Rundown Read Online Free PDF

league.
    â€œThat’s overreacting,” I said.
    â€œI’ve been thinking about this,” he said. “From now on you’ll jog with a bodyguard.”

Chapter 6
    Mom gave me one of her follow-me looks.
    Dad nodded that he was through with me and gave me a smile, not one of his publicity-photo half smiles. In those, he’s careful not to wrinkle his eyes.
    As we left I looked back and he was sitting with his arms on his chair like someone about to be electrocuted, putting up a brave front.
    â€œDon’t let Dad buy a gun,” I said, following the rustle of her robe down the hall. Only half the paintings were hung on the walls, but all the full-length mirrors were in place, and I had a glimpse of myself, tanned and athletic, good-looking in an ordinary way, nothing like my mother.
    â€œA gun?” she asked, holding the door for me like a hostess.
    â€œAnd don’t let him hire some guys in dark glasses and jogging outfits.”
    My mother flashes in and out of contact with people. One moment she is caring, full of feeling. And the next she looks around at her surroundings as though she had just materialized from thin air.
    â€œWhat kind of gun?” she was saying, as though for a moment she saw my dad with a shiny automatic in his hand and liked the image.
    â€œRemember how he shot a staple into his hand?” I said. Two staples, with a staple gun. “And the time he cut a tendon in his finger with his Swiss Army knife?” Blood all over, stitches, tetanus shot.
    â€œI want you to tell me if there’s anything I should know,” my mother said. She had a cup already waiting for me, a family recipe, intended to make you feel better more from holding it than from sipping the stuff. My cup probably had about ninety percent less booze than Mom’s.
    We sat in a sort of assistant bedroom, a lieutenant to the main bedroom, which in any case was a showcase room and not where my parents actually slept. For now Mom had given up any resemblance to a fashion model, her eye makeup bruising out down her cheeks and across her temples, her hair claiming a life of its own.
    She got out of her chair, kicked it hard into a new position, and sat down like she wanted to be especially mean to the furniture. Sometimes Mom didn’t have to fire her secretaries—they quit, worn out by her sudden tempers. Her father had been killed in Laos, during the prequel to Vietnam, blown up by a land mine. I had always wondered if this had given my mother a desire to fight back, get her hands on an enemy. Her sudden moods often gave Dad a headache.
    I told her she knew everything.
    With my father you get the feeling that some of what you say might show up in his memory of the day’s events. With my mother you realize that she’ll remember what’s best for you, and for her.
    After a silence, she said, “I don’t care much for that detective. Margate.”
    Mom hated police. Parking tickets made her seethe. She had witnessed a violent crime when she was a high school student, and she believed police did more harm than good, asking dumb, brutal questions. She had gotten one speeding ticket in her life and she went to traffic court with a lawyer. She won the case.
    â€œI can tell by looking at you this has been a terrible event for you,” Mom said. “And I’m not letting that bitch-cop tell me what therapist you’re supposed to talk to.” Mom uses coarse language way more than Dad, but even so bitch sounded especially harsh.
    â€œI want to help the police, if I can.” I felt protective toward Detective Margate, doing a tough job, working nights.
    My mother looked at me as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She lifted her hand like it took a massive effort, so she could finish her drink. I began to wonder how much scotch she had chugged into her cup. “Detective Margate is lying,” she said.
    I felt a prickling sensation