Something to Be Desired Read Online Free PDF Page B

to pile his belongings next to the sedan, as though he were going to move things indoors by installments. Then that was done and he put one foot in front of the other, clumped across the plank porch, thankful that the slant of morning light made the windows blank, and knocked. No one came, but Sadie appeared from the sedan and burned around the porch as though it were the lobby of a crazily permissive hotel.
    He decided to look in a window. He put his fingers to the glass on either side of his face. It was not so much being able to see a little into the darkness, finally, as it was the sense of her eyes coalescing somewhere in that interior. He lifted a hand to wave and the eyes moved away. He knew she was at the door. When it opened, she said,
“My old flame,”
in that deep voice from which laughter was never absent, even, apparently, in very hard times. At that moment Lucien was once again her suitor of all those years ago, probably as out of the question now as he was then, but as gripped as ever.
    Her great dark looks had perhaps improved, especially to someone like Lucien, who liked crow’s-feet in women almost above all other features. She was wearing house-painter’s pants and a cowboy shirt with the tails out, and she was barefoot: she’d just gotten up. And how was Lucien different? He guessed he was losing a certain unreplenishable moisture. He went squirrelly after drink number 3 and resorted, in public places, to making a mark on his hand for each one; he never went out without a ballpoint pen. His craving for sport had become less a sign of buoyant youth than of crankiness and approaching middle age. In the nature documentaries that appeared on TV, he identified with the solitary and knowledgeable male, whether baboon or penguin; and this foolishness represented the same gap of wishful thinking that had plagued him all his life.
    Emily’s greatest change, obviously, was that she was under indictment for murder. As she opened the door for Lucien, he had the extraordinary sense that her eyes were somehow focused on his entrance while her thoughts were entirely elsewhere. Then she stared down at the dog, who backed about looking for a spot to sit:nothing seemed quite right to her, and she stood crookedly next to the luggage. The luggage consisted of two tan bags from a broken set of smart luggage. When he’d been in foreign service, Lucien felt that luggage better identified the traveler than his own body.
    “I’m, in effect, all alone here,” said Emily by way of laying down her requirements. “There is the hired fellow. He’s very nice and I don’t treat him as a servant. Beyond that, he knows his limits. However, the feeling that I am living by myself is something I absolutely have to have right now.” She was staring into Lucien’s face and he was getting uncomfortable. He’d gone unchallenged for too long.
    “Are you sure it’s all right if I stay?”
    “I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise. Besides, I obviously owe you one.”
    “Not at all, I—”
    “Of
course
I owe you one. Let’s not begin with baby talk.”
    Emily showed Lucien his room upstairs, and with mutual awkwardness they ferried his belongings there. He was briefed on the food, water and towel supply, and left to his own devices. Before going to the window, Lucien transferred his clothes into the dresser, stuck his Dopp kit on top and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. Then he went to the window, where the feeling of cold mountain was in the light.
    Lucien could see the trail and the gate the hired man had used from up here. There was an abbreviated bench of pastureland through which a creek threaded incandescent against wild grass. Then beyond were the Crazy Mountains.
    Emily was moving around downstairs. Lucien kind oftracked her at that as he tried to figure how the curiously separated range of mountains was attached to the earth. The heights of snow and light-relaying stone tied the range to sky as