Out of the Blue Read Online Free PDF Page A

Shepherd, Mamet, Ibsen. Shakespeare, to lighten things up.”
    “When I teach a play just from the text, I feel like I’m cheating the dramatist.”
    “There’s a Tom Stoppard in previews. Will you come with me?”
    “Maybe,” I said. I was thinking we’d see how things went.
    “Fair enough.”
    He chose a quiet neighborhood place that served homemade pasta. Over linguini, he told me that he rarely stayed in the city if he could possibly get back up north. “It’s ironic. My mother and my brother are much more urban, and they’re stuck up there in the boondocks running the day-to-day. And here I am, Farmer Jones, wheeling and dealing in the big city.”
    “Oh, sure, Farmer Jones, I read about you in Crain’s. That was a cute picture of you milking cows in your overalls.”
    “You read that?” He looked pleased.
    “And the Times.” What the hell. I’m too old to be coy.
    “Then you’re completely informed.”
    “Mm.” Not quite. There was that little item about Lola Falcon.
    “You said you’d tell me about the MS.”
    I obliged, describing the litany of early symptoms, the fruitless trips to specialists, the misdiagnoses of Lyme disease, hypochondria, Guillain-Barre, brain tumor. Ma didn’t tell me about that one until later, and just lived through four days of hell all by herself. “It was actually a relief by the time I found a smart neurologist who figured it out.”
    “Are you on steroids or one of the ABC drugs?” He smiled at my look. “I’ve been putting in some time at the medical library. I also have a physician friend upstate who won’t take my calls anymore.”
    He was exaggerating, of course, but it was disarming just the same. “I’m on prednisone,” I said. “One of these days I’ll balloon up and they can use me in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.”
    “Well, it hasn’t happened yet.” He called the waiter. “The lady will have the Chocolate Sin for dessert.”
    “You’re very bossy.”
    “It’s how I got to be in Crain’s.”
    “I see. Okay, Joe, I paid my dues. Now let’s hear about the airplanes.”
    He pushed his chair back from the table just an inch or two. “I’m not very good at introspection. Sometimes when I think about where I’ve wound up, I feel as if it had more to do with everybody else than me.”
    “In what way?”
    “Well, back in high school, for instance. I always got elected class president, but I never looked for it, never wanted to run. It just happened, year after year.”
    I laughed. “I was president, too, but I was always in there electioneering like a madwoman. Selling favors for votes, kissing babies … well, maybe not kissing babies. The thing is, you’re obviously good at running things.”
    He nodded. “I know it.”
    It was hard not to smile. He acted as if leadership ability were some terrible character flaw. “Maybe you’re just not interested in airplanes,” I suggested.
    “Actually, I like how they look. They’re very pleasing. The shape. The grace. I’d rather fly in them or photograph them than sit in those endless board meetings with a bunch of people who think spread sheets carry the same moral weight as the Gettysburg Address.” He actually ran out of breath. “Quite a speech. Sorry.”
    “I’m not so sure you’re in the right line of work.”
    “Well, it’s what I’ve spent a lifetime training for.”
    “Top of your class at the B-school.”
    “That’s right. We’ve got a few hundred employees in an economically depressed county up there depending on us to keep things percolating. That’s pretty gratifying.”
    “What about your father? Is he still… ?”
    “Oh, he spends all his time puttering around with antique planes and talking to his cronies about the good old days. Your Chocolate Sin is melting.”
    I poked at it. I felt like poking at Joe some more, too, but he was looking so haunted that I took pity. And I suddenly had one of those waves of fatigue that feel like somebody dropped