Straightjacket Read Online Free PDF

sitting in a pool of oily liquid, the top of it obscured by a mound of limp, stringy onions and chunks of mushy gray, which he took for the mushrooms. The small round potatoes were greasy and wrinkled, like someone had stuck a straw in them and sucked out all the moisture. He took a sip of his water, which was already at room temperature and emitting a faint odor. All those fancy words on the menu, and this is what they bring. False advertising . He decided he better try to eat something and moved everything around on his plate with his fork, unable to commit to anything.
    Gertrude was sawing away at the meat with her blunt knife. Her progress was slow. Ethan stuffed his mouth full of salmon and only stopped briefly to chug part of his Coke. He noticed Caleb watching him.
    “If you play the game, you reap the rewards,” Ethan said smugly and toasted himself with the can.
    Anna was staring down at her plate with disgust, trying not to be sick.
    “Disgusting,” Caleb said as much to himself as to her.
    “Gross,” she said in response. She stabbed some noodles with her fork and wound them around the tines aimlessly.
    He smiled, happy that she had answered him. He heard a slurping sound and turned in its direction. Ethan was shoving soggy green beans into his mouth as fast as he could.
    “Oh, it’s not that bad,” Ethan said with a full mouth, having noticed the look of disgust on Caleb’s face. “I only ever ate canned vegetables at home. I can’t stand them fresh, you know, before all the vitamins are boiled out.”
    Gertrude let a frustrated sigh loose on her steak.
    “Would you like some help with that?” Caleb asked, wanting to help her but secretly hoping to impress Anna.
    “Yes, thank you.” She pushed the plate in Caleb’s direction and handed him her fork and knife. The attendant bolted toward them.
    “What are you doing over there?”
    “I’m helping Gertrude cut her steak, unless you want to do it?” Caleb said, inflamed by a sudden anger that he had thought he’d gotten under control. He started to hand Gertrude’s utensils over to him.
    “No, go ahead,” the attendant muttered, and stepped back into his station.
    “That’s what I thought,” Caleb said under his breath as he started to cut the meat into bite-size pieces.
    “Such a nice young man,” Gertrude whispered to Anna.
    Anna smiled reluctantly, quickly returning to her plate to stab at her chicken some more.
    Finished with his cutting, Caleb tried to eat again. Nobody spoke for several minutes. Someone at a nearby table was complaining about how Carlene had confiscated some cookies her mother had brought her.
    Caleb glanced over at the clock. It was exactly six o’clock. Dinner was over. The attendant took the knives away first and then swept each of the plates away. Caleb watched Anna’s as the attendant dragged it away.
    “Aren’t you going to eat anything?” Caleb asked her, ready to snatch her plate away from the attendant so she could finish, consequences be damned.
    “No,” she said, and shoved the chair out from under her as quickly as she could.
    With his sketchpad in one hand and a box of dull-tipped pastels in the other, he followed her out. He found her in the common room, having settled herself into an overstuffed chair. She was busy reading and either didn’t notice or didn’t care that he took a seat in a nearby wooden chair.
    Caleb got up to speed in minutes. His right hand would grab one color, drag it across the sheet of paper quickly, and then release it and pick up another. The pastels were flying. He zoned out the commotion around him—the droning voice of the news anchor on the television, the soft flip of the page as Anna turned it every minute or so, an old woman’s voice singing a hymn, the quiet moaning of a man across the room. None of it could anesthetize his mad tempo.
    “What are you drawing?” a voice asked meekly.
    He looked up at Anna’s unsure face, not believing that she would actually