Free How to Fall by Edith Pearlman Page A

Pinky would serve him, and someone would note the resemblance, and . . . But he was tall, at least according to the form he’d filled out. So why was she was only average? Had he lied about his height?
    That was her father—a sociopath.
    Her mother? Both of her mothers? A pair of lanky opinions.
    One of them, Paula Pinkerton, was a pharmacologist. The other, Mary Kelly, provider of the womb, was a pediatric nurse.

    Pinky had abandoned them the day she turned seventeen. She didn’t go far; Godolphin was only fifty miles from Providence.
    I want to live where nobody knows me [she wrote]. You’ve got to understand. I don’t hate you. My post office box is 105446. Don’t come after me. I’ll write every week. I don’t hate you.
    Â 
    We wouldn’t dream of coming after you [they wrote back]. Self-actualization is our watchword. We’ll send refills of your Ritalin to the post office.
    Pinky had stopped taking Ritalin a year ago. Coffee worked much better. For awhile she had sold the pills in downtown Providence; later she simply flushed them down the toilet.
    In Godolphin she checked into the Y.
    She found The Local five days later.
    On that warm October day the glass doors had been detached from the central post and folded back into two gleaming accordions. The brass tables were square and the small bar curved. She examined the menu—sandwiches, salads, omelets.
    At eleven in the morning there were three patrons, alone, each chewing behind a newspaper.
    Pinky leaned against the post.
    A man with an abundant mustache—graying blonde, like tarnished gold—was putting condiments and napkin holders on unoccupied tables. He retied his white apron and began to sweep the floor. He nodded at Pinky without speaking. The door into the kitchen was open; no, not open, there wasn’t a door at all, just an archway. Pinky saw a sizeable shoulder in a white tee.

    She had already been turned down by a dozen nondescript restaurants who didn’t need anyone at the moment thanks leave your name. She had conquered her distaste and marched into the Women’s Bookstore and Café. “Too late, the position’s filled,” sighed the proprietor. She had failed to find employment in an organic Undermarket. (“As opposed to Super,” the manager explained.) She’d been snubbed by a Cigar Bar downtown. “Too young,” the interviewer said, but too chunky was what he meant: face too round, and those eyebrows like awnings . . .
    The man with the mustache was still sweeping.
    In the kitchen the shoulder moved again; then a buzz cut came into view over a heavy Asian face; then the whole organism disappeared.
    â€œCan I help you?” said the man with the mustache at last.
    Pinky swallowed. “You can give me a job.”
    He looked at her kindly. “We are four people—Inez and I and Kazuki the Chef and Fogg the Bartender. Those titles are mainly for tax forms. Everybody does a bit of everything. Four is sufficient for our enterprise.” After this long-winded refusal he leaned on his broom. “What do you cook?”
    â€œI wasn’t aiming to cook, really. Washing up, waitressing, busboy stuff, that’s all. Though I do know how to mix a lot of drinks.”
    â€œAnd what do you know how to cook?” he persisted.
    â€œOkroshka, radish pie,” she said fast. “Eels, lots of ways.” She thought with sudden dismay of the oven at home; its door probably hadn’t been opened since her departure. Half-empty Chinese cartons stood on the counter... “Tomato baked with maple,” she resumed. “It is an unusual dessert.”

    â€œOur dessert is trifle. We make the jam ourselves.”
    â€œI’ve made jam.”
    But he was no longer listening to her. “The trifle is necessary but incidental.”
    She attended silently.
    â€œWe used to be five,” he said.
    Pinky inhaled.
    â€œWe could be five