Going Native Read Online Free PDF Page B
Author: Stephen Wright
"Almost."
"Wylie?" Rho, already vaguely discomfited, having minutes ago shared with Gerri the impossible lunacy of her junior year at Northwestern, the wild boy called Speedy and the ending between obstetric stirrups in a horror not even her husband knows complete details of, offering as sacrament to the sisterly cheer of the moment this raw fragment of her past, she is now queasy with pangs of betrayal at ransacking her heart for a woman she discovered halfway through the telling she isn't sure she even likes, so. . . "Wylie?"
He approaches, pauses under the deck, gazing up at her. "We're okay." His hand reaches to touch her bare leg. "Looked like a holdup or an attempt or something like that. Whatever happened, somebody is definitely very dead."
"Oh my God."
"Couple minutes earlier," explains Tommy, "who knows what we might have seen. Or been involved in."
"The modern world," comments Gerri. "Five blocks away."
"You shoulda seen that body lying there on the pavement just as still as anything. It looked phony it was so real."
"Yes," Gerri declares, "just what I need to see, another dead person. I am sick to death of dead persons, of hearing about them, of looking at them, of feeling sorry for them; they're on television every hour, in the papers every morning, and bleeding all over me in every magazine. Today you'd think that was all life was about, dead people."
"Long as it ain't us," drawls Tommy.
At their backs there's a flash and a sudden whoosh, a beat of gigantic wings; they swivel in their seats to the unnerving spectacle of a column of flame rearing up angrily into the dim air. "Oh, look," remarks Rho, "Wylie's got the fire going."
The daiquiri pitcher is emptied and refilled and emptied again. The citronella candles are lit. Mr. Freleng, the retired electrician next door, totters out to adjust his hose, faithful attendant to the abiding needs of the lawn god. He behaves as if he were alone, blind and deaf to the balcony audience spellbound by each fussy exertion. Upstairs the children sleep at last. Daphne gets paid and goes home. A small dark bat appears, flutters anxiously through the soft twilight, a flimsy prop on ineptly managed wires.
"Five hundred mosquitoes an hour," informs Tommy. "Amazing."
"I suppose," says Gerri, "that radar they're supposed to have causes cancer."
"Even as we speak."
"It must be exhilarating, though," she goes on, entranced by the creature's strobelike flight, "to eat what's eating you."
"Well, I don't think --"
"But imagine being that free, able to fly, to sweep across the night in some sort of erotic stupor."
Tommy extends a closed fist. "So, Mrs. Hanna, if you could come back as any animal, the varmint of your choice would be --"
"Yes, Gene, the bat, definitely the bat."
If Rho is expected to comment, she misses her cue. The diverse demands and unforeseen surges of the day, in tandem with tonight's elevated blood alcohol levels, have driven her circuitry into a sputtering staticky condition near brownout or worse, she's phasing eccentrically in and out, her attention temporarily and fiercely magnetized by the oddest fragments of isolated fact, so while Gerri natters on, from bats and sex and reincarnation to -- working hard now to amuse her audience -- stale crowd-pleasers of lust and gaucherie among her wealthy clientele, Rho is pleasantly tuned to the resonant sound of hissing meat. She watches the coals glowing in backyard obscurity like poisonous pink eggs in a metal nest, the spit and spark of yellow flame as grease hits the briquettes like a short in the night, a modest show but richly entertaining. The hours of her day pass in review at a respectful distance, she feels nothing, the simplest formulation (my life, this particular point on the graph, is it + or - ?) beyond her depleted capacities, she's tired, foundering in a profuse mystery of feckless convalescence she recognizes to her relief as more than one private neurotic dilemma, every one of her friends
"Wylie?" Rho, already vaguely discomfited, having minutes ago shared with Gerri the impossible lunacy of her junior year at Northwestern, the wild boy called Speedy and the ending between obstetric stirrups in a horror not even her husband knows complete details of, offering as sacrament to the sisterly cheer of the moment this raw fragment of her past, she is now queasy with pangs of betrayal at ransacking her heart for a woman she discovered halfway through the telling she isn't sure she even likes, so. . . "Wylie?"
He approaches, pauses under the deck, gazing up at her. "We're okay." His hand reaches to touch her bare leg. "Looked like a holdup or an attempt or something like that. Whatever happened, somebody is definitely very dead."
"Oh my God."
"Couple minutes earlier," explains Tommy, "who knows what we might have seen. Or been involved in."
"The modern world," comments Gerri. "Five blocks away."
"You shoulda seen that body lying there on the pavement just as still as anything. It looked phony it was so real."
"Yes," Gerri declares, "just what I need to see, another dead person. I am sick to death of dead persons, of hearing about them, of looking at them, of feeling sorry for them; they're on television every hour, in the papers every morning, and bleeding all over me in every magazine. Today you'd think that was all life was about, dead people."
"Long as it ain't us," drawls Tommy.
At their backs there's a flash and a sudden whoosh, a beat of gigantic wings; they swivel in their seats to the unnerving spectacle of a column of flame rearing up angrily into the dim air. "Oh, look," remarks Rho, "Wylie's got the fire going."
The daiquiri pitcher is emptied and refilled and emptied again. The citronella candles are lit. Mr. Freleng, the retired electrician next door, totters out to adjust his hose, faithful attendant to the abiding needs of the lawn god. He behaves as if he were alone, blind and deaf to the balcony audience spellbound by each fussy exertion. Upstairs the children sleep at last. Daphne gets paid and goes home. A small dark bat appears, flutters anxiously through the soft twilight, a flimsy prop on ineptly managed wires.
"Five hundred mosquitoes an hour," informs Tommy. "Amazing."
"I suppose," says Gerri, "that radar they're supposed to have causes cancer."
"Even as we speak."
"It must be exhilarating, though," she goes on, entranced by the creature's strobelike flight, "to eat what's eating you."
"Well, I don't think --"
"But imagine being that free, able to fly, to sweep across the night in some sort of erotic stupor."
Tommy extends a closed fist. "So, Mrs. Hanna, if you could come back as any animal, the varmint of your choice would be --"
"Yes, Gene, the bat, definitely the bat."
If Rho is expected to comment, she misses her cue. The diverse demands and unforeseen surges of the day, in tandem with tonight's elevated blood alcohol levels, have driven her circuitry into a sputtering staticky condition near brownout or worse, she's phasing eccentrically in and out, her attention temporarily and fiercely magnetized by the oddest fragments of isolated fact, so while Gerri natters on, from bats and sex and reincarnation to -- working hard now to amuse her audience -- stale crowd-pleasers of lust and gaucherie among her wealthy clientele, Rho is pleasantly tuned to the resonant sound of hissing meat. She watches the coals glowing in backyard obscurity like poisonous pink eggs in a metal nest, the spit and spark of yellow flame as grease hits the briquettes like a short in the night, a modest show but richly entertaining. The hours of her day pass in review at a respectful distance, she feels nothing, the simplest formulation (my life, this particular point on the graph, is it + or - ?) beyond her depleted capacities, she's tired, foundering in a profuse mystery of feckless convalescence she recognizes to her relief as more than one private neurotic dilemma, every one of her friends