Little Known Facts: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

could assail her with are true:
If he asked you out, you’d leave me for him in a second. You wouldn’t have given me the time of day if I weren’t his son.
Realistically, how could she not feel this way about Will’s father? Long before they met, Renn Ivins was more familiar to her than many of her own family members. She has seen almost all of his movies, a number of them years before she started to date his son.
    And yet, whatever her feelings for his father, she probably cares for Will as much as she has for any man since the college sweetheart she married during their senior year at UCSD, a marriage that lasted only two years. Her husband enlisted to fight in Iraq without first discussing it with her, she seeing his enlistment as a betrayal, he as an honorable and patriotic act. Joe is now stationed in Afghanistan, but the last time she saw him, at a college alumni party two years earlier, he was almost unrecognizable, not so much because of his physical appearance as because of his rigidity and quickness to perceive insult when no one was, in fact, insulting him. His face reminded her of certain landscapes she had seen in photographs, ones ravaged by fire.
    She is older than Will by four years, and already tainted by domestic failure (a feeling she has trouble suppressing), whereas he has never been married or engaged. She is a tall, pretty redhead who regularly attracts the attention of other men, but she likes being with Will. Even if he doesn’t yet have a career, he is reliable, smart, and not self-congratulatory in the way that the close relatives of famous people she knew in college sometimes were. His plan, before he went to New Orleans to help his father, was to take the LSAT a second time and apply to law schools. But upon his return from Louisiana, he decided not to fill out applications for next year. What happened while he was working on
Bourbon at Dusk
isn’t clear to her, though her impression is that he wouldn’t take orders as noncommittally as expected, being prone to bad moods and intractability where his father is concerned. If she hadn’t been in Maui with two college friends when Will’s father called suddenly to ask him to come to New Orleans, she would have advised him against it.
    Her own career, reorganizing and streamlining work and living spaces for restless wealthy people, is profitable, and, she has found, more fulfilling than she had expected when she began to work as a life space consultant, a title she made up for her business cards. She admires simplicity, uncluttered rooms, natural light. Will has let her redesign his place, which is in a high-rise just off Sepulveda Boulevard. His neighbors are all doctors or movie people or privileged offspring like himself, living on inherited money.
    He has been back from New Orleans for a little over two weeks when he tells her that she can move in with him if she still wants to. It is something they have discussed a few times, but usually without any real conviction on his part and hurt or irritated feelings on hers. When he makes this suggestion, he is rinsing a glass in the kitchen sink, his back turned. She is sitting at the table, eating some of the fresh strawberries she cut up for dessert and laced with honey. He hasn’t eaten any of them. He didn’t eat much of the baked chicken she made for dinner either. He has lost weight since he left to work on his father’s production, and seems likely to lose more if he keeps going on the long runs he has added to his mornings without eating breakfast before or after these runs.
    When she doesn’t reply, he turns and looks at her. “So what do you think?”
    Her mouth is full of half-chewed strawberries. She has to swallow one almost whole to keep from choking on it. “I like the idea, but I need a little time to think about it, Will,” she finally says. “I thought you weren’t interested in living together.”
    “I was always interested, but I wasn’t sure.”
    “You are