Nine Volt Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

beguiling smile.
    “Can I make you something to eat?” she said.
    Oh god, I wanted to say no. I loathe hurting people’s
feelings, but home cooking usually turns out bad for me. She saw my hesitancy
before I could even begin to stammer and decline the invitation.
    “Vegetarian, right?” she said. “I just don’t know the depths
of your persuasion. Ovo-lacto? Vegan? You won’t be afraid to say, will you?”
    “Eggs and dairy. Though I will eat a fish once in a while if
I don’t have to see its head or fins.”
    “That’s what I thought. I just couldn’t remember for
certain.”
    “How did you know?” I don’t proselytize my diet or carry on
a moral crusade. I learned it from my uncle as a way to stay healthy while
living on the road. It is nothing more than that.
    “Common knowledge,” she said, laughing. “How about an
omelet?”
    It seemed the safest choice that a stranger could propose,
and I had already peeked past her shoulder to see that her kitchen was
immaculate, with utensils in tidy order on a wall rail, spotless pans hanging
from a rack near the range. When I nodded, she washed her hands in the kitchen
sink, then pulled an omelet pan down from the rack, though she is small enough
that she had to stand on her toes and stretch to reach it.
    “You can put on music if you like,” she said.
    Ah, permission from the owner to prowl her premises. A
butcher-block island separated the kitchen from the living area. A baby grand
piano stood at the far end of the room, and a large Mission-style sofa and two
chairs filled the middle of the room. No TV in sight. Glass-enclosed oak
bookcases lined the walls. Three of the larger cabinets held CDs and vinyl
records. A couple hundred DVDs were alphabetized and labeled, apparently having
been converted from reel-to-reel. The whole lot was worth a modest fortune on
eBay. I was longing to see what a cultured pick-up artist keeps in her library,
but my goal was to select music.
    Very little in her collection had been composed later than
the middle of the last century. Plenty of the recordings were newer, but the
composers had all died, save for a few like John Adams. An eclectic but deep
set of classical CDs stood alongside a collection of Americana artifacts and
British and Celtic folk music that I would pawn Toby to own. My hands shook
with both challenge and desire: I needed to choose what to play while
repressing an impulse to drown in the liner notes of the CDs. It would take
days to work through it all. I had intended to judge her taste, but looking at
this awesome collection, it occurred to me that I would be judged by what I
selected, and the performance anxiety unnerved me. It had to be something I
knew well, so I could pay attention to her and not the music. Shaking from the
overstimulation, I went for a CD collection of early recordings by the Maddox
Brothers and Rose.
    With the West Coast hillbilly boogie turned down low, I
forced myself not to examine her books as I passed. Yet I couldn’t help seeing
the shelves of opera folios and musicology books, the kind you can read only in
the reference room of a university library.
    “So, you’re a musical snob?” I said, trying to joke. “I see
you aren’t afraid of what Puccini will do to you. You have it all. Madama Butterfly. The Girl of the Golden
West. Turandot. ” I almost selected the
homemade CD of Turandot from the cabinet to play, but
we had Rose Maddox for now.
    Susi looked up from preparing the food and smiled again,
lighting the room. Dammit. Also, the food smelled wonderful. She said, “I’m not
interested in opera anymore. I should have gotten rid of all that before now.”
    “Would you marry me so I could stay here and listen to your
music and read your books?”
    She laughed as she turned the omelet out onto a plate. The
toast popped up at the same moment. “I thought you’d like it. Oh, I know you
don’t care for the classical part. The rest is a blessed collection, isn’t it?
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