Blind Lake Read Online Free PDF Page B

the hectic red of his cheeks, and he wore shapeless sweaters to disguise the awkward generosity of his stomach and hips. Elaine disliked him—he was a parvenu, she had whispered to Chris, a fraud, practically a fucking spiritualist—and Vogel had compounded the sin with his unfailing politeness. “Algonquin Park,” he said. “Canada. A camping trip. Decades ago, of course.”
    “Looking for God?”
    “It was a coed trip. As I recall, I was looking to get laid.”
    “You were what, a divinity student?”
    “We didn’t take vows of chastity, Elaine.”
    “Doesn’t God frown on things like that?”
    “Things like what? Like sexual intercourse? Not so far as I have been able to discern, no. You should read my book.”
    “Ah, but I did.” She turned to Chris. “Have you?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Sebastian is an old-fashioned mystic. God in all things.”
    “In some things more than others,” Sebastian said, which struck Chris as both cryptic and typically Sebastian.
    “Fascinating as this is,” Chris said, “I’m thinking we should get some dinner. The PR guy said there’s a place in the concourse that’s open till midnight.”
    “I’m game,” Elaine said, “as long as you promise not to pick up the waitress.”
    “I’m not hungry,” Vogel said. “Go on without me. I’ll guard the luggage.”
    “Fast, St. Francis,” Elaine said, shrugging her jacket on.
     
     
    Chris knew about Elaine’s Roy Chapman Andrews biography. He had read it as a freshman. Back then she had been an up-and-coming science journalist, shortlisted for an AAAS Westinghouse Award, charting a career path he hoped one day to follow.
    Chris’s one and only book to date had also been a biography of a sort. The nice thing about Elaine was that she had not made an issue of the book’s stormy history and seemed to have no objection to working with him. Amazing, he thought, what you learn to settle for.
    The restaurant Ari Weingart had recommended was tucked between an interface store and an office-supply shop in the open-air wing of the mallway. Most of these stores were closed for the evening, and the concourse had a vaguely derelict aspect in the cooling autumn air. But the diner, a franchise Sawyer’s Steak & Seafood, was doing a brisk business. Big crowd, lots of talk in the air. They grabbed a vinyl booth by the wide concourse window. The decor was chrome and pastel and potted plants, very late-twentieth-century, the fake reassurance of a fake antiquity. The menus were shaped like T-bones.
    Chris felt blissfully anonymous.
    “Good God,” Elaine said. “Darkest suburbia.”
    “What are you ordering?”
    “Well, let’s see. The All-Day Breakfast? The Mom’s Comfort Meat Loaf?”
    A waiter approached in time to hear her name these offerings in a tone of high irony. “The Atlantic Salmon is good,” he said.
    “Good for
what
, exactly? No, never mind. The salmon will do. Chris?”
    He ordered the same, embarrassed. The waiter shrugged and walked away.
    “You can be an incredible snob, Elaine.”
    “Think about where we are. At the cutting edge of human knowledge. Standing on the shoulders of Copernicus and Galileo. So where do we eat? A truck stop with a salad bar.”
    Chris had never figured out how Elaine reconciled her close attention to food with her carefully suppressed middle-age spread. Rewarding herself with quality, he guessed. Sacrificing quantity. Balancing act. She was a Wallenda of the waistline.
    “I mean, come on,” she said, “who exactly is being snobbish here? I’m fifty years old, I know what I like, I can endure a fast-food joint or a frozen dinner, but do I really have to pretend the apple-brown-betty is crème brulée? I spent my youth drinking sour coffee from paper cups. I
graduated
from that.” She added, “You will, too.”
    “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
    “Confess. Crossbank was a washout for you.”
    “I picked up some useful material.” Or at least one totemic quote.
It