All Night Read Online Free PDF

tuxedo, with her back to me. She must have checked in the pockets. What is she doing now? I can’t hear what she’s saying.
    She looks as if she is pretending to talk to the acting school judges. Maybe about her father. About the nose hairs. Or how he would do tai chi fighting onthe weekends for extra money. How he loved being in the ring. He’d fight anyone, a kick-boxer or maybe a karate guy. When he practised, his movements were very slow, but he was fast enough in the ring. She told me no one could knock him down.
    But Jess is different. Her spirits do get low. I know that about her. She is a fighter, too, but she needs someone steady beside her.
    Someone who doesn’t take no for an answer. Or even not yes .
    I find myself standing by the door, listening. Her voice is hard to hear, but I can just make out what she’s saying.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you about Peter,” she says. “Peter had these sideburns. Has. He has. Is he really gone? I don’t believe it.”
    Quiet. I imagine Jess wiping her eyes. Misty. “These sideburns. He would shave them off and look so goofy, like a twelve-year-old. But they’d be back in a few days. You couldn’t ... you couldn’t keep him down. He would call in the middle of the night, blind drunk. He’d say, ‘Jess. Jess, I love you?’ Like a question. ‘Where are you? What are you doing right now?’ And I’d say, ‘I’m sleeping. Beside Gregor, your friend. What do you want?’ ”
    Her voice falls, and I strain to hear. “Peter told me, ‘I want to just breathe the air you breathe. That’s all. That’s all I need.’ ” She gives a little laugh.
    I am shaking, shaking in the cold. But I can’t go in yet. She says, “I know Peter was drunk. But I would give anything, anything I’ve got, to hear that voice again: ‘I want to just breathe the air you breathe.’”
    I step away. I don’t want to hear any more, so I walk back up the alley. But I really have nowhere else to go. When I turn around, I shuffle my feet as loudly as I can to warn her that I’m coming.
    I hurry through the door and quickly shut it behind me. I jam the magazine in place. Jess is in bed now, in the dark, pretending to be asleep. The tuxedo jacket lies on the floor where she must have dropped it.
    If she can pretend, so can I. “It’s bloody cold out there!” I say. I pull off my outer clothes and jump into bed beside her.
    “I’ve got freezer burn!” I say. I am a shivering ice cube beside her.
    “Gregor,” she says.
    “Just don’t say anything. Nothing! We’ve already said enough.”
    “You’re shaking.” She holds and rubs me.
    “Not another word,” I say. “Honestly. We have said way too much. All right?”
    She stays quiet for a moment. Then she says, “I looked in the tux pocket.”
    Of course she did. And yet still she was thinking of Peter. I just want to breathe the air you breathe. He would say anything to impress her.
    “Yes,” I say. “You looked.”
    She turns on the light. “A toy snake jumped out of the box in the pocket and almost hit me in the eye. I screamed like you have never heard me scream.”
    “I’m sorry. I can explain everything,” I say.
    “I’d like to hear you try.”
    I sit up. “Did you check the other pocket?” When she doesn’t move, I run from the bed and get the tuxedo jacket. From the pocket she did not look in, I pull out the small gift box she did not see.
    Jess smiles grimly. “What’s in there, a whoopee cushion?”
    I just want to breathe the air you breathe. All right, Peter could be a poet. That’s what she wants from me. I open the box: a beautiful old ring with tiny diamonds.
    That’s what she wants. I get down on one knee again.
    “It was my grandmother’s,” I say. “I’m sorry. I was only going to use the snake if I had to.”
    “Why would you ever need to propose to your girlfriend with a toy snake?”
    All right, my plan was silly, or worse. I was supposed to be there when she opened the