Ryan Seacrest Is Famous by Dave Housley

Author:Dave Housley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ryan Seacrest Is Famous
ISBN: 9781938604560
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2007-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

I grab the newspaper and drop it into my Civic. The couches are gone. I picture a family of Salvadoran immigrants relaxing on the supple leather, laughing at the crazy gringos. Somebody is picking these things off the curb and moving them into an apartment somewhere, someplace not far but not too close either, away from the clean colonials of our upscale neighborhood, the good schools, the Whole Foods, and the Starbucks. Somewhere, our living room is resurrected.

I would save them, each piece, rescue the whole house and bring it back. If only I could afford my own place. And if only they were my things to begin with. But they were Charles’s, paid for with a squiggled signature on a trust fund check. The house is his, too, or his father’s, anyway. Around the time this whole thing started, when he got fired and James moved up from Ocean City, Charles stopped making me pay rent, called it a hassle to deposit the checks and said if I couldn’t pay in cash, don’t worry about it anymore.

I check both ways, wave to Neighbor Betsy, reaching low to grab the newspaper in her purple bathrobe, and pull out slow. At the intersection of Richmond and Bradley, I toggle my head between both lanes and my rearview mirror. I need to make a left, get to Connecticut Avenue, and take another left. A Lincoln Navigator pulls up behind me and my face starts to get hot. There’s no break in traffic. I keep checking, right left right left right. Nothing. The Lincoln toots his horn. In the rearview, I see gray hair and tapping fingers.

The accident started just like this. I took a couple of pills. I got stuck at an intersection with some beeping executive behind me, pulled out too soon and the next thing I know I’m standing in the middle of the street, bawling and shouting “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry” while the jaws of life cut into a brand new Chevy Suburban. The lawyer tells me that wasn’t the best way to handle the situation, in terms of liability. The court date is in one month.

Another toot from the Lincoln. Sweat rolls down my sides. Right left right left right. Nothing. The Navigator holds his hand out the window in a question. He’s older. Gray hair, blue suit, red tie. I pull over as far as I can and wave him along. When he passes, I pretend to be getting something out of my bag.

I take the back way to work, pull in twenty minutes late with my shirt soaking wet. A cool wave of air conditioning hits me as soon as the elevator opens. Counting the steps to my office, my heartbeat slows, blood drains from my face. The American Pharmaceutical Information Center is my paradise. I am appreciated here. I am left alone. Here, everything happens as it should, each day almost exactly like the ones that have gone before, tomorrow a clean carbon copy of today.

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