An Available Man Read Online Free PDF

what he listened for mostly, and this time, too, a remnant of that laughter in her voice, a brief reprisal of their silly happiness that day. It didn’t hurt anyone, he reasoned, and the message might even be putting off future phone calls from unknown, unattached women. He put the phone back in his pocket and considered what to do.
    Edward had attended dozens of the Morgansterns’ dinner parties, but he’d never gone there before without Bee and they had never been the first ones to arrive. Long ago, when thechildren were still at home, there were all the delays of saying good night—Julie was especially clingy—and the futile warnings about bedtime and homework and television repeated like protective mantras.
    And once the kids were grown and gone, Bee had invented other delays: a misplaced earring or shoe, or the need to pee one more time, as if they were going into some third-world area without indoor plumbing instead of to an upscale suburban Jersey street so similar to their own. She’d insisted they were only “fashionably late” when they showed up last, after the other guests had made sloppy dents in the hummus, and the conversation was already heightened by alcohol. Bee loved plunging into the middle of a party, and Edward always followed in her wake, feeling his own natural reticence melt in the warm and lively room.
    Now, hiding out in his car, he looked at his watch every few minutes until the half hour was reached, and then he drove back to the Morgansterns’ street, where other cars were already parked near their house. He recognized Ned and Lizzie Gilbert’s SUV, the environment-friendly Prius that belonged to the Jordans. Just a few old friends, as Sybil had promised in that cajoling telephone call. She had been Bee’s oldest and closest friend, and she and Henry were like sturdy bookends of support throughout her illness and ever since.
    “Edward, we
miss
you,” she’d practically wailed on the phone, and he realized that he had been missing them, too, all these months, or at least the ordinary business of a communal life, of breaking bread with friends, and talking about politics and movies and neighborhood gossip.
    So he grabbed the bottle of Chardonnay that had rolled around the floor of the passenger side while he drove, and wentinside and accepted the minor clamor at his arrival, the velvet skim of the women’s cheeks, the hearty grasps and back-patting of the men. But if they spoke of Bee, he believed he would not be able to bear it, and if they didn’t, it might be equally terrible.
    The recently dead were such a social menace. Their absence was as aggressive as the loudest voice in a room. You could not speak of them without sorrow, or ignore them without shame and even trepidation. They ruined the natural flow of conversation and the pleasurable balance of coupledom. It had been tolerable somehow during that unreal but official period of mourning, when they’d all come to him with their casseroles and consolation. But tonight was a kind of debut, or at least a reentry into the real world. Edward was on his own now; he would be the extra man in the room, the odd number at the table.
    But when he glanced into the dining room, he saw that the gleaming Parsons table had been set for ten; its symmetry was shocking. And then the doorbell rang and Henry was greeting a woman Edward had never seen before. She’d come alone—the door was shut firmly behind her—and she carried a large ferny, foil-wrapped plant, which Henry took from her, along with her coat and trailing scarf, and he staggered a little under the awkward burden. Edward didn’t offer to help, his automatic inclination, because he didn’t want to be introduced to this stranger in the entry. It was only a fix-up, after all, and he felt the awful thrill of Sybil’s betrayal.
    Then Sybil herself was coming toward him, pulling the plant woman along by the hand. “Oh, Edward,” she said, as if they’d just run into each other