Animal Husbandry Read Online Free PDF

reference to her, but something—
New-Cow hormones?
—made me decide to take him by the horns and find out what the deal was.
    “So. When’s the wedding?” I said, my talk-show-producer guest-preinterview skills kicking in—asking direct, to-the-point questions you really don’t want to know the answer to but that you need to know the answer to.
    “When?” Ray slung the bag of pants over his shoulder and stared into the window of Williams-Sonoma. There were wicker picnic baskets bursting with long-stemmed champagne flutes and red-checkered tablecloths, and he eyed them suspiciously. “Is May National Picnic Month? If it is, maybe Diane’ll want to do a show on that. You know, get a few retail gurus together. Maybe add Faith Popcorn. Talk about
trends
.”
    I stared into the window too but noticed only our reflection in it: one tall; the other short. One J.-Crew-model-bone-structure-endowed; the other Semitically challenged. It felt strange suddenly to be shopping, together, in a mall, in another city, when we’d never been outside the studio except for that lunch. I saw him roll his eyes and turn away from the window, and then we started walking again.
    “When am I getting married? I don’t know, actually. Sometimenext year. We haven’t quite figured it out.” He looked at me. “Do you think that’s weird?”
    Of course it was weird. “I don’t know you well enough to know if it’s weird or not.”
    “Well, it probably is. Most people who are getting married usually know when they’re getting married.” He smiled, and we kept walking.
    “How did you meet?” I asked.
    “At a friend’s party in Montauk. I was about to start my master’s in American history at Stanford. Mia had just graduated from Barnard, and I guess the thought of driving crosscountry to San Francisco appealed to her. Which appealed to me.” He looked down at his feet. “I guess I’ve always been shocked when someone shows the slightest bit of interest in me.” He slung the Gap bag down off his shoulder and carried it in front of him like a small child. “Anyway, so we did, and we found this great apartment, the top floor of this big old house, and it was bliss for the first few years, but then, I don’t know, something changed. I had this shitty legal proofreading job at night to help pay for tuition, and Mia started working at some rape crisis center, after which she stopped talking to me and stopped sleeping with me, and I would bike twenty miles a day, in the hills, down to the water, trying to figure out why I was with her. Now it’s six years later and I’m still trying to figure that out.”
    I looked away. Even then I knew enough not to say anything negative about a man’s girlfriend—past or present—no matter how much he seemed to want me to. Or, in Ray’s case, how much he seemed to be begging me to. Sooner or later it always backfired.
    “She’s not an easy person,” Ray continued. “I mean, she’s a
vegan
.” He laughed and took his glasses off. “I don’t know. Maybe I like being berated. Maybe I’m just naturally obsequious.”
    “Well, you must get something from each other,” I said. “People don’t usually stay together for no reason.”
    “It’s not that we don’t love each other,” he clarified, which was surprising given what he’d just said. “We do. Just never at the same time.” He rubbed his eyes and put his glasses back on. “Only now, we’re practically like brother and sister. Sometimes it just seems harder to leave than to stay.”
    (Better a Bull has some Cow than no Cow at all.)
    We walked through a set of automatic sliding doors and into the dark, humid air. Ray looked at me and elbowed me lightly. “So what about you? Were you ever going to get married without knowing exactly when you were going to get married?”
    “Me? No.” I smiled. “I came close once, but not since.” Not since Michael.
    “Why not?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. Michael was not exactly