A Model World And Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

clenched and he must have looked as if he was about to slug her.
    “Whoa!” said Suzette, stepping neatly around him. “I’m getting out of here, Bobby. Good-bye.” She tucked her chin against her chest, dipped her head, and slipped out the door, as though ducking into a rainstorm.
    “Wait!” he said. “Suzette!”
    She turned toward him as he came out onto the patio, her shoulders squared, and held him at bay with her cup of espresso coffee.
    “I don’t have to reckon with you anymore, Bobby Lazar,” she said. “Colleen says I’ve already reckoned with you enough.” Colleen was Suzette’s therapist. They had seen her together for a while, and Lazar was both scornful and afraid of her and her linguistic advice.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll try to be, um, yielding. I’ll yield. I promise. I just—I don’t know. How about let’s sit down?”
    He turned to the table where he’d left Albert, Dawn, and his cup of coffee, and discovered that his friends had stood up and were collecting their shopping bags, putting on their sweaters.
    “Are you going?” he said.
    “If you two are getting back together,” said Albert, “this whole place is going. It’s all over. It’s the Big One.”
    “Albert!” said Dawn.
    “You’re a sick man, Bob,” said Albert. He shook Lazar’s hand and grinned. “You’re sick, and you like sick women.”
    Lazar cursed him, kissed Dawn on both cheeks, and laughed a reckless laugh.
    “Is he drunk or something?” he heard Dawn say before they were out of earshot, and, indeed, as he returned to Suzette’s table the world seemed suddenly more stressful and gay, the sky more tinged at its edges with violet.
    “Is that Al’s new wife?” said Suzette. She waved to them as they headed down the street. “She’s pretty, but she needs to work on her thighs.”
    “I think Al’s been working on them,” he said.
    “Shush,” said Suzette.
    They sat back and looked at each other warily and with pleasure. The circumstances under which they parted had been so strained and unfriendly and terminal that to find themselves sitting, just like that, at a bright cafe over two cups of black coffee seemed as thrilling as if they were violating some powerful taboo. They had been warned, begged, and even ordered to stay away from each other by everyone, from their shrinks to their parents to the bench of Orange County itself; yet here they were, in plain view, smiling and smiling. A lot of things had been lacking in their relationship, but unfortunately mutual physical attraction was not one of them, and Lazar could feel that hoary old devouring serpent uncoiling deep in its Darwinian cave.
    “It’s nice to see you,” said Suzette.
    “You look pretty,” he said. “I like what you’ve done with your hair. You look like a Millais.”
    “Thank you,” she said, a little tonelessly; she was not quite ready to listen to all his prattle again. She pursed her lips and looked at him in a manner almost surgical, as though about to administer a precise blow with a very small ax. She said, “ Song of the Thin Man was on last week.”
    “I know,” he said. He was impressed, and oddly touched. “That’s pretty daring of you to mention that. Considering.”
    She set down her coffee cup, firmly, and he caught the flicker of her right biceps. “You got more than I got,” she said. “You got six thousand dollars! I got five thousand four hundred and ninety-five. I don’t owe you anything.”
    “I only got four thousand, remember?” he said. He felt himself blushing. “That came out, well, in court—don’t you remember? I—well, I lied.”
    “That’s right,” she said slowly. She rolled her eyes and bit her lip, remembering. “You lied. Four thousand. They were worth twice that.”
    “A lot of them were missing hair or limbs,” he said.
    “You pig!” She gave her head a monosyllabic shake, and the golden curls rustled like a dress. Since she had at one time been known to