A Stranger's House Read Online Free PDF Page B

research done in this former boys’ dormitory, that money would keep coming in, and I would have a job. Nothing more: only a job. Sometimes I wept over this, over the realization that there might not be anything more for me to do than be here; but most times I just worked, collected my pay, accepted my benefits, comforted, somehow, by the knowledge that if indeed I ever had a baby, the insurance would have covered everything.
    I looked at Sandra, and thought I had seen some sort of hope slipping away from her. I thought maybe she was losing something, or perhaps she had already lost it.
    I said, “If you tell me you’re having your period, I’ll believe you. But if you tell me the truth at lunch, I’ll believe you even more.” I smiled at her, not sure whether or not she could see me in the darkness. “In the computer room.”
    â€œOkay,” she said, and took hold of my hand on her shoulder. She squeezed it, let go, and turned toward the computer room at the far end of the hall. I watched her move toward the bare bulb at the hall’s halfway point, and saw her burst into color as she passed beneath it, her white coat brilliant, her brunette hair shiny in the French braid, the pale blue of her shirt cuffs below her lab coat sleeves. Then she disappeared again into the dark.
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    Rabbit running would be easy today. We were at the beginning of a new study, the rabbits fresh, delivered only last night by Mr. Gadsen, the animal supplier for most of the labs on campus. He was an old man, short and a little overweight, but you could tell by looking at him that he had been in shape at one time: his forearms were still thick and hard, his shoulders broad. He had a fringe of white hair just above his collar in back, and always had on his Boston Red Sox cap, the bill crumpled and soft. He always wore a red corduroy shirt and ancient, dirty Levi’s and a Levi’s jacket, the elbows worn through to show red shirt.
    He was a good man, I knew; he treated the rabbits as best as anyone could, though none of us had ever been out to his farm in Leverett to find out what happened out there, how he was able to raise these animals so well. They were always healthy, bright, clean. Seldom did any of them come in sick.
    But Mr. Gadsen—no one, except perhaps Will, knew him to have a first name—drank too much, his nose and face flushed no matter what time of day or year. A couple of times I’d stepped into Will’s office, just after a new batch of rabbits had been delivered downstairs, only to find Mr. Gadsen leaning forward in the old rocking chair, Will in the blue chair, each with a Styrofoam cup in his hand, Mr. Gadsen with a fifth of some off-brand whiskey in his other hand.
    â€œTo new rabbits,” Mr. Gadsen would laugh and look up at me each time. He always gave the same toast, holding the cup in the air as if it were fine crystal: “May your happiness multiply as quicklyas do my rabbits,” and he would laugh again, knock back the slug of whiskey, his BoSox cap never falling off no matter how quickly he snapped back his head.
    I felt sorry for him, always smelling of booze and animals: rabbits, guinea pigs, blue jays, cats, everything else he handled. That smell made me want to cry for him sometimes, but most often I had to smile because he seemed happy, and he cared for the animals.
    About a year ago, for no other reason than that he wanted to try someone new, Will decided to buy some animals from a different supplier, this one out near Worcester. When Mr. Gadsen had called to find out how many rabbits we would need for the next study, it had been left to me to explain that we had used somebody else, Will in London to visit a laboratory, everyone in our own lab busy with something else.
    â€œGoddammit,” he had said over the phone, though not to me. “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it,” he whispered again and again. I didn’t know