Robert B. Parker Read Online Free PDF Page A

screwing some townie. I knew she’d be delighted.
    And I thought about her in the limpid stillness of the dim church while I knelt, and I thought of Barb on her back with her legs apart and as I felt the surge of desire in my belly, I tried to think of the Virgin. For a moment Jennifer and Barb and the Holy Mother all blended in my imagination and for a moment my passion was multiple and two-thirds holy.
    Oh my God
, I said,
Oh dear God make her love me
. Then I stood and walked, trembly and thick with passion, from the silent church.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    The library reading room, deal tables, bright lights, maps and reference books, the low buzz of talk, sharp outbursts of male laughter and female squeal. “Nick said you could help me with
Hamlet
, Boonie,” Jennifer said. Black sweater, simple string of pearls. “My professor said Hamlet’s tragic flaw was original sin.” Her breath smelled of cigarette smoke, her hair of perfume as she bent toward me.
    “Sure, sit down.” The rustle of her wide gray skirt. Her elbow touched me. More perfume. Her knee touched mine briefly. “He means sort of nobody’s perfect,” I said. “He means that because the world’s not perfect you can’t control it and the best anybody can do is be ready, you know?”
    Cigarette smoke on her breath again and hint of Colgate, her mouth wide and smiling, her eyes the shape of almonds but much larger. “What in hell has that got to do with original sin?”
    I leaned back a little in my chair. Expansive. “Ididn’t say it was a swell answer, your professor is kind of vague, but you know the theory of original sin?”
    Her smile again and the laugh lines deepening around her mouth; a tiny shadow formed beneath her lower lip when she smiled. “I believe it involves fucking,” she said. And both of us burst into laughter in the quiet hall.
    Jennifer never drank much beer. Everyone said she did, but she didn’t. “I hate it,” she told me. “Never tell, because if you’re going to date, you have to drink beer. Nobody drinks anything else.”
    “Except in hotels they don’t serve anything else in this state.” She hadn’t known that. She didn’t know a million things. I drank my beer and got two more. Hers was half finished. I drank it. I didn’t care if she knew anything or everything, but it was hard to figure how someone so wonderful could know so little. She didn’t know where Omaha was. She didn’t know that Benny Goodman had given a concert in Carnegie Hall in 1938. She cared nothing about the Brooklyn Dodgers. She’d never seen a play. Her feet on the seat under her, ballerina slippers. A white blazer.
    “Why do you know so much, Boonie?” Her nails were glossy and slightly pointed. Her hands looked strong. A red pack of Pall Malls, Teresa Brewer on the jukebox, smoke and maybe the faint smell of clean sweat in the crowded bar.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess it must be I’m very smart.”
    Her eyes were blue. Jennifer said, “Maybe it’s not such an asset. Maybe it’s better to know what you need to.”
    “Once more,” Olivier said, “into the breech, dear friends.” The theater half empty, Jennifer and I had our feet dangled over the backs of the chairs in front of us. Jujyfruits, Black Crows, the smell of popcorn, the smell of damp woolen coats, darkness, and the ray of projected light from the back to the screen.
    “They’re not talking Shakespeare,” Jennifer whispered. Her lipstick smelled a little like raspberry Jell-O as she leaned toward me to whisper.
    “Yes, they are,” I said. “They’re just saying it right.”
    Snow from our boots melted in small puddles under the seats. We sat together without touching.
    At the door of her dormitory at ten o’clock she was kissing Nick good night. The collar of her camel’s-hair coat was up, she was on her toes, white socks, penny loafers, her face up toward Nick. Me she could have kissed flatfooted. Nick’s left hand was on her backside. There