An Ornithologist's Guide to Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

the idea of it out of her mind. She misses Peter, yes. But she misses more than just him. She wants that again. The kind of love they had then, in Paris, and all the rest of their time in Europe, the months in Krakow and Sofia, the nights spent sleeping tangled together in second class compartments on trains, speeding toward—toward what? A future, she supposed. A future that was good, and right. She did not think of any of that then, drinking bad Polish coffee in the early morning, or walking the gray streets of Sofia, each tucking a hand into the other’s coat pocket, or chewing the yeasty warm rolls that every Hungarian bakery seemed to sell. You don’t think of the rightness of things then; you simply bask in it. Later, when you find yourself on a sidewalk in Providence late at night with a stranger, it all comes back—why, Rachel can almost taste those rolls! She takes Harry’s hand. It is small for a man’s hand, and soft. She takes it in hers and leads him inside.
    M ARY CALLS, FIRST thing Sunday morning. She has just come back from church—She goes to church? Rachel thinks, blinking against the sun that filters in between the slats of her mini-blinds—and, Mary squeaks into the phone, she only has a minute but she really really thinks that Harry liked Rachel. Rachel stifles a laugh. She is finding out that Mary is oddly innocent.
    â€œI’m sure he’ll call you,” Mary is saying.
    She sounds almost schoolgirlish, and for a momentRachel imagines her in the plaid skirt and cardigan uniform of some Catholic church.
    â€œI think he will,” Rachel manages. A conversation with a real friend would play so differently. She knows this. She can still smell Harry on her sheets; her thighs are sticky from him.
    â€œAll of that stuff about Europe,” Mary says. “He ate that up.”
    Rachel stifles more laughter. She promises to tell Mary every detail when he does call. She promises to get the girls together later in the week. Until finally she can hang up, and go back to sleep.
    W HEN HE FINALLY does call, on Wednesday, she invites him over for lunch. It is her day off, and Rachel is reworking her résumé. She does not want to manage the toy store anymore. In fact, she is sick of managing things. Rachel puts all of the papers aside, into a heap, on the kitchen table, and makes poached chicken. Then she pours herself a glass of wine—So decadent, she thinks, drinking wine in the middle of the day—and waits.
    Harry arrives late, breathless. She is struck again by how small he is, and how she has spent so much time with large men. Perhaps, she decides, as he forgoes the poached chicken and instead undresses her right there in the kitchen, perhaps she has wasted her time on large men. Here she is, making love on her kitchen table—she sits, he stands, and they are eye to eye. Her résumé flutters to the floor. Like snow, she thinks. Like fallout. Like the stuffing from that old sofa in Paris. Is it an omen? She tries to focus on what she is doing, her legswrapped around Harry’s waist, her breath coming out in tight little gasps, but she is too far ahead of herself, past this moment and seeing somewhere down the road. Living near that cemetery in Paris, Sofia in a Madeline outfit—blue coat, yellow hat, and Harry taking her like this, on tables and in doorways. What a future, she sees as Harry collapses against her, done.
    Rachel puts her hands on the back of his neck. She can feel the bristly hair growing there. The tops of his ears are red.
    â€œWe’ve made quite a mess,” he says, looking down at her papers.
    He bends to pick them up, and she is suddenly embarrassed at what she had been thinking just a moment before. This man is a stranger. His body, in daylight, reminds her of a rooster, compact and sure of itself. He struts, she realizes as he gathers all of her papers and hands them to her. He has freckles she did not know