Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain: Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

thing he said before he disappeared inside the bathroom. When he opened the door, for a second Arnie could see the white slope of his mother’s back, crouched over the water tap.
    He tried the motel TV but now, at midday, found only soap operas and cooking shows. The motel TV sat next to their own set, a thirty-six-incher that Jay had brought in from the car last night so that it wouldn’t get stolen. Arnie’d brought in his transforming lizard, and for a while he tried playing with it but soon realized that it was the wrong toy to bring because it did not have any purpose beyond changing from one thing to another. And it could not be the two things it was at once — like you could not have the lizard do battle with the spaceship. Too slow to be constantly changing back and forth.
    Last night he’d also brought in the fishing pole, just a cheap Zebco rig, nothing to worry about getting stolen, but still. Its reel was made of plastic and shaped like the nose cone of a rocket. He drew back the drapes and opened the balcony’s sliding door. It overlooked the dune behind the motel, which was littered with the random plastic that the last storm had delivered up. He could not see the ocean from here but could hear its pulsing underneath the steadier howling of the wind.
    He stepped back inside and slid the door shut, his ears humming in the quiet. He could walk to the beach, but his jacket was still locked in the car, and then he thought about what the man had said: You got to build up your tolerance for rain. He searched the pocket of Jay’s crumpled jeans but did not find the keys there — he must’ve had them in his flannel shirt. He thought about knocking on the bathroom door then, but could not bring himself to do it. The two of them would be in the tub, flopping around like seals.
    So he sat on his bed, eating his cherry pie and watching a fat man in a chef’s hat make something called polenta. It looked like what prisoners of war would have to eat. Even with the TV on, Arnie could hear Jay’s laughter made husky with smoke, the water spattering through it. His mother’s laugh reminded him of a vine, tendrils wrapping themselves on anything that would hold.
    When he finished eating, what Arnie did was stab a piece of the other pie on the hook of his Zebco. Out on the balcony, he pulled the damp sleeves of his sweatshirt down around his fists. Ten yards off in the dune there was a considerable puddle of rainwater, surrounded by broken glass and one abandoned flip-flop. No fish were leaping from it, not that he could see, but two seagulls seemed very interested in whatever lay beneath the surface: they nosed the water and threw drops over their heads. And if you could drive on the beach here, you might just be able to fish in a puddle. Who could tell how things worked now that they’d come to the end of the earth?
    Arnie’s first cast bounced off the roof overhang on the balcony. His next landed in the mud below, and failed to attract the seagulls’ notice. But on the third cast he was able to make his pie-piece land near the rim of the puddle: the two birds gawked at it for a moment, wondering what it was. Then one pecked gingerly and finally managed to pull a piece of the piece loose. Swallowed. Tried to go back for more. This discovery — that the waxy clod was edible — caused the other bird to turn up the volume of its squawk. The two birds commenced lunging in earnest, one stabbing its beak at the pie-chunk while the other huffed its feathers, and while they were caught up in this game of feints and counter-feints a bigger, whiter gull swooped down and gobbled up the hook.
    Once it realized it was snagged, the bird landed, then hopped on the ground for a while with a look of confusion that soon gave way to rage. The bird flapped in the puddle and made the sound kyee! kyee! while its beak snapped open and shut. Mud flew as the bird slapped the puddle with its wings: kyee! But little by little, the bird wore