Blue Ruin

The following is from Hari Kunzru’s Blue Ruin . Kunzru is the author of six novels, Red Pill, White Tears, Gods Without Men, My Revolutions, Transmission, and The Impressionist . He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and writes the “Easy Chair” column for Harper’s . He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University. I swung my legs out of bed and stood up carefully. I felt light-headed and hungry, though better than before. I decided to go and scavenge through the bags of groceries in the car, but when I got to the bottom of the stairs, I found a tote bag filled with supplies and a note from Alice saying I’d been asleep when she came and she hadn’t wanted to wake me. There were some cut sandwiches wrapped in aluminum foil, bottled water, painkillers, toilet paper, a toothbrush, hand sanitizer, fresh masks. I held the bag as if it were a bomb. It had been a long time since anyone had made me a care package. One corner of the barn had been partitioned with plasterboard, and I opened a door to find a basic but functional bathroom with a shower stall wedged next to the toilet. I went to the car to see if I had any fresh clothes. An hour later I was washed, dressed and shaved, feeling cleaner than I had in days, but so tired that I had to go back upstairs to lie down. Almost at once I fell asleep, and when I opened my eyes, the light was failing and the trees were vague black shapes outside the window. I shut them again and woke into another bluish-white morning that smelled of earth and leaf mulch and wood exhaling the moisture of the night. I sat upright. I felt shaky, empty and insubstantial, but my head wasn’t throbbing and my vision was clear. The little cot above the barn was the first proper bed I’d had since the day Augusto drove me out of the house in Jackson Heights. Sleeping in a […]

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