February Read Online Free PDF Page A

he thought, Why not? He liked islands. He’d heard you could run into Björk on the sidewalk.
    Something old-fashioned, a rogue honesty Jane Downey probably wasn’t even aware of and couldn’t control—that’s what he’d seen in her face. A girl from Alberta who was writing a PhD thesis in anthropology. She was in Iceland for an academic conference and they met in a bar.
    The little Japanese girl on the platform in Tasmania reached into the pocket of her dress and took out a cellophane packet, and she tore it open with her teeth. She let the packet flutter to the ground, and although John had no memory of doing so, he must have bent and picked it up.
    Littering is bad, he must have thought. He must have engaged the adding machine of morality, the subconscious work of ticking through the rights and wrongs he had committed recently, in case there was a need to defend himself. Jane Downey’s false tone induced in him a vertigo similar to the vertigo he’d felt when he leapt off the cliff a few days earlier to zoom and swoop like some heavy-headed bird over the rainforests of Tasmania. He had not enjoyed the ride while it was happening. It had been something—he realized as soon as his feet left the cliff—he needed to get through. But immediately afterwards—legs rubbery, a crusty line of drool on his chin from breathing through his mouth and yelling his guts out over the treetops—he’d felt a luxurious clap of solitude, the sense that he would always be happy in his own company.
    And now, as he reached into his pocket in the Singapore airport to pay for his espresso, there was the purple candy wrapper.
    Inside the packet had been a plastic ring with a giant candy jewel. The little girl had put on the ring and sucked the candy, and it was faceted and red like a ruby, and the dye from it had stained her lips. The sun in Tasmania had caused the candy-jewel to pulse, and in the harsh light John had thought of it as emotion: the dull red light in the ring going flat and bright by turns, like a twist of love or fear.
    John had felt pretty sure that when he and Jane Downey said goodbye at Heathrow almost seven months ago, it was with the firm understanding that there would be no phone calls. He had tried to work that former understanding into his conversation with Jane Downey. A slight reference—nothing crude or cold—to the fact that maybe she should ask herself what the fuck she was doing phoning him up out of the blue.
    And now he was striding through the Singapore airport, and he desperately wanted his mother’s advice. He had phoned his mother’s number without giving a thought to what time it was at home. He had a desire, he realized, to be absolved. John wanted his mother to be indignant on his behalf, avenging. He wanted her to leap at the throat of the world.
    The Singapore sun was blasting through the glass wall of the terminal. The airport was cool but a heat haze lifted off the tarmac, and it made the plane rolling slowly towards the building look wobbly. John took the candy wrapper he’d found in his pocket to a garbage bin and tossed it, but some sugary resin or static electricity caused it to stick to him. He shook his hand over the bin and the wrapper clung to the cuff of his shirt and slid down his pant leg and worked its way to the sole of his shoe. He walked with it attached to his shoe towards the endless expanse of glass that looked out over the landing strip. The sunrise or the sunset—whatever it was—and the disintegrating darkness above. The girl behind the coffee bar was calling to him—Sir, Sir—because he had her cup and saucer, but he ignored her.
    His mother was groggy and panicked all at once.
    The thing is, John said. I think I got somebody pregnant. Then he felt the candy wrapper under his shoe. He stepped on the wrapper with his other foot and the cup jiggled on the saucer, and he lifted the first foot and looked around to see who was watching him. The wrapper peeled off and