This Cake is for the Party Read Online Free Page B

pushing the fabric out like soft rosy fists.
    I say, gently, “What are you going to do with him today?”
    Finally she looks at me. “I’m going to take him to the park,” she says. “Maybe to the zoo.”
    â€œYeah. Why not go for a walk?”
    â€œWhat is that supposed to mean?”
    â€œNothing! You could walk to the park, that’s all.”
    â€œJesus,” Lise says, and turns back to her toes.
    â€œNow what? What did I say? What just happened?”
    â€œYou think I’m an idiot. The way you talk to me.”
    â€œI just said about the park, I didn’t say anything.”
    â€œI’m smarter than you think I am. I can tell when you’re making fun of me.”
    This is how it’s been with us all summer. I imagine how good it would feel to throw her bottle of nail polish into the street, kick in the screen door, tear at the grass. But it’s so freaking hot . I close my eyes and count to seven as I inhale. This helps. I close my eyes and let my head fall back. I always feel gummy and sick to my stomach when we fight.
    â€œYou know, Lise? This is my weekend. I don’t want to do this on my weekend.”
    â€œIt’s my weekend too.”
    Except that it isn’t . Every day I have to wake up at six in the morning and get a shirt ironed and drive across town to the bank where I work, and every day Lise sleeps until eleven and then makes a cup of coffee and brings it back to bed so she can look for a job on her laptop . I stand there with my hands in my pockets and listen to the sticky sound of the masking tape as Lise peels it off each toe. There’s a crisp line between the polish and the bare nail.
    â€œI saw him at the Wicket last week,” I say.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œAtlas. Sitting at the bar.”
    â€œKrystal took him to the Wicket?”
    â€œKrystal wasn’t there.”
    Lise swivels on the towel so she is facing me. “Who was with him?” she asks.
    â€œHe was there on his own. At the bar with a plate of cherries and olives and a couple of plastic cocktail sticks. Swords, whatever.”
    Lise stares at me.
    â€œBruce was behind the bar,” I add. “He must have given him the cherries and stuff to play with.”
    â€œWhat did you do?”
    â€œI told Bruce, be good to this guy, he’s a friend of mine.”
    Lise pushes her bangs out of her face. Her hair is sweaty and it stays where she pushed it. She looks cute, like a fancy canary. “You left him there?” she asks me.
    â€œEveryone knows who he is. They wouldn’t have let anything bad happen.”
    The Wicket is our local pub, but it’s more like a community centre. It’s a second home for guys like Bill Peters and Sid Rochon, who I don’t think even finished high school. They start and end their days on those bar stools. But it’s not a seedy place, either. Sure, the regulars are on their third pint by noon, and they have a stunning lack of ambition, but they aren’t criminals .
    â€œDon’t you have to go to the gym?” Lise says. “You should just go.”
    The sound of an old motor curdles up the street. Krystal’s blue Chevette pulls in front of the house. It’s coated in a layer of dust, and the signal lights are chipped away from a variety of fender benders. Blisters of paint cluster on the hood like acne breakouts. The car chugs a little, settles after the ignition is turned off. Then the zipper sound of the parking brake.
    Still sitting on her towel, Lise waves to the four-year-old in the car seat in the back. He stares out the window, takes in the cube of yellow bricks that is our house, the white and green striped awning over the front door, the dried-out lawn, all of which he knows as well as he knows his own house now. His eyes fix on me.
    â€œThank you, thank you,” Krystal says out loud to nobody. It could be that she is talking to us. She steadies herself with