Gryphon Read Online Free PDF Page B

yesterday. I wanted to drop something on the ground the way the trees do. Dead leaves reactivate the soil, you know. They don’t rake leaves in the forest, only in the suburbs. It’s against nature and foolhardy to rake leaves. I pulled out a strand of my hair and left it in the grass. Why did we get married in October? Tell me again.” He smirked at her. “I’ve forgotten. I’ve lost my memory.”
    “It was 1930, Horace. Times were hard. When you finally secured a job at the Farmers’ and Mechanics’ Bank, I agreed to marry you.”
    “Yes.”
    Margaret knew she had made a serious mistake as soon as she saw the tears: she had mentioned the bank.
    “When did you stop kissing me?” Horace asked.
    “What?”
    “After the war. You wouldn’t kiss me after the war. Why not?”
    “I think this is very unpleasant, Horace. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Of course you do. You wouldn’t kiss me after the war. Why?”
    “You know very well,” she said.
    “Tell me again,” Horace said. “I’ve lost my memory.”
    “I didn’t like it,” she muttered, standing up to look out of the window.
    “What didn’t you like?”
    “I didn’t like the way you kissed me. Too many germs.”
    “We weren’t old yet,” Horace said. “It’s what adults do. They have passions. You can’t fool me about that.”
    Margaret felt tired and hungry. She wished she hadn’t taken the breakfast roll out to the hallway.
    “I’m not here to settle old scores,” she said. “Do you want to split one of these candy bars?” Outside, a blue convertible with a white canvas roof came to a stop at an intersection and seemed unable to move, and all around it the small pedestrians froze into timeless attitudes, and the sun blinked on and off, as if a boy were flipping a wall switch.
    Horace struck a kitchen match on the zipper of his pants and lit up a cigarette. “I love cigarettes,” he said. “I get ideas from the smoke. Call me crazy if you want to, but yesterday I was thinking about how few decisions in my life were truly important. I didn’t decide about the war and I didn’t decide to drop the bomb. They didn’t ask me about nuclear generators, or, for that matter, about coal generators. I had opinions. They could have asked me. But they didn’t. Mr. List and I were discussing this yesterday. The only thing they ever asked us was what we were going to do on the weekends. That’s all. ‘What are you doing Saturday night?’ That’s the only question I can remember.”
    Margaret tore the brown paper away from the candy bar, then crumpled up the inner wrapper before she snapped off four little squares of the chocolate. Someone seemed to be flicking lights inside the First Christian Residence as well. The taste of the chocolate rushed across her tongue, straight from heaven.
    “Want any rum?” Horace asked. “I have some in the closet. Mr. Listbrought it for me. On days like this, I take to the rum with a fierce joy.” This line sounded like, and was, one of his favorites.
    “Horace, you can’t have liquor in here! You’ll be expelled!”
    Suddenly he appeared not to hear her. His face lost its color, and she could tell he would probably not say another word for the rest of the morning. She took the opportunity to snap off one more piece of the chocolate and to straighten the room, to put smelly ashtrays, pens, shirts, and dulled pencils in their rightful places. There were pencil sketches of trees, which she stacked into a neat pile. In this mess she noticed a photograph of the two of them together, young, sitting under a large chandelier, smiling fixedly. Where was that? Margaret couldn’t remember. Another photo showed Natwick, Horace’s dog in the 1950s, under a tree, his mouth open and his dirty retriever’s teeth prominent. Horace had trained him to smile on cue.
    “Someday, Horace,” Margaret said, “you’ll remember to keep your valuables and to throw away the trash. You’ve got the