The Parallel Apartments Read Online Free PDF Page B

the waiting-room TV, oh, I bet you weren’t paying attention to TV at the time, hahaha, and I remember thinking the gum goo was the same green as your eyes, a green there’s no name for except maybe in a dictionary but I wouldn’t be able to find it, oh, they’re just as mysterious and beautiful now as they were then.”
    The witch leaned within five inches of Justine’s face and looked into one eye, then the other, then back again.
    â€œAnd my pain disappeared,” said the witch. “I told a nurse I was your mother and I asked if you were okay and she said you were going to be all right, and I was going to go inside to visit with you, but Officer Prado wouldn’t allow that, she was just coming out from behind the swinging emergency-room doors, her black uniform shiny from blood, I decided I didn’t need stitches for my little scratch, so I left, a man was already there with his dirty yellow bucket on wheels mopping up all the drops and smears of you on the floor, there were footprints in it, oh, I was sad all the way home to Progress House. Look, here’s my little scar.”
    The witch extended her right arm. It was bare, smooth, hairless, and sunburned to a color that reminded Justine of canyon walls. On her bicep near the crook was a white, raised and rippled scar in the shape of a fishhook. It even appeared to have a tiny snell.
    â€œ J ,” said the witch, smiling, her dentures stuck loosely to scurvied gums. “Isn’t that something. So can I see yours?”
    The nausea rose. Justine did remember. Not this witch, but the emergency room. She hadn’t meant to cut herself that badly, but they didn’t buy that, and as soon as she was stitched up they trundled her off to Austin State Hospital, where she stayed for months and months, till Christmas, 1987. Justine laughed.
    â€œHa ha, yes, isn’t that amazing,” said the witch, laughing along with her.
    â€œYou’re scaring me.”
    â€œBut then, one day, a few months later I remember, April 5, 1988, you left and I was alone. I know I deserved it. I left you once. Then you left me. It was my punishment. I hated myself so much. Then when they came out with the internet I found out you were in New York—”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know, I just asked a man at the library how to find you, and, like magic, there you were, a picture and everything, right on the screen, something about space, it said you lived here. So I left Austin to find you, baby Justine, to ask you back, to explain and apologize, to beg, but I couldn’t find you, the internet doesn’t tell you everything, so long outside in this moody steam-grate city. But then one day I heard you.”
    Justine looked over at Meenakshi, but she seemed not all interested in, or even aware of, the accostment in her shop.
    â€œAnd now,” said the witch, “we’re together again.”
    She leaned over and hugged Justine so quickly Justine didn’t have time to even blink: her bare cornea touched the dirty white canvas shoulder of the witch’s poncho.
    â€œOh dear,” the witch said, in a way that seemed systemically familiar. “I so want us to be one.”
    Justine slipped away, and backed slowly toward the restroom, blinking.
    â€œJustine, oh, forgive me. It wasn’t my fault. It was my husband. He took you and threw you back like small-fry. But I got away, and he’s still in Austin, we’ll never see him again.”
    Justine ran into the restroom and locked herself in a stall. She hung her apron on the unsure-looking hook on the door, lined the toilet seat with toilet paper, sat down delicately, and waited for the danger of this frightening woman and her distressing monologue to leave. Justine tried to pee, with no result—she had done all her peeing on the e.p.t. strip a couple hours ago. Presently, the witch’s shoes, grimy, cracked Air Jordans with zip-cord