Crazy in Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

represented the unschooled. I tried to get her attention, but she was engaged with her weak martini.
    “You know, Mother,” Clare said, “I was interested in nature, but that was always Georgie’s province. Georgie was the nature lover, I was the bookworm. Georgie was the tomboy, I loved pretty dresses. It’s strange how we attribute different characteristics to each child. Even here,” she said, casting a significant glance at her two sons, playing with drink coasters. “One is the scamp, the other the gentleman.” I thought I saw Eugene, the scamp, sharpen when he heard that, but he continued to play.
    “I think Georgie would be a good lawyer,” Nick said. “She knows a lot of law. She sat through the bar review with me, and I know she could have passed the bar exam. In some states you don’t need a law degree—you serve an apprenticeship, then pass the bar.”
    Honora leaned forward, grinning. “I’m just waiting to see what happens with the Observatory. I think it will put the Swift name on the map.”
    “Thanks, Mom,” I said. For no matter how plain I saw Honora, she was still my mother, and I wanted her to be proud of me.

    IN A WEEK THE weather was clear and fine. I lay on the floor of my workroom, reading old newspapers. The sun had come around the Point and was streaming through the tall windows. It glittered on the bay. Shorebirds appeared in bold relief against the brightness. By their silhouettes I recognized mallards, mergansers, buffleheads, brants, loons, and cormorants. The kingfisher perched on the pier. I found no updates on Mona Tuchman. The phone rang.
    “It’s me,” said Nick.
    “What’s cooking?”
    “Tonight will be very late. I won’t make it home.”
    “I’ll make a reservation,” I said. Whenever Nick had to stay so late that he would miss his flight, I would book a room at the Gregory and take a train into the city.
    “Georgie, are you sure you want to? It’s going to be late, and I mean late.”
    “Don’t ask such a ridiculous question,” I said.
    “Ah, well.” He paused, then said, “Project Broadsword is taking off. A corporate raider is getting into the act.”
    Corporate raider. I thought of the language of tender offers: white knight, golden parachutes, shark repellents, scorched earth, sale of crown jewels. It had a poetry that belied the brash doggedness of the participants. “Don’t tell me the details. Discretion is paramount. Someone might have your phone bugged.”
    “Which train will you take?” Nick asked, ignoring my sarcasm. I couldn’t stand the way he used those phrases, like a boy playing King Arthur or Arabian Nights, playful little phrases that trivialized his work and made too light of the disruption it caused in our lives.
    “The next one. The one that gets in at two-thirty.”
    “I’m sorry about this. It’s just that meetings are scheduled all day, and then I’ll have to turn the agreement around. They need a final version tomorrow morning.”
    “That’s okay,” I said. “We can have a late dinner tonight. Clare gave me a book about New York restaurants open after midnight. There are more than you’d think.”
    Nick laughed. I pictured him leaning back in his brown leather chair, his back to the window facing Trinity Church’s dark spire. I knew exactly which glen plaid suit he had worn that morning, which navy foulard tie, which socks. His white shirts were interchangeable; even I could not tell them apart. The instant a fray appeared, he would give me the shirt to wear on the beach. I found his dislike of frays endearing.
    “Should I call you when I get in?” I asked.
    “Of course. Leave a message with Denise if I can’t come to the phone.”
    “I will. I love you.”
    “I love you.”
    I love you
: We said it so often I sometimes expected the words to lose their meaning, but they never did.
    We had a regular room at the Gregory, a small hotel on West Twentieth Street named for Yeats’s Lady Gregory. Before the