaches the kitchen and sweeps her into a hug, barely giving her time to put down the knife to avoid impaling him.
    Katya tries to pull back no less than three times before her dad releases her, and even then he looks into her eyes with a penetrating gaze. He looks up at Mira, still holding one of Katya’s hands, and the two of them trade a look that makes Katya shiver, despite the heat from the stove.
    Charles walks back in, clicking shut his cell phone. “Damn work, I might have to go back into the office tomorrow.”
    Lucky me, thinks Katya, as she turns from her father and sweeps the vegetables into the bowl with the side of the knife. Lucky, lucky me.

CHAPTER 7
Ivan
    IVAN SITS IN HIS VW, LISTENING TO THE ENGINE TICK AND HISS, two blocks from his parents’ home, where his older sister has no doubt already arrived and taken over everything. Ivan turns his cell phone over in his hand. His gaze rests on a group of children playing jump rope in a yard. But he’s thinking about Barbara.
    He could call her. Maybe she’s had a change of heart.
    And what to tell the family? It was ill-advised, but he’d bragged ahead of time about her beauty. He shouldn’t say anything at all, let them think what they will. But what to say when they asked about his life?
    The job? He’ll say, “Great, terrific.” One of his students obviously forged his parents’ signature on his practice record sheet, and Ivan graded him a “zero” for that week, thereafter getting called on the carpet because his parents swore up and down that they’d signed it, and Jason had indeed practiced his sax the required thirty minutes a day. Sure, and his father just happens to have identical handwriting, right down to the flattened top of the cursive “J” with which Jason signs his own name. And with all this alleged practice, how is it possible not to show even one speck of improvement? If anything, he’s gotten worse as one of the busty flute girls has been flirting with him during her sixteen-measure rest, squelching what little musicality he ever had.
    Ivan smelled defeat on the wind and gave in.
    The songwriting? He could talk about the close personal relationship he has with several rock acts in town, if by “close” he means “running from me like a crazed stalker with a machete” and “personal” means “using my demos as coasters for their drinks.”
    He notices that the children have stopped jumping rope and are staring at him like rabbits before bolting into the underbrush. He starts the car, leaving the cell phone in the cup holder.
    Van knows he can’t dodge the Barbara question. Someone will mention it. Someone always does.
    The house peeks out from behind the big maple tree, redolent in all its showy Victorian embellishment. Van’s eyes go first to his dad’s office in the second-floor spire. He pictures Max at his computer, writing his latest novel, with a complicated mix of pride and envy that sits like a stone on his heart. Next, as always, he looks up at his own bedroom window: upper story, far right, above his mother’s den. Ivan feels like he’s never left that room, and that his apartment near the high school is merely a satellite of his boyhood home, not having the benefit of gravitational pull of his own family to anchor him somewhere else.
    Ivan pulls the VW next to Katya’s huge yuppiemobile and thinks of writing a song called “Gravitational Pull.”
    Seeing the house reminds him he hasn’t written the toast yet. How is