Inside Madeleine Read Online Free PDF Page A

them and Shelley said, Michael’s not here. I said, yes he is. I heard four footsteps come in. Then they start fooling around. I can hear the slight rustling, you know? I can smell the mustiness of her cunt. So I start toward them. I was just so angry, you know. I wanted to pull them apart, rip them apart. And Shelley’s laughing, moving so quickly—Michael, too—that I can’t grab them. The whole time I was yelling, I know you’re here! I know what you are doing! And I was falling over the furniture, trying to grab them. They just laughed at me. And then they ran out.”
    “That is so awful, Caroline.”
    “Why would they do that?”
    “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
    “Do your roommates do shit like that to you?”
    “Well, not like that.” Maggie thought for a moment. “I havetwo roommates. I don’t really like them. But we’re not that nasty to each other, either. Listen, Caroline, I better start reading. It’s getting late.” She felt bad saying it. But it was true.
    She read: “Although we usually fail to think of it in this way, the world around us today is just one of countless possible worlds. The millions of species of plants, animals, and insects we see around us are the expression of myriad interacting processes, including chance—perhaps especially chance. At any point in its prehistory, a species might just as easily have taken a different direction, given a slightly altered confluence of events, thus leaving today’s world a slightly different place.”
    A year later, on a particularly freezing, windy day in March, Maggie was walking down Commonwealth Avenue toward a class that she didn’t really care about. She hadn’t mustered up the emotion to care about anthropology, or anything really, in quite some time at that point. Even Anya Lander held no power for Maggie. Anya! Who once meant so much to her. Who cared for her and seemed to lead the way for Maggie when she was a new student, a new person in Boston. Maggie saw Anya in class, a seminar on the history of science, but that was it. The wind blew viciously, cruelly, as if full of hate. Maggie wore red high heel boots and jeans and a short motorcycle jacket, the jacket that once belonged to Tony. Her head was uncovered and her thin, blonde hair whipped in the wind. She was shivering large, spastic shivers, her hands shoved deep in the cold animal hide of her coat. She was deeply hungover.She’d taken to getting very drunk and having sex with just about anybody, as many nights as she could.
    Caroline came walking toward her, alone, tap tapping her cane, her face purple-red with the cold, and perhaps fear. Her coat was buttoned wrongly, as her shirts often were when Maggie read to her, now a year ago. They had not been in touch since then, even though Maggie had promised to stay in touch, to call or write letters that Caroline’s mother would then read to her. The wind blew fiercely and Caroline hovered, as if she were about to fall. It had been so long since Maggie had seen her. Maggie dug her chin down into her neck to brace herself against the wind, but it didn’t help. Nothing did.
    This was her chance. As the two young women approached each other, a great gust of wind sang in Maggie’s ridiculously uncovered, raw ears. It was a searing noise, high-pitched and unearthly, like a band of desperate angels screeching to be heard. The noise penetrated the cold, superceded it, and gave Maggie a sharp, abrupt headache.
    They were both alone, walking toward each other, in opposite directions. This was her chance to help a blind girl through an impossible day, through one moment of a horrible, horrible day. Or, Maggie could walk right by her, and Caroline would never know. Would she? Maggie slowed down, her mouth began to open. Caroline slowed down too, her eyes darting around, panicked and searching. Could she sense her, could Caroline sense her?

    Once, when Maggie was still reading to Caroline, they went out for coffee. As