Free B005HF54UE EBOK by Willy Vlautin Page A

frightened that her nervousness would affect the baby. Each time she felt a panic attack coming, with her body shaking, her breath shortening, she would break down and cry, scared that somehow it would cause the baby to abort or cause some sort of unseen damage.
    Oftentimes in the middle of the night she would lay awake and think about the baby. She felt it was a boy and in her mind thought of him as such. She wondered what he would look like, and what he would become. If he would be a good person. In her heart, she didn’t want to give him away, and some nights she would pray over and over that Jimmy Bodie would be killed before the baby came, and she could then, finally, keep him.
    The few times she called her mother she asked about him, hoping that somehow he was finished. That he’d gotten in a car wreck, or maybe gotten killed in a fight or died in a fire. But her mother would always reply that he had called a few days earlier or had just left a message on the machine.
    As the weeks of her ninth month passed she spent more time in bed and more time sleeping. And then near dawn one morning, she had pain in her guts. She walked into the kitchen and knocked on another pregnant girl’s door and told her that she wasn’t positive, but that she was pretty sure it was her time.
    The other girl had a car and drove her to St Mary’s and sat with her until a nurse came and put her in a room. Then the other pregnant girl disappeared, and she had the baby alone. Only the nurses and the doctor were present, and her labor was long, but by dusk she had a son.
    The adopting couple were led into the room moments after the birth. Allison began crying at the sight of them. The nurse held the baby and she left the room with him and the new family. Allison fell asleep in exhaustion.
    Hours later, when she woke, she tried to get up and leave. A nurse came in and stopped her and talked to her. It was the middle of the night. The nurse opened the blinds and the girl stared out the window at the city lights and wished she was dead. There was a show playing on the TV but she could only vaguely hear it. It felt miles away, like she was disappearing down a long hole. She thought of her son and her heart began to race. Her breath shortened and tears filled her eyes, but as the panic got more intense exhaustion took over, and she closed her eyes and once again fell asleep.

Chapter 18
Emerald Arms
    Two weeks later she moved out of the quad. She had six thousand dollars saved in a bank account and over a thousand dollars cash in her purse. She had hoped to move again, to put Reno and what had happened there behind her. For days she went to the bus station staring at the rows of destinations they had posted, but in the end she knew she could never leave. She felt she had to be in the same city as her baby even if she could never see him. So when the last day at the quad came, she put her two suitcases in storage at the bus station and went to look for an apartment.
    She walked past downtown and headed east on Fourth Street. She stopped at the first apartment building that had a ‘For rent’ sign and went to the manager’s door. It was called the Emerald Arms. It was a mid-1950s two-story apartment complex with ten units. It had been in a state of ill repair for the last fifteen years, and its quality of tenants had fallen along with it.
    The room wasn’t much, just a second story studio apartment. It was a decent sized room with stained tan carpet, an old table and two chairs, a kitchenette, and a twin bed. The place smelled of cigar and cigarette smoke and the once white walls were faded and yellow from it.
    The manager stared out the window while she looked it over. He was a middle-aged Greek man who spoke with a thick accent. He was overweight and dressed in faded, worn out gray sweats. His gut hung out over the waistband and she could see his hairy skin from there. He looked like he hadn’t shaved or showered in days and she could smell