An Ornithologist's Guide to Life Read Online Free PDF

Harry’s work in Paris.
    â€œWhere are these buildings you’re saving?” Rachel asks. The rum has made her bold.
    â€œThe fifteenth arrondisement,” Harry says.
    â€œNear that big cemetery? The one with Chopin and Gertrude Stein and everyone?” Rachel asks him.
    â€œYes,” he answers, obviously excited. “You know Paris?”
    â€œWell, I spent time there, years ago. Almost ten years ago, I guess. I was there in winter. And it rained all the time. That made it even more perfect, roaming around that cemetery in the cold rain.”
    â€œYes,” Harry says. “It would.”
    â€œWe rented a drafty apartment near Notre Dame.” Rachel tries to keep her voice from catching. But a rush of warm memories slide over her. The peeling paint on the walls, the sourishsmell of falafels from a stand below, the lumpy mattress on their bed. She can almost hear Peter’s poor attempts at romancing her in French. Shut the door, shut the door , he whispered each night as he moved inside her, and Rachel would struggle for a way to do that, to somehow close their bedroom door—though it only opened into a high ceilinged sitting room filled with faded velvet high backed chairs and a worn sofa whose stuffing fell out and floated around the apartment like the fluff from old dandelions. It was weeks before she realized what Peter was whispering to her: Je t’adore .
    Harry has rested his hand lightly on her bare arm.
    â€œYou have fond memories of living in Paris,” he says.
    Rachel can manage only a nod.
    â€œMaybe someday you’ll go back?” he asks.
    â€œYes,” she tells him, surprising herself with the enthusiasm in her voice, as if by going back she could reclaim something.
    T HEN LATER, AT DINNER —Mary has made sate, shrimp and chicken, with jasmine rice—Rachel and Harry have their heads bent together like old friends. She is telling him about Europe, how she and Peter spent two years there. She doesn’t mention Peter by name, or that she later married him. Instead, she calls him my friend ; she says we .
    â€œWe managed to get into Eastern Europe. That was something,” she says.
    â€œTen years ago?” Harry whistles. “I wish I’d seen it back then.”
    â€œI had no idea you were such an adventurer,” Mary says. “Hitchhiking around Europe and such.”
    â€œMary knows me better as the crazed mother making sure my daughter doesn’t fall head first off the curly slide,” Rachel explains.
    â€œYou have a daughter?” Harry asks her.
    â€œShe has a Sophia!” Mary tells him.
    â€œSpelled differently,” Dan adds.
    â€œMine is S-O-F-I-A,” Rachel begins.
    Harry finishes for her. “Like the city,” he says.
    W HEN H ARRY HEARS where she lives, he insists on driving her home. “You can’t walk there at this time of night,” he tells her.
    It is very late. After dinner, they all go outside and eat strawberry shortcake on the patio. Dan brings out a bottle of grappa that he and Mary got in Italy.
    â€œIs that when you saw the pope?” Harry asks. It is obvious this is a joke between them.
    â€œYes,” Dan says, “that’s when we saw the pope.”
    By the time they are leaving, Rachel feels happy. She lets Harry take her arm. She agrees to his offer of a ride home. His car is a beat up Triumph Spitfire with a noisy muffler. She tries to ask something once, but the muffler is too loud. They cannot talk. When they get to her house, and he turns off the car, the silence almost hurts her ears. She thinks of how after rock concerts her ears would feel this way when she walked outside. This is something Harry would appreciate, but when she turns to tell him he has already moved out of the car and is opening her door for her.
    â€œI would like to come in,” he tells her.
    It is odd, but since that first rush of memories about Paris, Rachel cannot get