Ray of the Star Read Online Free PDF Page B

the lady dressed as a fruit stand: this was on a par with the golden centaur, or the two platinum men on bicycles, a real work of art,
Yes, a work of art,
thought Harry, who stood on the sidewalk no more than three feet away from the silver box the angel seemed bolted to and gazed up into her hardly blinking eyes, which did not move even when she very precisely arched her back, then lifted a shoulder, then twisted her arm, and after a few minutes he was asked by several of the onlookers to step aside, there were pictures to be taken, he was blocking the full view, in short, “What the fuck, man?” but Harry did not move, kept gazing up into her eyes, even as the murmuring around him grew louder, less relaxed, until suddenly it struck him that she was, perhaps because of him, on the verge of breaking her silence, that by standing there and somewhat impudently staring at her, he was committing a transgression, interfering with her act, possibly even making her nervous, which was exactly the opposite of his intent: he had thought long and hard on this, the two of them with their broken faces could eat together, share a drink, take a stroll, apply tape and glue to each other, but now he could see that the situation would require much more than a casual “Hi, they thought I was you,” and that his standing in front of her, in all her splendor, like a troll lying in ambush beneath a handsome bridge, was no way to get things started, so he bowed his head and, with the idea of in some way mitigating the disturbance he had caused, murmured an apology then backed away slowly, rather ridiculously, before turning and moving off down the boulevard, where eventually he passed Julius Caesar, then a rather good Atlas with golden dreadlocks, who had set down his globe and was sweeping the ground in front of his box, and then Che Guevara, who had a plastic cigar stuffed in his mouth and was engaged in lighting and throwing tiny firecrackers onto the ground.

C heeks burning as he hurried away, Harry reminded himself that, in his defense, he had stumbled upon the silver angel by accident, and that while it was true that this accident had occurred in the context of his attempts to locate her, it was still an accident, that could not be disputed, or could it? hmmm … : he had been looking for her and had found her, and hadn’t his method been more or less to stagger around the city until their paths crossed again? and hadn’t that been what had happened? it had, but, still, in what sense had he, actually, been looking for her? wasn’t he mistaking what had been reduced to rather a wan hope, one stripped of all but the most desultory agency, with active engagement? wouldn’t any outside, so-called impartial observer briefed on the situation exclaim, “but you weren’t looking for her, you were just flopping around, you may have been thinking about her in some abstract way as you went out, but that’s pretty far from constituting a search”? but what constitutes a search? Harry wondered, what is the cut-off point? the point beyond which the activity ceases to be what we have mistaken it for? once, over coffee, a well-meaning friend had put her hand on his shoulder and said, “what are you doing? that was years ago, years and years …” and he had taken a sip of his coffee and said, “I’m searching”—in much the same tone, he realized as he passed a pair of living tree statues, fairly nice ones, that he had used in making his comment to the pigeon about beginning his “assault on life” and his comment to the man under the awning about the number of hurdles life lines up before you—but what, exactly, had he meant by that? had he been describing an open-ended engagement, one that, perhaps, continued even now? this seemed plausible, and rather interesting, insofar as said search could be seen as an umbrella for the search he had or had not been conducting for the woman he had or had not found, but which was it? had he, in this