Good Bones and Simple Murders Read Online Free PDF Page B

and “bird watching.”
    F. If you think this is all too bourgeois, make John a revolutionary and Mary a counterespionage agent and see how far that gets you. Remember, this is Canada. You’ll still end up with A, though in between you may get a lustful brawling saga of passionate involvement, a chronicle of our times, sort of.
    You’ll have to face it, the endings are the same however you slice it. Don’t be deluded by any other endings, they’re all fake, either deliberately fake, with malicious intent to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality.
    The only authentic ending is the one provided here:
    John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die
.
    So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it’s the hardest to do anything with.
    That’s about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.
    Now try How and Why.

LET US
NOW
PRAISE
STUPID
WOMEN
    —the airheads, the bubblebrains, the ditzy blondes: the headstrong teenagers too dumb to listen to their mothers:
    all those with mattress stuffing between their ears, all the lush hostesses who tell us to have a good day and give us the wrong change while checking their Big Hair in the mirror,
    all those who dry their freshly shampooed poodles in the microwave,
    and those whose boyfriends tell them chlorophyll chewing gum is a contraceptive, and who believe it;
    all those with nervously bitten fingernails because they don’t know whether to pee or get off the pot, all those who don’t know how to spell the word
pee
, all those who laugh good-naturedly at stupid jokes like this one, even though they don’t get the point.

    They don’t live in the real world
, we tell ourselves fondly: but what kind of criticism is that?
    If they can manage not to live in it, good for them. We would rather not live in it either, ourselves.
    And in fact they don’t live in it, because such women are fictions: composed by others, but just as frequently by themselves,
    though even stupid women are not so stupid as they pretend: they pretend for love.
    Men love them because they make even stupid men feel smart: women for the same reason,
    and because they are reminded of all the stupid things they have done themselves,
    but mostly because without them there would be no stories.
    No stories! No stories! Imagine a world without stories!
    But that’s exactly what you would have, if all the women were wise.
    The Wise Virgins keep their lamps trimmed and filled with oil, and the bridegroom arrives, in the proper way, knocking at the front door, in time for his dinner;
    no fuss, no muss, and also no story at all. What can be told about the Wise Virgins, such bloodless paragons?
    They bite their tongues, they watch their smart mouths, they sew their own clothing,
    they achieve professional recognition, they do every right thing without effort.
    Somehow they are insupportable: they have no narrative vices:
    their wise smiles are too knowing, too knowing about us and our stupidities.
    We suspect them of having mean hearts.
    They are far too clever, not for their own good but for ours.
    The Foolish Virgins, on the other hand, let their lamps go out:
    and when the bridegroom turns up and rings the doorbell,
    they are asleep in bed, and he has to climb in through the window:
    and people scream and fall over things, and identities get mistaken,
    and there’s a chase scene, and breakage, and much satisfactory uproar:
    none of which would have happened if these girls hadn’t been several bricks short of a load.
    • • •
    Ah the Eternal Stupid Woman! How we enjoy hearing about her:
    as she listens to the con-artist yarns of the plausible snake,
    and ends up eating the free sample of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge:
    thus giving birth to Theology;
    or as she opens the tricky gift box containing all