Free The Parallel Apartments by Bill Cotter Page B

dented green gypsy cab. When it stopped, he got in by himself and slammed the door before Justine could follow. He rolled down the window.
    â€œMaybe you two can go shopping for box cutters and mercurochrome together, Justine, huh, fuck me Jesus. Oh, by the way? You’ve got ketchup on your blouse or your top or whatever you call that.”
    â€œDrive,” said Franklin, slapping the dirty Plexiglas behind the cabbie’s head.
    Within the soft hug of a warm cloud of cab exhaust, Justine examined her smutchy blouse. A fair amount of ketchup, enough for a child’s hamburger, had found safe harbor between the third and fourth buttons.
    Women do not walk nine semi-sketchy crosstown blocks bedaubed with vegetable gore. She briefly considered taking her blouse off, but remembered that neither do women walk the same dubious route with the boobs out, no matter how well brassiered. So Justine folded her shirttails up over the offense and headed west.
    A souvenir shop soon appeared. Justine peeked inside. It was more like a slogan shop: personalized keychains swung from tippy, spinning racks, clever bumper stickers and anarchist patches and gender-identity buttons all but blacked out two walls, and from the open ceiling beams toon-illustrated nylon fanny packs swung like emergency oxygen masks on a depressurized airliner. Piled high on rough plywood tables were hundreds and hundreds of dirty, dusty photo albums. Tacked on the back wall were plain T-shirts in scores of sizes, styles, and colors.
    Justine went in. She opened up a random album, denominated #9 KiTTEN’S . Another album: #103 BEER. And another: #30 FUNNY . And #336 BUBiES . #1061 LiTTLE KiTTEN’S . #57 BEViS ‘N’ BUTTHEAD .
    In #590 DEATH Justine found a heavy metal–style picture of a muscled and freshly bloodied man in an Ostrogothic helmet holding a huge dripping sword and standing atop a low peak composed of variously diced and headless ex-warriors. A voluptuous red-haired vixen strapped into a suede war bikini clutched his thigh. A mustardy après-massacre fog wisped around them.
    â€œSir?” said Justine to the proprietor, who was busy eating a falafel while working a massive, creepy mangle that reminded her of a Stephen King story. “I would like this on that white V-neck. Medium size.”
    â€œNo,” he said, shaking his head and chewing. “Frazetta, best on baby-doll. Cuff sleeves, yellow color. See? Very chic.”
    â€œOkay.”
    Wearing her soft, snug new shirt, mangle-warm, Justine walked back to Mulda’s, nearly drugged with adulterous ambition, and strode inside. The waitress had just left for the day.
    Three weeks later, Franklin pled guilty to sexual contact with a minor, earning five hard years. The same day, Justine returned to Mulda’s, wearing her Frank Frazetta T-shirt, found the waitress, Henriette, and told her that she needed her. Their affair began shortly after, and lasted until their four-month anniversary, when Henriette posted on the bathroom mirror a note saying she was going back to her husband in Neptune, New Jersey. Justine had not known she was married.
    From the balcony railing Justine collected her Frank Frazetta shirt and a still-roasting pair of blue cotton-rayon sweatpants whose legs were enlivened by vertical racing stripes. The garment had been semi-stylish for about thirty minutes in 1990, and was now, she felt, fashionably inoffensive.
    She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, and was not totally displeased. She removed her clothes and laid them at the end of the bed. It would be her library outfit.
    The next day, on the second floor of the main branch of the Austin Public Library, at Eighth and Guadalupe, Justine signed the waiting list for thepublic internet, then sat down at a long table, the other end of which was occupied by a skinny Hispanic girl partly hidden behind a yard-high Machu Picchu of dozens of dark red Who’s Who s.
    â€œMary