All That Follows Read Online Free PDF

mensch rather than a snitch.” Emboldened by alcohol and being far from home, he is airing for both their benefits a more truly daring version of himself. What is there to stop him? As far as this young stranger is concerned, he is an unmarked canvas that he can color in any way he wants. “Guns,” he says again, and then adds a line that, even as he says it, seems lifted from the tritest gangster movie: “He’s armed. He’s desperate. He could do anything … so we should do something. Yes?”
    “Well, yeah. That’s what I said to Mum …” (Here she imitates her mother’s evidently apprehensive voice.) “She said, ‘Be sensible. Don’t get involved.’ Well, let’s be honest, that’s never on the toolbar, is it? That isn’t me. I always get involved. Feet first. She always got involved when she was my age. So she says.”
    “She was an activist.”
    “My mum, the activist? Not nowadays she’s not. She’s … what’s the opposite?”
    “A dormouse,” Leonard suggests.
    The teenager laughs. “Just a pinch more lively and opinionated than a dormouse.”
    “A rightist, then?”
    “No, not that. She hasn’t changed her mind. She’s more, you know … a smolderer. All smoke and no fire? She’s shouting at the TV news all day but doesn’t even vote.”
    “A sofa socialist.” It’s Francine’s nickname for her husband nowadays.
    “A sofa socialist. That’s it. Pass the velvet cushions, please.” She mimes a yawn onto the back of her hand.
    “She was a firebrand, actually,” Leonard says. “She really was. We both were. Once upon a time. Red Nadia.” In fact, for a moment, earlier, he expected to discover that her mother was Maxie’s female comrade in the hostage house.
    “Is that you now, a sofa socialist? Or are you still the activist?”
    “I’m still ready,” Leonard says. Not quite a lie. Ever since his teenage years he has been ready for the fray—politically, at least. Where other boys had sports or girls or evening jobs, little Lennie immersed himself in his music, or in protest groups, his meetings and his high hopes for the world. “One has to throw one’s pebble at the wall,” he adds, a modest phrase he’s always liked.
    “So let’s get ready with the pebbles, then.” She high-fives him, and Leonard responds a little clumsily, sending wincing pain into his shoulder. Then they sit awkwardly and silently for just a shade too long. Too long for Leonard, anyway. He has to speak. “I hope I haven’t lost the fire.” He is rewarded by an entirely unguarded smile that can mean anything: that she finds him laughable, admirable, embarrassing, dishonest. But he is charmed by it, and by her openness. Again they sit in silence, staring at the back wall of the pub. This silence is no longer cumbersome. The teenager is thinking, even nodding to herself.
    “Yeah, what you said is right,” she says finally. “He’s armed. We should do something because he could do anything . That’s great, you know? Do it, do it, do it now.” She drums her knees and sings. “ Yup, Davey Davey, do it now . You know that Jo Bond song? I’ve reached the beating heart of you / But I won’t fall apart for you / Unless you do it now, ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum . That’s almost how it goes. I’ll send it to your cell if you like. Great track.” She drums on her knees again. “Want one of these?”
    Leonard used to smoke, and to validate himself a bit with her—and with anybody watching from the rear windows of the busy bar; they must seem an ill-matched pair—he takes a cigarette, his first since both he and Francine gave up three years ago, despite the assurances printed on low-risk brands that nicotine in moderation might protect the smoker from dementia. He feels self-conscious in her company. She’s noisy, odd, and unpredictable. And she is the curl-up-and-nestle sort who sits too close and touches people when she talks to them, a hand spread lightly on his arm, to show support or sympathy,