Perfect Fifths Read Online Free PDF

'aw shucks' and scared of me."
    "Ah hah-vaynt lahst mah raid-nake ak-say-ent," says Natty in a deep-fried squirrelly drawl. "Ah jus choos naht t' yooose eee-it." He double-time scurries to keep up with Marcus, whose stride is twice the length of his own. "And I was never scared of you," continues Natty, returning to his foreign tongue, the neutral dialect known as Standard American with a strong hint of college-male braggadocio and puerility. "I was scared of the smell. Of. ... your... balls."
    "Now who's the one acting twelve, Junior High?" Marcus asks, pausing to look around the bend before turning the same corner. He catches sight of Jessica's back just before she enters the glass doors of the Clear Sky customer service center. He can relax now, seeing that there are at least twenty people on line in front of her.
    She'll be there for a while.
    Natty steps right in front of him, but it's a symbolic gesture of protest at best. With a twelve-inch height advantage over his friend, Marcus's view of Jessica is still unobstructed. This is not lost on Natty, a tenacious flea who leaps into the air to block the sight line between him and her. Marcus sidesteps left, Natty bounces right.
    Marcus sidesteps right, Natty bounces left.
    "That's right, Professor," Natty taunts. "I can do this shizall damn day." To onlookers, it looks like an outmatched game of one-on-one, only without a ball or a hoop.
    Had Marcus not so carefully hidden himself around the corner and out of her view, Natty's gamesmanship surely would have attracted Jessica's attention, too.
    Marcus gives up. Stops. "Are you really a Rhodes Scholar?"
    "Never forget," Natty says, puffing up his birdcage chest, "that the primary export of Nathaniel Addison is awesome."
    "I pity the British," Marcus says before returning his attention to the Clear Sky Airlines customer service center. Jessica is no longer the last person on line—there's a woman behind her—but no one has moved forward.
    "I'm trying to help you here," Natty says. "I was there when this girl fucked you up. I was there when you only got out of bed for class. I was the one who was nearly suffocated by the stank of your unwashed balls—"
    "You take far too much pleasure in talking about my balls," Marcus counters.

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    A bald (him) blue-haired (her) couple in their Boca Raton best has just hobbled up to the departures board. They harrumph over the use of such coarse language.
    "I can't help it," Natty says to them with a mischievous grin. "I just love every inch of this man, especially his balls."
    The geriatrics scurry away as quickly as they possibly can, outraged at the crudity of youth.
    "Testicles!" Natty shouts after them. "If you prefer the proper terminology!"
    "Are you done talking about my balls, Brokeback?" Marcus asks.
    Natty frowns, a gesture that takes a lot of effort from his freckled, preternaturally sunshiny face. "I wasn't kidding, dude. I've got a whole heart full of nonsexual man love for you," he says. "Which is why I am asking you to leave this airport with me right now. Take the train back to Princeton. We'll head to Ivy Inn, toast a few rounds to our final semester, chat up some new lady friends, and forget that you ever saw the bitch—"
    Marcus lunges. "Don't ever call her that!" Natty is pinned against the wall by the menace in Marcus's voice, the fury in his stare. Both men are staggered by Marcus's feral instinct to protect and defend the only woman who doesn't want his protection or defense.
    "S-s-orry," Natty stammers, still taken aback by this never-before-seen burst of violence from Marcus, a bona fide pacifist with whom he has never, not once, had a serious argument.
    Marcus relaxes his stance, closes his eyes, shakes his head ruefully "My response had more to do with what's fucked up about me than anything that's fucked up
    about her."
    Natty parses that bit of inarticulation, amazed by his friend's