Agnes Among the Gargoyles Read Online Free PDF Page A

might object?"
    Â Â Â "We'd get along like a house afire. We're very similar."
    Â Â Â "I'll bet they don't even sleep together," says Agnes.
    Â Â Â "Granted, Ron naked must be an appalling sight."
    Â Â Â Agnes spends a peaceful week at Barbara's. The reporters either can't find her or have lost interest, and Agnes doesn't care which. Agnes gets up early in the morning and makes breakfast, and after Barbara has gone off to audition or be an office temp, she shops for dinner or takes long walks through the neighborhood. She doesn't turn on a television. The newspapers are all in Hebrew. She soaks in Barbara's bathtub, which stands on brass lion's paws.
    Â Â Â Barbara is too disorganized to cook. She eats a lot of scalloped potatoes out of boxes. Agnes once considered going to cooking school. She spends hours making the kinds of desserts that haven't been seen since Delmonico's closed.
    Â Â Â "There's a tourniquet of butterfat tightening around my heart," says Barbara. "I love it."
    Â Â Â The two women eat like horses. Barbara blames her appetite on depression. She has broken up with her boyfriend Jack.
    Â Â Â Jack the Pinboy.
    Â Â Â Barbara met him at a cast party at the newly refurbished Hippodrome Lanes in Times Square. There were a lot of Wall Street people there that night. Barbara and Jack clucked their tongues at the money-grubbing Yuppie assholes they were forced to be near.
    Â Â Â Barbara said, "It was like someone picked up the brokerage houses and shook them and this was what fell out."
    Â Â Â The next thing Barbara knew, Jack was setting the pins in her alley. He tried to help with her horrific bowling. He shouted instructions. He contorted his body for the english. Then he tried something else. After dropping the rack for Barbara's turn, he would move several pins an inch or two to improve the action. Any contact at all guaranteed a strike. Barbara bowled nothing but strikes and gutter balls and 10-pin spares.
    Â Â Â "My score sheet was covered with slashes and dashes," Barbara tells Agnes. "It looked strangely cuneiform."
    Â Â Â "So the first thing you did together was cheat."
    Â Â Â "Agnes, you have no romance in you."
    Â Â Â Barbara pursued him. She went to hear his band, Anonymous, which plays rocked-up arrangements of traditional Irish folk music.
    Â Â Â "The young professionals go apeshit for us," Jack told Barbara.
    Â Â Â "Assholes," said Barbara. "Have you read much Joyce?"
    Â Â Â "Only Ulysses."
    Â Â Â That sealed it. Barbara, a fanatical reader, has always been a pushover for a man with a book. Barbara herself so loves books that she dropped out of college after a single semester because reading had become drudgery.
    Â Â Â Barbara thought she and Jack were in love. But his discontent soon became apparent.
    Â Â Â "We want different things," he said.
    Â Â Â She felt nauseated. "Like what?"
    Â Â Â "You want to talk all the time. You're always asking me about myself."
    Â Â Â He made it sound as though she had committed a crime.
    Â Â Â "I'm interested in you," she said.
    Â Â Â "You're rushing things. You'll find out about me in time."
    Â Â Â "How will I find out if I don't ask any questions?"
    Â Â Â "In a good relationship, things just emerge," he said scornfully. He was making her feel horribly empirical. "I think we should stop seeing each other. I can't spend my life telling you when your behavior is inappropriate. You certainly don't have a handle on it."
    Â Â Â "Tell me. I don't mind," said Barbara.
    Â Â Â At the recounting of this, Agnes's gin and tonic goes down her windpipe.
    Â Â  "That was my low point," Barbara admits.
    Â Â  "Good Lord. How debasing."
    Â Â Â Jack said to Barbara, "I need some time to think. I'm going to visit my brother for a few days. Can't you see how upset I am? Isn't that proof that there's