Animal by Lisa Taddeo

Animal by Lisa Taddeo

Author:Lisa Taddeo [Taddeo, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781982183721
Google: rMImzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Simon + Schuster Incorporated
Published: 2021-06-07T23:00:00+00:00


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IN NO TIME, THE UGLY home transformed before my eyes, the way the ugly homes of beautiful women are wont to do. Alice cranked open the window in the kitchen and the California breeze blew in. She set a bushel of basil in a vase filled with water, and a bunch of cilantro went into an empty creamer carton. She took out all the fruit and vegetables we’d bought, arranging them in bowls and tall carafes until the kitchen came alive. Dusty orange watermelon radish, prim pearl onions, grassy spring onions, vine tomatoes, and limes. Sandy spinach, mustard greens, and arugula. Green papaya and avocado, and the banana blossom looking like a panicked bird in its own white bowl. She placed the hunk of ruby tuna we’d bought from the fishmonger on a white cutting board and then rubbed the bluefish with salt and oil and left it in its brown waxed paper. She washed her hands with Mrs. Meyer’s lemon soap and played calypso from her laptop.

She was going to make a salad and ceviche and she asked me to tell her about Vic as she worked. She asked me what he looked like. I described him as best I could but said that he was more of a feeling than anyone I had ever known. I told her about his hats and his suits, how large they were, that he’d never worked out in his life beyond the weights he lifted in high school. And though he wasn’t overweight, he was definitely ashamed of his figure, and so he wore these big suits.

She asked me again if it was crazy of her to think that we were getting somewhere. I told her no, it wasn’t crazy. I could have said more then. I could have told her everything, and I wanted to. But she was right that Vic would lead into the rest.

I’d already told her about Scotland and Cumberland Island and Mexico. The sunny days. The times when I’d still felt like a girl, when I could still pretend that I hadn’t flushed myself down a drain. Now it was time to tell her when the rot set in.

In as much detail as I could remember, I described the company trip to Palm Springs. The scaly heat of the desert. Vic was always arranging events so he’d have an excuse to be with me for a long weekend. It’s funny to think how many corporate dollars are spent so that one man can fuck one woman.

We stayed at a ten-bedroom guesthouse that had natural-rock hot tubs with unobstructed views of the mountains in the distance. I’d never been attracted to any of our colleagues, but there was one man, Paul, who had just come from Virginia, from some old tobacco family, and he hunted and fished and wore Minnetonkas and swore very graciously, the words goddamned and witch’s tit.

Paul was something of a precursor to Big Sky. He was an amuse-bouche. I sat next to him at the first dinner.



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