Absent Friends Read Online Free PDF Page B

answer to Clark, and sliced at the air again.
    For some time now Marian had been seeing younger men. She had been surprised to find herself drawn to the first one: Frank, a field director for Human Rights Watch. The difference in their ages was not so very great, but enough: Marian by then had roots, commitments, the quiet consolation of expected rhythms. Frank was like a dancing flame. He sought, incessantly, new things to illuminate and to feed on. When he was transferred to Prague, she had been relieved. And then two months later she found herself sitting over martinis with a Japanese video artist even younger than Frank.
    The young men suited her in many ways. They had passion, they were tireless, in bed and in the world. Not yet weary, they saw the good in people, as Marian did, and also still had hopes (as Marian wished to have, but some days it was difficult) of helping it to blossom. Because they valued Marian's experience and fulsomeness, they were flattered by her attention, which flattered her in return.
    And they were willing to move on. No matter their protests, their broken hearts, and their promises, Marian knew they would begin to forget her as soon as the door had closed. Their need to be lightly connected suited her. It eased the burden of guilt she would otherwise feel as her joy in and desire for each new lover bloomed, flowered, and faded. It always did; it always would. She had come to accept that. No new love was able to last through the seasons in a heart like hers; none could become established where the roots of her first love ran so deep and its branches spread so wide.
    What had been between Marian and Sam had ended long ago, but the friendship that had started before and continued after seemed to Marian stronger, like a rosebush once the extraneous growth has been pruned away. She'd approached the start of their affair tentatively: Sam worked for MANY, and it had been new for Marian, poaching on her own preserve. But she'd judged Sam capable of handling the situation—its beginning, its middle, and its inevitable end—and she'd been correct. About character, Marian was rarely wrong. While others marveled at her unerring intuition, Marian understood her skill to be that of an overcompensating athlete injured when young, now running marathons even though—or because—she'd thought she'd never walk again.
    Marian was grateful for Sam, for his daily, practical presence in the office, for his willingness to stay friends. Still, when the Fund came up, she hoped he would be calm. In this circle of friends, she would be embarrassed by any attempt at rescue.
    A month ago, when this same group had come together for dinner, the first time some of them had seen the others since the attacks, the first time they had been together as a group, someone had asked about the Fund. Jeana, it was; she'd read about the establishment of the McCaffery Fund in the Tribune the day before, and she'd wondered why, with all Marian had to do, had she taken it on, this McCaffery thing? Marian answered, simply, to help, because they'd asked her. Didn't you know him, that firefighter? Katie asked. Oh, well, he was famous, Marian said.
    Marian knew many famous people. She never dropped names, but when Tomiko had had trouble with her work visa last year, Marian had called someone in a senator's office; and Ulrich's pictures would not be in the permanent collection at MOMA if he had not met MOMA's photography curator over dinner at Marian's loft. The fallen firefighter in whose name this fund was established had been notoriously publicity-shy but famous for daredevil heroic deeds nonetheless; it stood to reason, then, that Marian knew him.
    But though Marian did not expect to get through the evening without mention of the Fund, or of Jimmy, she was completely blindsided by the question that actually came.
    She was removing an olive pit discreetly to a bread plate when Clark asked what about that guy Randall, it was on the evening