Free Cadillac Couches by Sophie B. Watson Page A

falling to the bottom of a well.
    I turned the TV on, volume low, got the phone and called Isobel, and before she could say hello, I said calmly: “Listen, Isobel, don’t worry, I’m fine. I am fine. I just need to stay on the phone with you and not cry. Okay. I don’t want to cry. That’s the thing: not to cry.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong, sweetheart? Do you want me to come over?”
    â€œNo, no. I’m not at home. I can’t tell you right now. Sullivan will be here any minute. It’s just really important that I don’t cry. Talk to me. I just need you to talk to me. Tell me anything. Tell me about your day.”
    â€œLet’s see . . . I was dog sitting today for Frank, t’sais. So I went to Whyte Avenue with Cona and walked around. She tried to mount some poor woman on her lunch break. Got her paws all over her silk trench coat. Very bad. Though what she was doing wearing a silk trench coat on a cold-ass January day I don’t know!”
    As she talked, I thought about the water sex thing and how I had assumed it was something Sullivan and I had invented. “So then, Cona took an obnoxiously large dump right in front of Army & Navy and I didn’t have any plastic bags, so I seriously had to hightail down an alley and run a few blocks so I wouldn’t get chased by a cop on a mountain bike and get a fine!”
    I heard the kitchen back door close, and Sullivan saying, “Shit. Shit. Shit.” Then there was a cacophonic clanging of pots. The basmati must have been annihilated. The chicken probably nuked as well. For the first time I noticed the burnt smell and smoke filling the living room.
    â€œLook, Isobel, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”
    â€œSweetie, I’ll come see you tomorrow. It’s gonna be okay, ya?”
    â€œSee ya.”
    Sullivan walked into the living room where he found me smoking a cigarette and drinking my orange juice, oblivious to the kitchen crisis. I looked up from Brian Dennehy on TV and smiled. “Mind if we go to my house and pick up something to eat on the way there?”
    Sullivan looked at me and must have seen something like quiet hysteria in my unblinking eyes. I could tell my smile was twisted. He didn’t ask about why I had let the food get wrecked, or why I wanted to go home. “Sure,” he said.
    He must have known I knew, that I read it. Or he would’ve asked why I let everything burn.
    Outside it was pitch-black except for the white snowbanks and the lit road ahead of us. We drove past the neon sign by the funeral parlour that always had the temperature listed. Minus 26 in big digital orange letters. The truck’s vinyl seats had rigor mortis. But I wasn’t tensed up from the cold. I was sitting comfortably as we drove across town, crossing the frozen river on the High Level Bridge. I chatted aimlessly, oddly determined not to let any of the horror out. “Brian Dennehy, you know he’s not a bad actor, but he’s always playing these overworked cops . . . except for that movie about his belly, you know in The Belly of an Architect , he was awesome in that. But that’s it, I mean, otherwise it’s these bullshit movies of the week. I wonder if he minds . . . It’s like . . .”
    Sullivan kept taking his eyes off the snowy road; I could feel him looking at me, no doubt trying to gauge the damage. I knew he was anxious; he was scratching his chin. He knew I knew. Had to. But he was keeping a lid on it for some reason. I could hear him scratching, couldn’t stop himself. I took a peek at his profile. He looked seedy to me then, like a squirming rat. But he had such beautiful eyelashes. I jerked forward as the car swerved on the black ice under the snow. The truck was shimmying up the street. I didn’t care. Sullivan gripped the wheel, his arms rigid. I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt.
    All that was