Sometimes she forgot to open the shutters again during the day, and the lack of sunlight made her sleepy. She started opening her eyes only halfway, and then not opening them at all unless she needed them to make chicken salad or sweep the floor.
Eventually, chicken salad grew less important. The chicken straight out of the can gained its own intricacies, and adding mayonnaise and celery and bread and cheese seemed like too much. She could find the chicken in the pantry without opening her eyes, and soon enough, she learned to find the trash can to dispose of the can without peeking even once. She was a high-wire artist. Her invisible audience watched from their backyards.
74:PM
The trap in the attic was catching some seriously large squirrels. Rats too, but Reginald didn’t want to frighten Olivia by telling her there were rats crawling up through the walls. He installed a humane trap, a kill trap, and a poison trap, and left it up to the vermin to make the choice for themselves.
AM:75
Carla realized that there are morning people and evening people, and she was both of those, but what she certainly was not was an afternoon person. Words came harder. Things got unpleasantly bright while she dulled, squinting at the computer screen, sipping espresso and making a conscious effort to not eat too much, to not lie down, to take the phone calls and be patient, most of all, be patient.
76:PM
Reginald sat on the pile of mattresses and wondered how his wife’s friends would die. One particularly dependent woman would be the most likely to be involved in a jealousy-driven murder. Another was a bad driver and too sensitive about it. Still another had undiagnosed health problems. The moon above the loading dock was almost full and Reginald watched it, trying to determine in the stillness if it was waxing or waning.
AM:77
For a while, Carla dated a man named The Amazing Chet who guessed people’s weight at the science museum. The Amazing Chet was his real name, given to him by his mother. Twenty years before he had traveled with a circus. The science museum liked the novelty and The Amazing Chet was very good, guessing within the half-pound, and exactly more often than not. He used to sit at a folding table and write the weight down on a note card for the person, but the exhibit grew in popularity and the science museum made a special booth for him, with electronic output so that, when a patron stepped on the platform, he could enter their weight and have it be digitally displayed above their head. The Amazing Chet’s exhibit became the most popular in the museum, and scientists of various disciplines came to record and study his accuracy.
The Amazing Chet would come home, tired but happy, and lift Carla in the air to greet her. “You’ve dropped three ounces since yesterday,” he would say. “Are you drinking enough water?”
Eventually his divining career grew too important, and the science museum gathered the funds to turn him into a traveling exhibit. They hosted a gallery party to kick off the tour, and The Amazing Chet invited all his old friends from the circus. Carla was surprised to see so many people. The Amazing Chet was a dull man, in her eyes.
78:PM
When cold and warm fronts meet, at the right velocity and temperature, a hurricane forms. Tess remembered the morning of the hurricane seventeen years before. That afternoon, she watched the blue sky and white clouds from her seat on the bus and strained to feel something in the air. Seventeen years later, she felt her loneliness rise up to meet an overpowering urge and suppressed the desire to board the windows.
AM:79
“Being with you is like a plate of hair,” Andrew said. “A dainty bone china plate, covered in hair. And everyone at the table is watching me and waiting to see if I’m going to eat it.”
Carla looked at him and yawned. “Being with you,” she said, “is like taking a sleeping pill.”
80:PM
Is there too much suffering in the world, and not enough philosophy, or is it the other way around?
Press your right side to massage your ascending colon. Press your left side to massage your descending colon. Express the toxins you are able to express, and ignore the others.
Control the impulse to check the locks on your door.
AM:81
The more bleach in the bedsheets, the greater Chastity’s impulse to roll around in them. A party would be thrown, she decided, the kind that would tell a small story in the contents of the dustpan the next morning. Detached sequins and mint leaves muddled by high heels, shrimp tails mixed in with a few shards of broken glass, a crust of bread. She rolled in her bleached sheets until they wrapped about her like a storm, and she fell asleep in the eye of it.
82:PM
A man cultivates a terrible feeling in the woman who loves him. He turns the feeling of love on itself. The woman sees what love looks like in its grotesque selfishness. The price of her knowledge? An enthusiastic event, and another, and the actor will watch herself doing terrible things.
AM:83
The girls were doing yoga in the living room. Missy played some calming spiritual music and lit a candle.
Chastity winced, feeling the wood floor under her thin mat. “I want the kind of man who goes looking for a war,” she said.
Missy aligned her hips up and back for Downward-Facing Dog. “There’s a few wars out there already,” she said. “Should be easy to find.”
“Not a real war,” Chastity said, after her third attempt at the Plow. “Nothing that would kill him.”
“What, you just want things that will make him stronger?” Missy exhaled through her nose and stood up. “Boring.”
“I want him to find something worth fighting for every day.”
“This, coming from the woman with the most dangerous party theory ever.” Missy raised her arms and took a deep breath. “I guess I could have seen it coming,” she said, exhaling.
Chastity felt it wasn’t a true party until something got broken and someone got hurt. “I want a man who knows what it means to fight,” she said.
“Slap a pair of skates on the girl and you’ve got a roller derby,” said Missy.
84:PM
Hazel constantly felt the need to express something inside of her. With age, she would learn that everyone has that same feeling, and that the need to express comes from a sensible desire for community, but that reasonable people either forget the feeling or get tired of talking about it, as when all the gossip about an embarrassing acquaintance finally winds its way down and the friends stare at each other across the table, each thinking, now what.
AM:85
Martha was face down on the bed with her feet draped over the closed violin case as if she was having them examined. She didn’t move when Emily walked in and sat next to her.
“I thought I’d join a bluegrass band,” Martha said. Her words were muffled by the pillow.
“You practiced?”
“I can play the songs, but it makes me nervous. Everything makes me nervous.”
“It’s normal to be nervous.” Emily rested her palm on the bottom of Martha’s left foot.
“Great,” Martha said, “I’m nervous and I’m normal.” She started to cry.