Sex and Death in the American Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

have done any time.” I was yelling by the end—like an insane person— frustrated, hoping for a reaction from Tristan, who only met me with silence and began pulling the tie off his neck.
    I kicked the door of the elevator. The metal made a hollow sound like it was imploding. “That's why you're so depressed all the time. You never tell people what you really think, and it hurts you.” As I stepped off the elevator I said, “And it hurts me to see it. At least Dad knew what I thought of him.”
    Tristan just stood there, watching me go, and even though we had rooms right next to each other, he didn't step out, only let the door close as a way to end the conversation.

Chapter 2
    A few months later, I drove over Deception Pass out to Whidbey Island to spend Christmas with the family. I arrived in the early afternoon and stashed my things in the guest room. I yelled down to Tristan. After ten minutes when he still hadn't come up, I stood in the living room wondering what I should do. Memories of barging in on him when he was sleeping off a hangover, or with a girl in his bed—or both—came back to me. I stared at the spot over the enormous rock fireplace, and above the mantle hung Tristan's shotgun. Displayed because it went with the motif and atmosphere of my mother's chic Western décor, not because Tristan left it there to torment me. It was small but proud; dark gunmetal, a wooden handle, shiny and dull in the right places.
    “Just go get him Vivi,” my mother said on her way to her office with a coffee cup and a muffin in her hand.
    I descended the stairs and knocked on the door. He had two rooms in the basement. One was a bedroom, the other he used for an office. I knocked on his office door. When there was no answer, I opened it. Along every wall were bookcases made from cinder block and plywood. They held hundreds of books, lined up neatly, and when he ran out of room, more books were shoved in the open space between the top of each row and the shelf above. On the floor were stacks of books, some with papers and Post-It Notes sticking out the sides. Notebooks lay open in odd areas, with his spiky scrawl in the margins and all the way to the top of the page. The empty office chair sat in the middle of the room. The room smelled of body funk and cigarettes. I crossed the room and opened the window. I had to bang on it a couple of times, grunting as I pushed it upward, hoping the glass wouldn't break and slice my wrists open.
    “Hey, Slug.” I heard his voice from the next room.
    I pushed the door open and found Tristan was still in bed, his bare shoulder visible under the checkered blue and gray bedspread. I leaned over the bed and opened the curtains. His room was just as much of a mess as the office, only the BO smell was much worse, like onions, cheese and sweat. Piles of clothes lay in each corner, and a TV was flickering with the sound off.
    I pushed a damp towel off a chair and sat across from him.
    He groaned and pulled the blankets over his head. I slapped at the lumps of his legs under the blankets and said, “Time to get up. We have to go do something, okay?”
    “Tomorrow,” he said from under the covers.
    “Not tomorrow, today. Now. I drove all the way out here to see you.”
    After a few minutes he flipped the covers back and I could see his chest hair, dank and greasy, sticking to his skin in oily strings.
    “You need a shower,” I said, and grabbed his hand and pulled.
    “Hey, do you mind?”
    “I'll wait five minutes.”
    I got up and went into his office. A few minutes later the clanging pipes above my head confirmed that he had started the water, and I could hear the faint sound of spray hitting the tiles in the bathroom.
    I looked around his office and began studying the books he had on his desk: Pale Fire , Picked Up Pieces , U and I , and a biography of Marcel Proust. Scattered over the desktop was a mess of loose notebook paper. A framed picture of Jasper Caldwell hung off to one