Interference & Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

astrology, tantric yoga, alchemy, and herbal medicine. From time to time she’d send him one, torn from a magazine, with a short note; sometimes all it said was FYI with Xs and Os for a signature.
    Harvey had his towel under his arm, rolled as always when he went swimming, but this time there was nothing in it. They were going to a nude beach. Harvey ran his hand repeatedly over the top of his head as they walked.
    â€œHarvey, remember that song you wrote for Sylvia?” said Linda. “The one about, well not about, but the one where you said, ‘The woods and water whisper: Eden’s here, O Eden’s here.’”
    â€œThat was the refrain,” said Harvey. So they were going to bring up Sylvia. Just like the time he’d visited them out West. Poor Harvey. Marries his perfect partner, singer of his songs, his inspiration, and she up and dies on him. They never knew her. What did they know? Pity. Screw pity.
    â€œDidn’t Bonnie Raitt record that?” asked Rick.
    â€œIt was never released. Her producer sent me a tape. It’s somewhere. Packed away. So you remember it?”
    â€œJust that part,” said Linda. “I was thinking how this place reminds me of it. Wait till you see it, Harvey, it’s perfect!”
    Harvey was remembering. He tried not to. He tried as hard as he tried to hold in his belly. He could feel his insides rumbling. Except for a few memories of their wedding, which were in fact memories of pictures of their wedding—cutting the cake, sitting in the back of the limo together, Sylvia throwing her garter and trying to hit her older sister’s upraised hands—he managed not to remember almost all their times together. The trouble was that his hands remembered; his nose and his chest and his belly and his arms remembered. What came back to him was the smell of her hair and skin, the light down on her forearms, the small pink birthmark on her neck, the feel of her earlobe between his lips. He remembered Sylvia, but he could not, or would not, remember places they had been and things they’d done together.
    Off to the left, in bright sunlight, children were sliding down the smooth rocks of the fast water where the streambed dropped suddenly, and there were twelve or fifteen people on the pebbled beach, sitting or lying on towels and blankets, reading or talking in twos and threes. The water poured over the rocks where the children played, then widened and became shallower as it passed the beach until it curved out of sight. The stream had cut though a tall hill so that across the water was a wall of clay and rock on top of which the trees, some with roots exposed, leaned out over the edge. It was as if the whole scene were a trench dug with a spade.
    Harvey didn’t notice any of this. While Linda and Rick spread out their blanket, holding down the corners with their sneakers, Harvey took off his clothes. Would people look at him? Would they note that he was mushroom-white, potbellied, with pimples on his ass? He ran his hand up over his head again and again.
    In the hollow dark of Harveys swollen self there was thunder, and he feared the storm it augured. Sometimes he would shake and lose control of his body, of his ability to concentrate or follow a conversation. At least this time he knew what he was so nervous about, and a part of him even thought that it was silly for him to be so agitated. Though his insides churned and mumbled, he could almost smile at himself. But only almost: he should have taken better care; he should have gotten more exercise; he should have worn a hat when he was young. He would jog; he would get more sunshine; he would write songs again. Harvey thought these things wordlessly and all at once.
    Intent on not looking at anyone else, Harvey headed straight for the water and waded in up to his neck. The water was warm and soothing. He paddled around for a short while, then found a place where some underwater rocks