Hall of Small Mammals Read Online Free PDF Page B

nonexistence, sliding back and forth between the two. Daisy Theory has helped put Claire’s physics department on the map.
    â€œI haven’t mentioned him until now because”—she scratches her chin with her chipped electric-blue fingernail—“I was embarrassed, I guess.”
    â€œJust tell me,” he says, wanting this over with quickly.
    â€œAll right, here it is. Okay. I’m kind of married.”
    â€œKind of?” He doesn’t understand. Typically, one is or isn’t married. He races through the possibilities: she’s separated from someone and failed to mention it until now; or rather, she met and married a mysterious man on the sly; or, not a man, but a woman, and what she wants to propose next is an open relationship. No, more likely this is a new and clever update on the same old fight they have about time and priorities. She’s married to her
research
, and he just needs to get that through his head.
    â€œNo, what I mean to say is, sometimes at night, when I dream, I dream I have a husband.”
    â€œA dream marriage,” he says. “Okay.” He kills the burner under the pan and scrapes the potatoes onto the plates where already the green beans have gone cold.
    â€œTell me what you’re thinking. Does this bother you? You’re not the man in the dream.”
    â€œJust so I’m clear,” he says. “This isn’t you telling me that you’re cheating on me?”
    â€œI’m not cheating on you. Not unless you count dreams as cheating. Do you?”
    Walker wonders if this is an elaborate test; if, maybe, he muttered some other woman’s name in his sleep the previous night. Although he sometimes dreams about sex, in the morning the details of his encounters are usually hazy and impressionistic, with floating parts that don’t connect to a specific face. He doesn’t mention this now. A dream marriage, if that’s really what this is about, should probably not bother him. He tells her so.
    â€œSo it doesn’t concern you that I’m in love with someone else in my dreams?” she asks.
    â€œYou didn’t mention love.”
    â€œWell, I married him, didn’t I?”
    â€œDo I know the guy? Have I met him? Please don’t tell me it’s your advisor.”
    Whenever she talks about needing more time for her research, Walker knows, that includes more time alone with her advisor. She reaches across the island for Walker’s hand, a gesture that makes him suspect he’s about to get more bad news.
    â€œIt’s not my advisor,” she says. “My husband’s name is Alan Gass.”
    Alan Gass only exists in her dream, she explains. He is anophthalmologist, a tall man with bright blue eyes and a lightly bearded face. His favorite meal in the world is barbecue biscuits. He is allergic to shellfish. Years ago he played college football, but he’s put on a little weight since those days. On Saturdays he plays golf, but professes to hate what he calls clubhouse culture. He just likes the wind in his hair, the taste of a cold beer on the back nine. Claire has been married to him for almost a decade.
    â€œWow,” Walker says. “You have incredibly detailed dreams.”
    â€œThat’s what I’m trying to tell you. They’re super-realistic. Sometimes I dream that we’re just eating dinner together, kind of like this. We tell each other about our day. Or we don’t talk at all. We’ve known each other so long, silence is okay at this point, you know?”
    Walker takes a bite of the potatoes. Claire hasn’t shut her laptop.
    â€œYou writing Alan an email over there?” he asks, and expects a full assault of noncommutative geometry, U-waves, big gravity. But when she turns the screen, he discovers that she’s looking at a website with pictures of celebrities eating messy sandwiches and picking out shampoo at the drugstore.
    â€œSo is