Lost Between Houses Read Online Free PDF Page B

the kitchen like I’ve been shot out of a cannon.
    Anyway, I’m down there for awhile, fooling around, when I hear Harper at the top of the stairs.
    “Let’s go down to the dock,” he says, which means that his bad mood has lifted. And I say sure and we head out.
    Must have been a couple of weeks later. I was in my mother’s bedroom one afternoon, listening to a Latin zither record. She went to town once a week and cleaned out the local recordstore, I mean she bought everything, Pete Fountain and his clarinet, Elvis Presley’s Golden Hits, Dave Brubeck, soundtracks from Italian movies, the works. It was corny stuff, this Latin zither, but romantic and it made me sentimental, sad about stuff that had never even happened. My mother had this great big picture window in her bedroom, it was huge, you could spread out your arms and not even touch the sides. You could see everything, the field going down to the marsh, the lake all blue and sparkly, a country road way, way off in the distance, and sometimes when the sun was setting, there was a gold light that covered everything. You couldn’t believe anything could be so pretty.
    I heard the phone ring at the other end of the house. It rang a couple of times and then it stopped. I waited. I heard footsteps coming toward me.
    “Simon, it’s for you.”
    I figured it was Greg, the guy with the bad teeth. We were going to Teen Town that night. He looked okay in there, you could hardly notice his teeth. I picked up the phone.
    “Do you remember me?” It was a sort of boyish voice but it was a girl.
    “Scarlet?”
    “Boy, you got a good memory.”
    “I recognized your voice.”
    “A lot of people do. I got your number from a friend of yours.”
    “Oh yeah?”
    “A guy at your party.”
    “Who was it?”
    “I can’t remember his name. Not really my type. I hope you don’t mind me calling you.”
    “No, not at all.”
    “I mean there’s not very much you could say about it, is there?”
    There was a pause.
    “Listen, do you remember that guy I was with?” she said.
    “Mitch?”
    “Yeah.”
    “He dumped me.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, he never really struck me as your type. If you know what I mean.” I sort of jumped into this sentence without thinking about it, and now I was stuck inside it.
    “No, I don’t.”
    “Well, he just didn’t seem like the kind of person you are.
    “What kind of person is that?”
    “Sort of…” I waited for the word to come, “complicated.”
    “You’re complicated, too,” she said. “I could tell.”
    “Oh yeah? How?”
    “Just by the stuff you said. Not having a girlfriend and not caring if anybody knew.”
    “Well, I’ve had a girlfriend before.”
    “Yeah, but it doesn’t mean anything, just
having
one. Just for the sake of it.”
    “Exactly. You don’t want to brag or anything.”
    That stumped her. “
    What do you mean?”
    “Well, there are some things you don’t want to get caught doing and tooting your own horn is definitely one of them.”
    “What are the other things?”
    “What?”
    “The other things you don’t want to get caught doing?”
    “Well, never mind about that.”
    “Tell me.”
    “We don’t really know each other well enough to get into that stuff.”
    “So you’ve had a girlfriend before?”
    “A couple.”
    “Do you have one now?”
    “Not at this very moment.”
    “Yeah, but is there somebody out there thinking they’re your girlfriend?”
    “Not unless they’re mentally ill.”
    “Listen,” she said, “when are you coming back down to the city?”
    I went outside looking for Harper. He was driving golf balls into the ravine.
    “Don’t you think the old man is going to notice he’s missing a few balls?”
    “Nah,” he said. “He won’t notice fuck-all.”
    Harper brought down the club and whacked one into the blue sky; it hung there for a moment and then crackled as it fell through the trees.
    “That’s a beauty,” I said. He teed up