Revolution Number 9 Read Online Free PDF Page A

eyes. But the woman said: “Bugs? They’re my favorite thing in the world.”
    “To eat?”
    “To watch. I spent three summers in a bug lab. Tanks from floor to ceiling. I got to like them. They’re so crafty, in a clumsy kind of way, and so futile. It was like watching the Cold War on multiscreen TV.”
    This was a cue Charlie tried to ignore but couldn’t. It was like asking a comedian to keep the punch line to himself. “Maybe you’d like to meet Dick Nixon.”
    “Dick Nixon?”
    “Of the crustacean world.” He knew he was being incautious but couldn’t stop. Maybe she would say no.
    She said yes.
    They went outside, into wind and flying snow. Charlie waited for her to flinch, cringe, shiver. She did none of those things.
    He took her over to De Mello’s and showed her the monster. De Mello had it in a tank of its own. “God in heaven,” the woman said.
    Her name was Emily Rice. She’d arrived after Christmas to do postdoctoral work for six months at the center. Her specialty was the physics of beach erosion. She was living with the chairman of the ocean geology department and his family, looking for a temporary place of her own.
    “You want to stop beach erosion?” Charlie said.
    “Can’t be done. Not in the long run. But at least I’d like to find ways of not making it worse.”
    They watched Dick Nixon. Dick Nixon watched them. After a while De Mello shooed them out.
    The wind had died down, but snow was still falling. They walked back to the café through a quiet white world. “Is it like this all the time?” Emily said.
    “Never.”
    Emily gathered up her skis and poles. Charlie thought of offering to help her carry them but wasn’t sure how she would take it, and said nothing. The chairman of the ocean geology department lived up a wooded hill a few blocks behind Charlie’s house. They walked around the pond together. Emily carried her burden easily; Charlie sensed long muscles working smoothly under the black tights.
    “What else do you know about Lord Acton?” Emily asked.
    “Is there anything else?”
    Emily laughed; a lovely sound. “He must have spent his whole life waiting for a chance to stick it in a conversation,” she said.
    Charlie laughed too. He realized he didn’t laugh often, and realizing it, stopped.
    “Guzzling port in red leather chairs,” Emily said.
    “That’s the ticket,” said Charlie, and heard her laugh again.
    They came to his house. “This is my place,” he said.
    Emily studied Charlie’s house. A real estate agent couldn’t have picked a better moment to sell it. Snow covered the roof, the pots in the yard; icicles hung from this and that. Charlie’s house looked like a postcard exemplar of rustic comfort. Charlie knew it began and ended at rustic.
    “It’s a dream,” Emily said. “Have you lived here a long time?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You’re from here?”
    “No.”
    Charlie waited for her to ask where he was from, formulating an answer. But that wasn’t what she asked. She said: “What’s it like inside?”
    Charlie’s heart beat a little faster. All he had to say was “Want to have a look?” and she’d come in. But that moment Charlie remembered where he’d first heard Lord Acton’s aphorism, more specifically whom he’d first heard it from, and everything changed. Maybe her question about where he was from had something to do with it too. “Messy,” he said.
    Emily turned to him and smiled. “Well, thanks for showing me Mr. Nixon. We’ll probably run into each other.”
    “Yeah,” said Charlie. And: “You’re welcome,” to her back as she walked away. Then he was alone in his house, every drab detail suddenly obvious, the whole small and stifling. “Christ,” Charlie said. He sat down, and thoughts of Rebecca drifted into his mind. To make them go away he picked up his sax and started blowing.
    It began as “My Romance” but soon changed key and sped up and was probably nothing at all, certainly nothing good,