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Back Bottle Grove Save as PDF
Chapters (17)
  1. Half Title
  2. Dedication
  3. By the Same Author
  4. Title Page
  5. Part One
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Part Two
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Author’s Note
  17. A Note on the Author

“He had, I am telling you, an animal face. A real animal. The face of a fox. Oh Padgett, I’m frightened, actually. I really am.” Nina leans in with her slaphappy eyes. “They’re everywhere, Padgett. The city’s changing. Men, beasts like this are prowling around all over the place like it’s theirs.”

“Nina,” Padgett says, “I’m not sure I’m sure what you’re talking about.”

“I think you are,” Nina says. She reaches out, first for Padgett’s hand and then for the wine bottle, which she grips to her chest like it’s a weapon at the ready, or maybe just something she doesn’t want to share. “Padgett, you know what you ought to do?”

Padgett brushes back her bangs. Across the room, the waiter thinks she’s asking for the bill. It’s not quite a question, what Nina has asked, and yet Padgett doesn’t know the answer. She looks at the muddle in front of her, all this drink on this fancy table, the pricey neighborhood outside, everything rising like a flood. Martin, where are lonely you? “What,” she asks blearily, “should I ought to do?”

“Get married,” this woman tells her. “Before it’s too late.”

Chapter Five

CHAPTER 5

Go home, the streetlights say to Rachel. For weeks now she’s been creeping around her neighborhood at night, reminding herself of the doomed girls in gory movies, alone and unprotected from fangs and chainsaws and what have you. In this case, nothing. Go home, but she doesn’t. She’s pregnant. She can’t drink and doesn’t want to eat, she’s tired but can’t sleep, she’s growing a baby but not always sure she wants a family. She’s a woman alone on the streets, but her rovings take her no place but the long-asleep residential blocks and one little business patch. Here’s the grocery store that never seems to carry anything. Here’s the palm reader she visited once years ago, with other drunk bridesmaids, where for seventy-five dollars she learned everything was going to be fine. Here’s the big lopsided Victorian, a fallen cake that she’s heard is an assisted-living center, where a woman sits each morning in the lobby, brandishing a rolled-up magazine over her knobby knees. And here’s the Kitsune School—an early education place her kid would likely attend someday, given its location and well-purchased reputation—and—

There’s a man on top of the building.