Perfect Fifths Read Online Free PDF Page B

swift degeneration at the mere mention of her. "It's just, well, I was there. I saw how long it took you to recover."
    "That's just it, Natty" Marcus opens his eyes. "I'm not sure I ever did."
    Natty holds up his palms in surrender because there is no suitable response to this confession. Whether innate or the result of so many hours practicing meditation, Marcus's single-mindedness is unrivaled and legendary, even on a campus with more than its share of freakish overachieving geniuses. When Marcus turns his
    annihilative attention to something—or someone—there is nothing else. He will not shift his focus until he has won the impossible bet, been awarded the impossible
    fellowship, bedded the impossible woman. Natty has no idea what Marcus ultimately seeks from Jessica Darling. He knows only that he doesn't want to stick around long enough to see his infallible friend be defeated by her again.
    "Dude," Natty says, shouldering his bag and turning toward the signs pointing in the direction of the Air Train exit. "You need a roundhouse kick to the brain."
    "You wish you could kick that high, Booster Seat."
    Natty is marginally cheered by Marcus's put-down. "Oh, fuck you, Professor."

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    They stand face-to-face for a moment before Natty silently extends his fist. Marcus grabs him by the hand and pulls Natty to his chest for a backslapping bro hug.
    "Yeah," Marcus replies. "I love you, too."
    ten
    essica is thinking about the wedding. Bridget and Percy liked how the numbers looked: 01/20/2010. All those zeroes, ones, and twos, nearly palindromic, only with a 20/20 in the center, 'like perfect vision," Percy said. Choosing to get married on this strange date—a Wednesday?, double-checked by all the invited guests after consulting their calendars—wasn't just a fit of numerical whimsy. The date was a significant part of their romantic history.
    "It's the eighth anniversary of our first kiss," Percy explained when Jessica inquired about the date.
    "His girlie knack for remembering such details," replied Bridget in a playful tone, "is why I finally gave in and agreed to this whole wedding thing."
    Jessica tries to remember the particulars of that conversation. Had she gone uptown to visit Bridget and Percy's West Harlem loft? Or had they made it out to her
    place in Brooklyn? Had they met somewhere in the middle, Hell's Kitchen, maybe, for beers and burritos? She's unable to piece together the details; she can remember only the words. All her memories are fuzzed over today, symptomatic of the disembodied disassociation of frequent air travel, but also the murky consequences of her mind's slog through logical and illogical, fact versus fiction, what just happened, what's happening now, and what could possibly happen next.
    Jessica works harder at pinning down this memory of Bridget and Percy's engagement as she stands on line at the Clear Sky customer ser vice center. This is not a happy place. If you're there, you're supposed to be in the air, but for some reason—be it a chaotic weather pattern, a missed connection, or some security line clusterfuckery involving a cactus plant derivative—you are not. The CSCSC is about as utilitarian and unadorned as a space can be. It has no inspirational artwork or vases of silk flowers on display, no smooth jazz or soothing aromatherapeutic scents piped in through the walls. Jessica appreciates and even respects that the
    CSCSC does not attempt to convince its customers that it is anything other than what it is: an unhappy place.
    Thinking about Bridget and Percy as she stands on line is preferable to obsessing over the strange particulars of the line itself. Specifically, that she appears to be only one of two people who were not on the flight to Las Vegas canceled due to "unforeseeable mechanical complications," and that the majority of these distressed passengers desperate to get the next flight out to Las