Orpheus Lost Read Online Free PDF Page A

Down in the garage there were crevasses and mountains of rubble, flattened cars, hundreds of injuries, but only eleven deaths.
    “Oh my God, oh my God,” a woman with a bloodied face sobbed. “This isn’t going to stop. It’s going to keep happening, and no one knows where or when.”
    At Godiva Chocolates in the Prudential lobby, the store manager said: “Where next? First New York, then DC and LA, then Atlanta, and now Boston. Nowhere’s safe.” There was a splattered tide-line of chocolate wrack on the wall behind her. “Our stock is ruined,” she said. “But what are truffles compared to a life? Not one of our sales clerks was killed. And yes, we’ll be open tomorrow. If we folded our tents and crept away, we’d be letting the terrorists win.”
    “I heard about it on my car radio,” a driver in downtown Boston said. “No, it won’t make me avoid the Callahan Tunnel. This is just something we have to learn to live with. Suicide bombings are like traffic accidents. You know they could happen any time, but you believe they will always happen to someone else. If you hear about one, you make a detour.”
    “My daughter lives in Israel,” a woman told the roving reporter. “They’ve had to deal with this kind of thing for years. What can I say? You grin and bear it. You can’t let the terrorists win. You have to get on with your life.”
    A mother was interviewed in Massachusetts General beside the bed of her four-year-old son. An oxygen mask covered the child’s face. “Ms. Dawson,” the reporter said. “I understand that you were just getting into the elevator on underground level three and that your husband was killed. Do you think the government is doing enough to prevent terrorist attacks?”
    The woman turned her ravaged face to the lens. She could not speak. The camera zoomed into a close-up of the little boy inside the oxygen mask, and a strangled sob came from Mishka. He had his knees hugged up to his chest. He rocked back and forth on the sofa like a child trapped inside a bad dream.
    “Mishka,” Leela murmured, holding him. She could feel him trembling. She turned the television off. “Let’s go to bed,” she whispered, and they made fierce and desperate love and clung to each other.
    Afterwards, Mishka’s sleep was turbulent. He groaned and cried out. He warded off blows with his arms. He talked in scattershot bursts, sometimes shouting and keeping Leela’s nerves on edge. Most of his words were unintelligible. At certain moments he seemed to be pleading for his life. Twice Leela heard him cry out to his mother and once she heard him plead: Uncle Otto, I promise I won’t open your door .
    She stroked his hair, helplessly, until she too fell into fitful sleep.
    Hours later, when she woke in the dark and reached for him, the bed was empty.
    “Mishka?” she called.
    She groped for the light and checked the bathroom. She checked the landing, the staircase, and the front hall at street level, but he had gone. She noted that his violin was also missing.
    He did not answer his cell phone. He did not answer the phone in his office the next day. He did not return until nightfall.
    “Where were you?” she asked, baffled, angry, and weak with relief.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to disturb you. I went to the Music Lab and played for hours.”
    “I called the Music Lab. You didn’t answer.”
    “I unplugged the phone. I just wanted to be alone inside my music.”
    “The entire day?” she asked, astonished.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s what I do when I’m upset.”
    “You could play here, Mishka. I wouldn’t mind if you played all night.”
    “I know that, but I have to be alone.”
    “Is it because of your grandparents and Uncle Otto? Because of the war?”
    “I don’t know. I suppose so. I’m sorry, Leela, but I did warn you. I don’t know how to be normal.”
    “Normal people bore me to death,” Leela assured him.
    That was how the absences