Animal Husbandry Read Online Free PDF Page A

Evelyn, and Evelyn looked at Ray, and then they all looked at Diane except for me.
    “I did,” I said finally, confessing my heinous crime. “I booked Brooke Shields.”
    Diane took a swig of her Volvic water. “Why? I think she’s a loser. She’s B list. We’re not B list anymore. We’re A list now. And we need A-list guests. A plus-list guests.”
    “I know,” I said. “It’s just that last year we canceled her twice because of scheduling conflicts—and now, because we’re national and because a play she’s in is just about to open, her publicist called in the chit.”
    Diane stared at me—her chief talent booker, who’d just admitted she’d been worn down by some twelve-year-old publicist—and before I could think of what to say next, Eddie lit a cigarette and cleared his throat.
    “I think Brooke Shields is cute.”
    There was silence for a few seconds, and then everyone started laughing. Even Diane. I turned to Eddie in disbelief and gratitude: Out of nowhere he’d come to my rescue and saved my ass.
    “Thanks,” I whispered.
    Eddie graciously responded by blowing a long stream of smoke in my face. Then he grinned and leaned toward me almost imperceptibly. “You owe me,” he said under his breath. “Big time.”
    At the end of May, Diane sent me down to Washington to scout for prospective guests at the annual book publishers’ convention, and at the end of the first day, on Saturday, Ray showed up unexpectedly with Evelyn. It was almost three o’clock when they arrived on the convention floor, wearing shorts and T-shirts and fake badges, and when I asked him, he told me that they had decided to drive down at the last minute because Evelyn was going anyway to visit her parent, wholived nearby, and because he hadn’t been to Washington for a while. It made me wonder whether the office scuttlebutt about their being involved, fiancée notwithstanding was really true. But then he said, “If you’re free later, after I drop Evelyn off, we could go to the Mall and see the sights,” and I wasn’t so sure.
    I looked past him at Evelyn’s long tan legs and shoulder-length horse hair, and tried not to think about my humidity-induced frizzball hair or about what his invitation might mean.
    “Okay,” I said. I had never seen the Mall at night.
    “Isn’t this amazing?” he said. “The scope of it? The expansiveness of it? The
manifest destiny
of it?”
    It was around eight o’clock that evening, and we were standing in front of The Gap, on the third level of the Pentagon City Mall, as it turned out. Ray strode into the store and over to a table of folded khakis. He held a pair by the waistband up to his stomach, and the pants dropped down, hitting his legs just above the ankles.
    “Do you think they’re too short?” he said, looking at me over the wire rims of his glasses.
    He was like a kid, with his glasses, and his hair falling into his eyes, and his flood-level test-pants, but when he pulled up his T-shirt to reposition the waistband, I saw a ripple of abdominal muscles that made my mouth water.
    I think I nodded.
    “Good,” he said, taking one last look and then refolding them. “If my pants aren’t short, I trip over them.”
    Still salivating from the flash of flesh I had seen, I followed him stupidly as he headed toward the register. “I love to shop,” he said, taking his wallet out of his back pocket. “I find it very comforting, the idea of being able to satisfy a need so easily.Like now: I came down here with only an extra pair of boxer shorts and I needed a pair of pants—and now I have them.” He looked at me and grinned. “Everything should be this easy. Mia thinks I’m insane. She thinks men are supposed to hate shopping. But I can’t help it. I grew up on Long Island—Mall Country.”
    He paid for the pants with a credit card, then slipped the card and receipt into his wallet and slid the bag off the counter.
    Mia again. I considered ignoring this second