They patted their pockets
absently, then pocketed the hundred and the ten.
"Well," Adam said.
They left, turning to give him the keys he'd had cut for them, a gesture
that left him feeling obscurely embarrassed and mean-spirited even
though -- he told himself -- he'd put them up and put up with them very
patiently indeed.
And then he left, and locked the door with his spare keys. Useless spare
keys. No one would ever come to stay with him again.
#
What I found in the cave,
(he said, lying in the grass on the hillside, breathing hard, the taste
of vomit sour in his mouth, his arms and legs sore from the pumping run
down the hillside)
What I found in the cave,
(he said, and she held his hand nervously, her fingers not sure of how
hard to squeeze, whether to caress)
What I found in the cave,
(he said, and was glad that she hadn't come with him, hadn't been there
for what he'd seen and heard)
What I found in the cave was the body of my first girlfriend. Her
skeleton, polished to a gleam and laid out carefully on the floor. Her
red hair in a long plait, brushed out and brittle, circled over her
small skull like a halo.
He'd laid her out before my mother, and placed her fingernails at the
exact tips of her fingerbones. The floor was dirty and littered with
rags and trash. It was dark and it stank of shit, there were piles of
shit here and there.
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