Bound by Antonya Nelson Page A

a pool cue, underage at a bar, or falling into this very bed with her clothes on, even her shoes—those scruffy beloved moon boots, faux leather, peeling—the two of them head to head on a single pillow, rehashing their day and night. Misty’s terrible teeth and worse haircuts, the products of poverty, her caustic laugh, her savage muttering cleverness, an odor of cigarettes and sour clothing, of concrete, as if she were preparing for homelessness. Tough as nails, Misty; had Catherine ever seen her cry? She opened her eyes against a sensation of the drunken spins, of drowning. No, not quite that. It was the sensation, perhaps, of having let someone else drown, of having let go. Misty. She said, “We would have seen each other in grade school, but it wasn’t until junior high that we were friends. She was maybe one of those people who thought high school represented the apex of life.” But that wasn’t quite accurate, either, since that conjured star athletes and their fetching cheerleader counterparts, prom queen and quarterback, quickly pregnant and hastily married, sent into middling jobs and maternity, settled in the suburbs. Misty hadn’t been popular, nor had she wanted or done those stereotypical (yet disappointingly true) things. Still, it was the past that now mattered, the past in which a pledge had apparently been made, remembered, and honored by at least one party to it.
    Outside, the sirens had ceased, the helicopters had flown away. The silence had the quality of waiting, the trembling feel at the end of any sounded alarm. The air kind of vibrated. Catherine let loose her husband’s hand just before he could let loose hers.
    “I’m going to take a pill,” he said. “I have too many things to do tomorrow.” He rolled from the bed. “You want one?”
    “Yes,” she said. “Plus something else for the headache.”
    “Good idea.”
    After they took their capsules, sharing the water glass, kissing with cool damp lips, married couple committing to a mutual dulled slumber, Oliver decided to retire to his own room. Catherine curled away from him, her back to his departing back and the shutting door.
    By habit, she reached to grasp the metal rosebud on the far side of the headboard. This had always been her side; she’d seen the bed’s brass origins only because her worrying hand, over many years, had unearthed the shine by clasping in her palm the chilly ribbed rosebud. One hand on it, the other tracing the tiny six-pronged scar on her shoulder. Now she waited for the wave of narcotic and painkiller to wash over her. She did not want to lie awake revisiting any more of the past, where, beside her, Misty had lain. She wished Oliver had not left her here with that vacated space.
    She could go to him, she thought, she could crawl into his bed the way she had her parents’ bed as a child, seeking assurance of protection. She could also summon the dogs from their cave beneath her, merely whisper, “Boys,” and pat the comforter, where they would land like logs and rest their chins upon her legs.
    But instead she lay alone, in this bed where she and Misty had read pornography together, here where they’d suffered hangovers, where they’d laughed long into the night. Eventually they slept, but more often they were inexhaustibly conversant, buzzing and pleased, two teenage girls burning bright as neon in the dark.

CHAPTER 6
    T HE MAN IN JOANNE’S ATTIC came downstairs on the first day of the new year. Maybe it was his resolution. Two thousand and five: inaugurated the night before in Montpelier with gunshots and banging pans, just the way it was in Houston. Cattie had spent the evening wandering up the hill from Joanne’s house, watching at the top in a bundled crowd as a meager display of fireworks was set off. The bright bursts of color in the sky reflected on the snowy hills. Everyone clapped and hooted every time, waving fizzling sparklers in their hands; small towns reminded Cattie of her public