The French Revolution by Matt Stewart

Author:Matt Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Published: 2010-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

The escalators at Van Ness station deposited Robespierre in a bank of fog, desolate gray streets infested with chilly cobwebs. She had matured into a sensationally average-looking young woman, bean-shaped brown eyes spaced far apart, skin the color of cheap chocolate milk, small breasts, frizzy hair, and a face that wasn’t quite pretty and wasn’t quite homely and was just kind of there. Over the course of her seventeen years she had identified a tendency to collect extra pounds in her rear and thus shared her mother’s perpetual diet, further buttressed by long jogs along the beach and daily sets of crunches and biweekly workouts to a hippie-ish yoga DVD she’d picked up at a yard sale. She looked bland up close, but through a distinctive if conservative taste in clothes, a never-say-die stylist, and an industrial hairbrush pilfered from her mother’s wool bag, she crafted a seductive, imperfect, can-do allure, a look that said she could leap over buildings—almost a star.

A three-minute charge through the meteorological smoke-screen on Market Street and she was seated inside the CopySmart flagship store manager’s office watching her mom work the phone.

“ . . . not stupid. At that volume, we need a major discount, bucko. And we haven’t been doing business long enough for me to give a goat’s ass about your costs. Call back with a lower number or don’t bother.”

Her mother’s new height continued to astonish her. Esmerelda had become an extremely vertical woman, five foot ten when totally unwound, with wall-straight posture imposed on her spine by the now-defunct Gargantuan. Watching her move around the room with the phone pinned to her shoulder, still thick and double-chinned but oddly mobile, Robespierre experienced a sense of out-of-place impropriety, as if intruding on an office blow job.

“Talk it over, be my guest. My kid’s here. Gotta run.” Esmerelda hung up the phone and booted a trash can across the room. “There was a time,” she grunted, “when I could get rid of assholes like that with just a look.” Through the corners of her rolling eyes she noticed Robespierre’s tired face and uncharacteristically tight lips. “What’s the scoop, sheriff?”

Robespierre repeated the speech she’d given that morning over breakfast, a brusque version of the gentle pleading she’d delivered twice the day before: “We got a notice about taxes that you’d better do something about. Also I need you to pay me back for the grocery shopping. And Marat and I need new clothes for school.”

“Hello, nice to see you too! My day was fine, thanks. A shitty sales guy just now, but I’ll manage.” She chuckled and pulled Robespierre against her side, jamming her up against the skeins of skin beneath her blouse, cascading from throat to thighs like rubber waterfalls. “Will you take a personal check?”

“Cash.”

Esmerelda bent open a paperclip. “Can it wait until payday?”

“Do I have a choice?” A line delivered so benignly it sneaked inside Esmerelda before exploding.

“Tell you what. I’ll buy you dinner for free, call it interest.”

“Not hungry.” Also impatient, sick of the dumb dopey dance.

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