Sign Languages Read Online Free PDF Page A

said to himself. But at that moment in October of 1969, it is impossible to know his exact reference.
    So in two days she was back at Mr. Warrant’s. It was Monday afternoon; there had been more snow, a deeper, bone-level cold. She knocked, using her left hand, the other arm full of groceries. As she shopped she had said, he’ll like this and maybe this. And soon she’d collected eighty dollars’ worth of exotics: pickled quails’ eggs, a rare Tuscan cheese, the greenest, most expensive olive oil in the city.
    But there was little surprise on Mr. Warrant’s face. He led her to the kitchen. She chatted about the terrible weather. He told about his bad knee. “Here, right here,” he said, and raised his pants leg. Without reservations. His shin discolored and hairless. As shiny as if he’d hot-waxed it. She looked away. Instead she cut onions into the olive oil, the expensive oil perfuming this room where they stood together. Until he sat and bent over a stack of crossword puzzle books.
    Later he turned his nose up at the plate, complained about the small portions though he ate almost nothing at all. There was exotic salad, exotic pasta. She promised she’d bring over her new pasta machine. Then, at the table, at that second, her face toward his which looked away, his eyes on the crossword puzzle book on the table, at his elbow, she saw a lover she’d forgotten who’d run dough through a machine as he stood naked in the kitchen.
    It’s like he expects all this, she thought, eating demurely, pretending she was in a restaurant with music and candles and aquariums built into the walls. Here, really, it was too warm and awfully humid as if their bodies, the cooling oil, pasta, salad, puzzle books gave off water, sweated into the air. She watched droplets stream down the door behind him that opened onto some room or yard she’d never seen, that she didn’t want to see. There at the table she promised she’d never learn about a yard or room or garage or if there was a car or anything else at all.
    She took an interest in Mr. Warrant’s puzzles. In some other room removed from the kitchen, where there were no odors of expensive oils and seasonings, they sat at a card table in the middle of furniture covered with chenille bedspreads. Onstage like chess champions, she thought. But a ghost audience.
    â€œYou’re a smart one,” he said. “Yep, you are a smart one.” And she was surprised at his limited vocabulary. Vocabulary, she said to herself, and realized it was a word from school, further surprised she could fill out the puzzles with ease. But they’re easy, of course. While he suffered over them. “No, don’t tell me now. Keep quiet.” His voice a command. Like Todd in throaty, aroused tones, telling her to roll onto her stomach.
    She smelled him, imbibed him. What is this but age? And she couldn’t place any of it exactly. Not among the most narrowly focused recollections. Not leather she’d smelled in France. Or fabrics in shops. Or the smell of any man anywhere before. Wasn’t it a house whose door she had just unlocked? On a tree-lined street, broken sidewalk a disadvantage. She saw clients stepping over it dramatically, arching eyebrows. A house on the edge somewhere in Pittsfield maybe. Almost a dozen things. Fashionable, ghetto, expensive, cheap. But the air when she opens it first, alone, doing her homework. God, she’s devoted, hard-driving, a hell-of-an-agent. Agent, she liked the word. A secret agent. Words and puzzles; she breathed in again. She’s not wearing underwear, you know. The young office boys talked at the cooler under the aerial view of the city they sold off piece by piece. She bends over for fun. To tease. But no, she never teased. Or not really.
    The odor of this very old man. Only a little like walls in houses that almost sell but never do. They talk about nothing at all. She cleans up