Free Lost Between Houses by David Gilmour

didn’t answer and I knew not to push it. I was just about bursting with pleasure though. Funny thing about that expression, “seeing red”: it’s supposed to be when you’re pissed off. It’s just the opposite with me. When I’m happy things go kind of strawberry.
    “Do you?”
    “Do I what?” I said.
    “Think my nose is too blunt?”
    “No.”
    “Look at it.”
    “I think you look like a movie star. I don’t know what I’d do if I was as good-looking as you. I don’t think I could stand it. I’d be going over to the mirror every fifteen minutes. I mean I do that anyway, I keep hoping something will change between trips.”
    “If I saw you on the street, I’d think, that’s a nice-looking person.”
    “Yeah?”
    “A friend of mine said you were going to be a real doll when you grew up,” she said.
    “Who was that?”
    “I’m not supposed to say.”
    “But really, she said that?”
    “Yep. But don’t let it go to your head.”
    “I won’t.
    I waited a moment.
    “You’re sure she meant me?”
    “Sure I’m sure. She named you by name.”
    It’s true what they say; you never notice fuck-all until you’re doing it yourself; you get a puppy, suddenly you see all the dogs in the world; it’s the same for couples, suddenly, they’re everywhere. Like all over the place, even the Chinese, everybody just
doing
it. Like it’s the only game in town. Which come to think of it, it is. But I’m telling you, it was like waking up in a totally new country.
    “Let’s steal something,” Scarlet said.
    “Forget it.”
    “Why not?” she said, sort of peeved.
    “Because I don’t want to get caught. Because I don’t want to get wheeled down the driveway of my summer cottage in the back of a squad car in handcuffs.”
    “You remember in that movie, when they go in and steal something?” she said.
    “I didn’t see that movie.”
    “Well you should have. It was a really good movie.”
    “What do they steal?”
    “Doesn’t matter. It’s just something they do together because they’re in love.”
    “Maybe you got more guts than me,” I said, sucking up a bit. “I’m scared of getting caught. Aren’t you scared of getting caught?”
    “I’ve been caught before,” she said. “My father thought it was a big fat joke.”
    “My father’d slug me.”
    “If my father ever laid a hand on me, I’d stick a knife through him like a bug.”
    I sort of looked at her twice when she said that. I wanted to tell her to simmer down, there was nobody in our immediate vicinity who deserved to die for fucking around with her, not so far today anyway, but I figured that’d piss her off even more. Whatever it was, it changed the climate just like that, on a dime, and for some reason my heart started beating fast like I was in trouble or something.
    We passed by a pet store. There was a little bowl of goldfish swimming in the window.
    “What’s your father in the loony bin for?” she asked.
    “For being an asshole. They’ve got a special wing for those people. My family are charter members.”
    Funny thing is, as I said it, I felt a sort of spear go through me, shame or something, as if, like in those cartoons, right up at the corner, I could see my old man listening to me talking about him like that. It actually made me wince. I mean, sure, he was an asshole (a bully mostly), but he was more than
just
an asshole. But you wouldn’t have known that from listening to me. Sometimes I think I’ll say anything about anybody just to get a laugh. It’s pretty disgusting.
    “You should come up to our summer cottage,” she said.
    “I didn’t know you guys had a cottage.”
    “My father rents it. It’s up in Georgian Bay. He goes there with his show-business buddies and they all get pissed for a week.”
    “So what do you do?”
    “Nothing. Wander around the rocks. Look at the water. Go down to the dock. Scratch mosquito bites. We don’t even have a TV.”
    “Maybe you should take up