30 Pieces of a Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

as that server last year told him most of the students do a little before or right after Labor Day, is dial Palm Beach Information, ask for Sage Ottunburg, and if there isn’t one listed just ask for any Ottunburg, and if he gets one of her relatives, but not her folks, ask if one of the other Ottunburg numbers is hers. But why’s he going on like this? And if some guy did want to meet her, he’d call her here, wouldn’t he? Unless he was with his wife or girlfriend or someone; or even if he was: something on the sly. And maybe she goes to school but for one reason or another doesn’t want to be categorized by it or doesn’t want it listed, or who knows what.
    She comes back with the menus. “Take as long as you like,” she says, “there’s no rush; this place is too pretty to feel rushed, and it smells so wonderful here”—for they’re on the outdoor patio—and takes a deep breath, and he says, “Just what I was thinking, and thank you,” and opens the menu and when she walks away he discreetly looks at her rear end and legs and when she returns for the order he quickly looks at her breasts a few times and tries to imagine what they look like under her shirt. High and young, and it’s funny but when he was in his late teens and early twenties he doesn’t think he ever thought how beautiful young breasts are. Older women had lower softer ones; young women, if they weren’t top-heavy, had high firm ones, and he doesn’t even think he thought of the firmness, but that was about the extent of his observations on breasts then, except if they were flat. Though there was an older woman—thirty-six, at the most thirty-eight, so for sure not “old” to him now; in fact, if he were seeing her today he’d consider her young—whom he went with one summer, about a half year before the Washington reporter’s job, when he was just out of college and worked as a soda jerk in an upstate resort and she was the stage designer of the theater there. And another who was fifty or so when he slept with her on and off for a year and he was around thirty, and both seemed to have not lower or high breasts or soft or firm, just very big and full ones. So what does he know? Every time he thinks he’s on to something, he quickly refutes himself.
    They order; she comes back many times: to bring their food, refill their water glasses, see if everything’s “satisfactory,” take away his plate, give his wife a free extra popover—she had something called “soup and popovers,” which came with two popovers but the kids split one of them. “How do they make those things, the popovers?” his younger daughter asks Sage, and he says, “Yeah, I’ve been curious about it too. Do you have a brigade of popover makers back there?” and she says, “You mean humans? No, it’s all done by machine—two, actually, and a third that mixes the dough and eggs and stuff, and these big popover machines just keep turning them out all day. From breakfast through dinner, pop pop pop , they plop out and we just grab them if we have an order and put them in the already prepared basket with a towel around them to keep them warm.” “They’re the best,” his daughter says, and he says, “Well, your mom’s made some pretty good ones in that popover pan we always bring up. Did we bring it this year? I haven’t seen it,” and his wife says, “I don’t know, you’re the one who packs the car. I know I reminded you,” and he says, “Oh, darn, I might’ve forgot,” and his wife says, “No big deal; mine aren’t nearly as good as these, and besides, I like them best when we have them here as a treat,” and he says, “Yours are wonderful on a cold night or a foggy afternoon with guests when no one wants to go out, and it’s something the kids like