The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg Read Online Free PDF

that stuff on the floor? That used to be my gorgeous ceramic bowl. I really wish you’d been here, Charlie. I needed you.”
    “I was needed by you elsewhere,” I said. “Remember Hector?”
    “Hector?” she said. “What were you doing with Hector?”
    “What was I doing with Hector?” I said. “How should I know what I was doing with Hector! I was doing you a favor, that’s what I was doing with Hector!”
    “Charlie,” Cinder said. “What’s the matter? Are you mad at me?”
    “I’m not mad at you,” I said. “Just don’t call me that name, please. It’s a man’s name. My name is Charlotte.”
    “Come on,” Cinder said. “Let’s have it. Tell Cinder why you’ve got a hair across your ass.”
    “I do not have a hair across my ass,” I said. “whatever that means. I do not have a hair across my ass in any way. It’s just that I got Hector out of here so you could see John Paul and then you don’t even say, ‘Thank you, Charlotte. I really appreciate that.’”
    “Thank you, Charlotte. I really appreciate that,” Cinder said. “Charlie—Sorry. Charlotte. Listen. You’re my best friend. What point would there be in my saying, ‘Oh, thank you, Charlotte,’ every time you did anything for me? You do thousands of things for me.”
    “Well,” I said.
    “Just like I do thousands of things for you. I mean, you know that I do things for you because I care about you and because I want to, not because I feel like I have to or because I want you to owe me anything. So you don’t have to say, ‘Thank you, Cinder, for letting me come live with you when I had no place else to go…Thank you, Cinder, for dragging me around with you everywhere and introducing me to all your friends.’ I know you feel gratitude toward me, just like I feel gratitude toward you. But that’s not the point.”
    “Well, I know,” I said. What point? “But still.”
    “And anyhow,” she said, “I did ask you to get that guy out of the apartment, but I didn’t ask you to spend the rest of your life with him. What did you do, anyhow?”
    “We had dinner,” I said.
    “Dinner! How hilarious!”
    “I don’t see why,” I said. “People eat dinner every night. Besides, I had to do something with him. And then”—oh, so what, I thought—“we went dancing.”
    “Oh, unbelievable!” Cinder said. “I can just see it. One of those places full of little Latino girls in pressed jeans and heels, boys covered with jewelry…”
    “That’s—” I said. “That’s—” I tried to seize the sensation that rippled under my hand, of gold against Hector’s skin as he drank his Coke and laughed with the girl, but the sensation dried, leaving me with only the empty image.
    “One of those places where everyone does this super-structured dancing, one of those places with putrid airwave rock…” Cinder said.
    “One of those places where everyone’s bilingual,” I said. “Besides, you were going to go out with him yourself.”
    “Go out with him, yeah, but not, like, necessarily into public. I mean, God, Charlie—Charlotte—you were so nice to him!”
    “Actually,” I said, and a thought froze me where I stood, “he was nice to me.” I looked at Cinder in horror, seeing the distress on Hector’s face as I’d shut the door against him and the roomful of dancers. “He was nice to me, and I just left him there.”
    “Well,” Cinder said. “He’ll live.”
    “I might have hurt his feelings,” I said. “It was a mean thing to do.”
    “Well, it wasn’t really mean,” Cinder said. “Besides, you’re right. It was me he asked out, not you.”
    My brain started to revolve inside my skull, tumbling its inventory. “I’m going to call him and apologize,” I said, rummaging through my pocket for the piece of paper with his number on it.
    “God,” Cinder said, looking at me. “He gave you his number?”
    “To tell you the truth—” I said. And then I couldn’t say anything else for several