Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley
Author:Sloane Crosley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
* * *
My liquor store does not have a ton of kosher wine options so I use the traditional method and pick the second-cheapest bottle. As I walk down Forty-seventh Street, paper bag tied with a flammable ribbon, I nod at the security guard in the beanie. I have more cash on my person than I did yesterday. Some of it is in my bra, which feels like a mistake. Regardless, I donât know how these negotiations will shake out. If I bring too little, my search will have been for naught. If I bring too much, I might give away too much. I donât want to spend years calculating all the things Iâm not paying for to justify buying back my own necklace.
Yesterday, I spotted cameras in the stairwell. So I have returned alone. I donât want anyone thinking I brought backup. Hard-boiled or not, it delights me to think this way, to feel at home in this space of transaction and darkness, in this land where the only law is the law of what you can get away with. Did Russell know a version of this world? Multiple versions? Multiple secrets? Suicide, unlike most deaths, is math you work backward instead of forward. Itâs enough to make you crazy.
In the halogen light of a new day, suite 303 seems somewhat defanged. Todayâs cast of characters is limited to Dimitri, a woman in a sheer frilly blouse, and a man in a leather bomber jacket who, like myself, has business here. I hang back as Dimitri and this man have an exchange involving an envelope and a hug. They pat each otherâs backs. After the man leaves, Dimitri starts speaking to the woman in Hebrew but she interrupts him, nodding at me.
âOh,â he says, upon seeing my face, âis this for me?â
âIt is,â I say, instantly embarrassed by the wine.
I place the bag on the partition, which is narrower than the base of the bottle. The woman watches me perform this balancing act without interfering. She remains unimpressed. Meanwhile, Dimitri is patting at his pockets and lifting papers, as if having misplaced his glasses. At long last, he removes an object from the top of the safe.
Itâs a plastic sandwich bag.
My eyes widen at the sound of the necklace being extracted from the bag. When Dimitri turns around, he is holding the amulet by its chain. The silver has begun to oxidize around the amber. If you wear silver every day, you will never have to polish it. The grease of life keeps it gleaming.
âGive me your hand,â he instructs, which I do, obediently.
He drops the necklace in my palm, dripping the chain on top of itself.
Then he closes my fingers for me and says: âTake it. That shouldnât have happened.â
What the fuck, I wonder, should have happened? But I am distracted by how lightweight it is. Every time I looked at a photograph of the necklace, it gained an ounce.
âWhat happened to you was not right,â he emphasizes. âJust take it.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Spell It Out by David Crystal(35360)
Professional Troublemaker by Luvvie Ajayi Jones(28970)
We're Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union(18083)
The Secret History by Donna Tartt(16657)
Cat's cradle by Kurt Vonnegut(13894)
The Goal (Off-Campus #4) by Elle Kennedy(12447)
The Social Justice Warrior Handbook by Lisa De Pasquale(11493)
The Break by Marian Keyes(8614)
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan(8369)
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher(7801)
The remains of the day by Kazuo Ishiguro(7575)
Educated by Tara Westover(7075)
The handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood(6873)
Win Bigly by Scott Adams(6327)
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin(5893)
This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz(5798)
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty(5210)
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion(5200)
The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish(5080)