A Stranger in This World Read Online Free PDF Page A

hoping for ice cream. He’d barely eaten at dinner. Even his father had noticed.
    ——
    Summer, school was out, his few friends had left town, nothing days. His mother sat with him after breakfast, inquired about drugs, he was scheduled to start a job in three weeks, did he need something to fill the time? Anomie, he said, bringing a smile to her face with the new word, the one thing he did right all day. The tennis racket ticked in a corner of Judy’s room, without going off. Tuesday nothing Wednesday nothing Thursday nothing, but he prowled the streets, a thief of opportunity, telling himself that he was only going to get the racket back. His nights were populated with versions of Judy,
Penthouse
dolls, secret skin, not the child who called to him still, Hi Paul! when he walked by to see if Mrs. MacGregor’s car was in the driveway—it always was—or the cleaning woman was there, but the tongue in his mouth, cries in his ear. He could not connect the two, could not believe that the afternoon had been anything but a dream, though now it was his everyday life that seemed like a dream, nothing weighed anything, nothing mattered, he found himself trying to read the clouds. It continued to rain, never hard, never letting up. Judy was growing inside him like a child, taking shape, stretching to be born, feeding on his blood. Even his father noticed.
    He was only going to get the racket back. Friday morning he saw Mrs. MacGregor’s car swish by under the arching trees, a flash of imitation woodgrain, a chance. A man two streets over had built a speedboat in his basement, a beautiful shape of varnished, steam-bent maple, without thinking how he was going to get it out. This was twenty years before, the house had been sold twice, the boat was still there.
    ——
    Paul, she said, Pauletta Paulotta Paulola Pauleeleelu.
    There in the corner was the tennis racket, and there she was. The air was turning fire-engine green, a whining in his ears like television, he wanted to lie down on the floor and cry like a baby boy.
    She said, My mom is gone all day.
    He lay down on the floor. Without affection, she came and lay beside him. The carpet was thick, soft and green, like a lawn, and as her clumsy fingers fumbled with his pants Paul wondered what the name for this was, fucking seemed too hard, making love seemed preposterous, maybe, as he lost the name for anything, maybe that was part of it, no name because it wasn’t anything human. Paul gave up his thoughts, met Judy on the carpet as body to body, equals, he remembered, equals. As he gave himself over to her hard little hands, he realized that only the things around it were at all human: courtship and roses, satin, magazines, going steady, we only owned the box, the thing in the box belonged to someone else, before words; and words extinguished themselves in his brain, though his eye kept recording, memories like pictures, her face, which was like an empty house, the rain in the trees outside, the plaid bedspread. Better than anything, but he wondered, in the shocked quiet afterward, what he was letting himself in for. He didn’t know anything.
    She said, I want some ice cream, Paul. Get me some, please.
    Left her lying on her side, her back to him, like an accident victim, heavy and inert. Nearly left, when he got to the kitchen, but remembered that his racket was still upstairs—the first joke, first hint that he was being played with. He thought of Judy and her cars, go left, now stop, and wondered who orwhat was watching him. Ice cream, two spoons, back along the morose hallways. What would it be like? A mommy, a daddy, a house. The ghostliness of these recent days came over him again, and he imagined that he would one day have all this, a house as big and fine as this one, a wife like Judy, only more intelligent, like looking down a deep hole into the future. A wife like Judy, what was so different? What was so wrong? But he knew as soon as he saw her, dressed again, big