Read The Visible Filth for Free Online Page B

and flirtatious, just like the old days. She laughed at his dumb jokes, made a few of her own. He felt like a human being again.
    When Doug came in to relieve him at two, he snagged a half-full bottle of bourbon from the shelf and swung it like a pendulum in front of Alicia. “I don’t want to go home yet,” he said.
    “Me neither.”
    “Let’s go up to the levee and kill this thing.”
    Her eyes unfocused for a moment, and he could actually see the doubt pass over her face. It stung.
    “Come on, woman.”
    “Okay. Let’s go.”
    Once they were in his car and on the road, he said, “Listen to this, it’s beautiful,” and keyed in a Pines song called “All the While,” a sweet, quiet rumination which filled the precarious space between them with warmth, a place for them to exist in soft and bleary community. The lights outside washed across the windshield, casting a glow onto her skin and then painting it with darkness again. She rested her forehead against the window and said, “You know what I like about you, Will? When you say something is beautiful, it really is. That word means something to you.” He absorbed the compliment. It filled him up.
    He parked in the grass and together they ascended the levee’s steep gradient, where a walking path snaked across the top. They crossed it and walked a little beyond, settling into the grass along the downward slope. The Mississippi was huge and silent at their outstretched feet, moving the earth’s dark energy through the night. The air was humid and close; clouds cruised across the stars above them. Their shoulders were pressed together as they lay back and watched them. Will took a pull from the bottle and passed it to her; she did the same.
    “This is nice,” he said.
    “Yeah. No people. I like no people.”
    “Me, too.”
    She angled her head so that it rested on his shoulder, her eyes closed sleepily. He turned to her, his nose in her hair. “You smell good,” he said.
    She smiled. “Mmm.”
    “You ever wonder how things could have been?”
    She took a moment to answer, but only a small one. “Yes,” she said.
    He kissed her forehead. Her breath stilled. He did it again, and this time she turned her face up to him, her eyes still closed, and offered her lips. He kissed her there with disbelief that such a thing might be happening to him, with a sense of a great engine beginning at last to turn, with a cresting joy. They kissed tentatively, their lips only grazing, and then more deeply, until they turned their bodies to each other and he put a hand on her cheek. He grazed his fingers across her ear, down the side of her face, and then down to her breast. He felt her bra underneath her shirt, wanted to pull it aside, touch skin to skin. He felt her fingers dig into his hair and his back.
    And then she pulled away, pressing her hand against his chest. “Stop, Will.”
    “But…”
    “Stop. Please. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
    He sat up, dismayed. “Why? What’s wrong?”
    “You know what’s wrong.” She sat up too, adjusting her shirt, brushing her hair back behind her ears. There was more space between them now.
    “Is it Jeffrey?”
    “Of course it’s Jeffrey. And it’s Carrie, too. Come on, Will.”
    “Why? Why him , for Christ’s sake? I don’t understand it.”
    She shook her head. Her face was flushed, and her lower lip trembled. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m horrible.”
    He put his hand on her back. “No, Alicia.”
    Arching away from his touch, she said, “Don’t.”
    He sat there, feeling ridiculous, feeling like something essential had been blasted away from inside him. “I’m sorry.”
    “Let’s just go back.”
    They walked back to the car, and when he started the engine, she reached down and switched off the music. They drove back to the bar in a painful silence. He pulled in behind the place she parked, his headlights illuminating the license plate, the rear window. He saw the empty seats in there and