Plots by Sky Curtis

Author:Sky Curtis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inanna Publications
Published: 2018-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

16.

I WOKE UP WEDNESDAY morning with Ralph curled up beside me, breathing soft puffs of air scented with stale toothpaste and the sickly-sweet undercurrent of alcohol. I blew into my hand and sniffed. Yup. The same. So alluring. It was definitely time to stop. Boy oh boy, did I ever need to follow Sally Josper’s directions every day. I lay there and reviewed her concise instructions. In the morning, I was to log three things I was grateful for.

I had to follow her instructions if I wanted to stop drinking, and I did, because most of the time I did not want to be an old homeless person pushing a shopping cart full of cheap bottles of wine tucked into my possessions. I had to weigh this visual against the picture of me lounging in a beach chair, a chilled glass of white in my hand, licking the condensation dripping down the side, deliciously cold on my tongue. Sometimes it was hard to make choices.

I wouldn’t put Ralph on my grateful list of three today because I had written him down every day this week. But still. I looked at him, his face relaxed and his mouth slightly open. I looked closer. His nose hair was undulating softly on every out breath. Maybe that wasn’t so cute. But his lips were so plump and pretty. But wait. Was that drool on the pillow? I peered at the corner of his mouth. Yes, there was a very thin transparent filament stretching from his mouth to the yellow daisy on the pillowcase. I actually thought it was kind of cute. Big strong man, drooling on the daisies.

He was a cop and, in general, I was grateful for cops. That could be my first thing I was grateful for. Yesterday was a terrible day, and thank heavens there were cops to call. It was very comforting to know we had that safety net. My mind wandered. It always did. Was I losing it? No, I consoled myself, stress does a number on a brain. It was just stress. I tugged my thoughts back from the swirling drain in the dark chamber of my brain. Yesterday. What a fuck of a day.

I had a feeling that Kowalchuk and I would be seeing each other again. I wondered why only Niemchuk had been attacked. What was so special about him? Maybe it was young male testosterone. Perhaps that threatened the bear. If he hadn’t been there, would someone else have been the object of the bear’s frenzy? I didn’t think so. The bear had burst through the forest directly for Niemchuk. Not a sideways glance at anyone else. I wasn’t sure if bears did sideways glances, but this bear did not. Is that what had happened to Darlene? No sideways glance? Had the bear sniffed the air and aimed for her like a homing missile? What did Niemchuk and Darlene have in common? We all know that bears can’t see worth a damn. I had read somewhere that if you stand perfectly still, a bear will not be able to see you.

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