Free Fast Lanes by Jayne Anne Phillips Page A

the bloodied phlegm, the lifted eyes.
    At night he almost hurt her. The Argentine couple above them never slept. Hours in the dark their chanted curses floated from the ceiling.
     
7. Film
    T hey turned out the lamps. Ate supper by the light of the streets. Boiled potatoes, no cheese. In her hair a sweet residue, what is left. Cigarette ashes on saucers.
    When they spoke her voice splintered. He saw she was breaking up, they said nothing. He held her feet. She rolled her ankles, reversed at the quarter hour. She was forty-one. Her legs were veined and supple.
    Late at night the old film clips reeled by. Troops of Navarre and martial music, 1939. More refugees, claimed the narrator. Democratic warfare from the sky, Russian workers on parade. Is it invulnerable. Or could it be stopped. And at Yankee Stadium it’s Lou Gehrig Day, the big man smiles. He’s finished.
     
8. Dancers
    S mooth slap, her foot on the lacquered floor. He watched her move. In his mind he stroked her thigh. Muscled flank hard in his hand. His fear of large sexual animals, mute, expecting.
    She moved at the bar, rippled her thighs. Horses. Pounding track at a country show. Blue flies bit women in hats. Children then were savage, hurt each other in the grass. Women tongued their teeth in the heat, touched his private throat.
    Church women held dances for youth. Arms fleshy in yellow sleeves. Girls wore pendants of praying hands. Boys asked for partners, leaned into steps. Two women moved across the floor to show them how. When you dance, they said, close your eyes and think of God.
    In the brass bar, her coiled reflection.
     
9. Kitchen
    M eat is a brainy twine. Soaked in wine it tasted of sweet dark blood. Mushrooms. Their gilled caps left a moist brown stain. She saw his face, waiting, his hands on the table. Her dress was a pattern of small black hearts. Its flared skirt made her thin.
    She was conscious of herself. Her pelvis arched and the egg yolks ran, congealed into a map. The kitchen steamed. She kept its wet heat in her clothes. Finally rain. The cooling food. Slick black fire escape and the soft edges of buildings.
    Knowing, they were kind. Moving against some current, but indolent. In slow water. Like spaniels swimming high up, hoping the water would hold.
    He wondered how much longer. Looked at the cracked ceiling. The bulb was there. She flicked a switch and light took its lines away.
     
10. Awake
    S he was awake, she wanted no knowledge. At night she sat by the window while he slept. She would leave him.
    She watched Third Street. Charcoal shapes clung to buildings. Derelicts pissed out of windows at the Men’s Social Care Center. Their urine fell three stories, clattered on the sidewalk. And the Bowery rolled like a grub, eating the dark all night.
    She remembered New Orleans boys peeling their gowns. One knelt beautiful, licked his lips in a mirror. Painted them red so slow. Matrons clicking ice at the bar, small groans.
     
11. Possessions
    S he packed her possessions in four large boxes. She would leave them with him and he would stack them in a closet.
    They sat on the fire escape. Watched the alley six floors down. Rows of trash cans leaned like dominoes. Tin lids glinting in the lights. Surfaces dented, dappled as the scales of fish.
    The radio wouldn’t stay tuned. Voices meandered. Snatches of hard rock. She bit her lips. Nervous. Or her fingers. Angry, he grabbed her hands. He remembered his mother’s red mouth, looking up at her as a child. Flecks of lipstick on the edges of her teeth.
    If you make your fingers bleed, he said, I’m going to slap you.
    She held onto him. No space between them. No declarations.
     
12. Camera
    S he kept a suitcase of clothes and one photograph. When she left him, he stole the photograph. He put it in a safety deposit box.
    In the picture she is nineteen, backed against slick white walls of a shower. Her face surfaces in long wet hair. At first glance she is a child living someone’s memory