Boy on the Bridge Read Online Free PDF Page A

Leonardos.”
    “And have you been to the Russian Museum?”
    “The icons. Yes.”
    “St. Isaac’s Cathedral?”
    “Very impressive.”
    “The Fortress of Peter and Paul?”
    “Yes.”
    “Here’s one place I think you haven’t been: the Museum of Hygiene. Have you been to the Museum of Hygiene?”
    She laughed. “No.”
    “They have a wonderful exhibit on the physical consequences of bad habits like smoking,” he said. “Disgusting! And they have Pavlov’s dog — the original! Stuffed.”
    “I’d like to see that.”
    “I don’t know…. The anatomy displays might be too gruesome for you. Next time we meet, I’ll take you to the Museum of Religion and Atheism.”
    “Um, okay.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Why was he acting so stiff and tour-guidey? This wasn’t what she wanted at all. She got enough of that cultural-exchange stuff at the university. Everyone she met hid behind an official happy face: See our historical wonders, let’s have a cultural exchange, the youth of the world must find common ground, blah blah blah …
    The café was steamy. She unbuttoned her coat. She didn’t really know anything about this boy, so she decided to start with the basics — which suited her vocabulary.
    “Are you a student?” she asked.
    “No, I’m an artist. A painter.”
    “Oh.” The blunt tips of his long fingers tapped the glass of coffee — they looked like an artist’s hands. One nail was smudged with a chip of bright blue. Under his coat he wore a V-neck sweater and an orange T-shirt.
    “I paint signs for movie theaters. The names of the movies, the times they are playing, maybe a scene from a film. That’s my job. Very boring.”
    “It doesn’t sound too bad. You should try working at McDonald’s.”
    “McDonald’s?”
    “It’s a restaurant.” She tried to translate fast food and chain into Russian but he looked blank. “They sell hamburgers.”
    “It’s good to work in a restaurant,” he said. “You have access to all that food.”
    “Um … yeah.” She wondered if anyone ever took a job at McDonald’s because they wanted to eat more of it.
    They sipped their coffees and watched the fur hats bob past the steamy glass window. The silence grew, a barrier between them. Finally, Laura said, “We are supposed to be practicing speaking, but we are not saying much.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not good at this. All I can think of are the English dialogues we learned in school.” He switched into stilted English: “ ‘Good afternoon. My name is Mr. Smith. I would like to buy a train ticket to Boston City, please.’ ‘Yes, Mr. Smith. One-way ticket to Boston City. Pay me two dollars, please.’ ”
    Laura laughed. “Boston City! Where’s that?”
    “In the Republic of New England, of course. Don’t you know your American geography?” He didn’t smile, but his eyes sparkled just a little, so that she couldn’t tell if he was teasing her or not.
    “Why don’t you teach me some Russian vocabulary?” shesuggested. “For example … what’s that?” She pointed to her glass.
    “ Shchenok ,” Alyosha said.
    She squinted skeptically at him. She was pretty sure he’d just said puppy , not glass or coffee or anything close.
    “Okay … what’s this?” She held up her glove.
    “Flower,” he replied in Russian.
    “It’s not a flower,” she said.
    “Which one of us is the native speaker here?” he asked.
    “You are, but —”
    “It’s an idiom,” he insisted.
    “If you say so.” She pointed to her right eye, which she was absolutely sure she knew the word for. “What do you call this?”
    “A star,” he said.
    “Now I know you’re teasing me,” she said. “It’s my eye.”
    “To you it may be just an eye. To me it is a beam of light from galaxies away.”
    She stared at him, taken aback. She didn’t know whether to feel flattered or foolish. “Is that from a poem?”
    He only smiled mysteriously. Then he looked at