Specimen & Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

to go for a leak.”
    “You could have gone in the river. It’s what
I do.”
    “For everything ?”
    She frowned. “I have a latrine. I’ll show
you later.”
    He had mixed feelings about that. Her tone
implied he might be around for awhile. However much he doubted
that, he didn’t know whether to be flattered or frightened. He
still hadn’t figured her out. Was she an escapee from a psychiatric
ward or just a sun-worshipping tree-hugger who’d taken her love for
the environment to its logical extreme?
    “Sit down.” She patted the ground in front
of her. “Show me your hands.”
    He sat cross-legged in front of her and held
out his hands. As soon as she took his right hand in hers, an
enormous current went through his arm, across his heart and into
his groin. He laid his left hand over his crotch in case his
erection burst through the fabric of his jogging shorts.
    She traced her finger across his palm. She
might as well have tickled his scrotum, it was all he could do to
stifle a moan of pleasure.
    “Long straight head line,” she said.
“Post-graduate degree, a scientist or some sort of
number-cruncher?”
    “PhD in statistics,” he admitted.
    “A branch off your head line curves down to
the heel of your palm. Ever been treated for depression?”
    “Self-medicated.” Seven years into his
marriage with Martha, he’d hit the wall of a mid-life crisis,
mourned his lost freedom, fell into a spell of drinking and
pot-smoking that had lasted two-and-half years. Luckily, he’d never
let it show at work.
    “Your heart line is short, takes a sharp
turn under your middle finger. Makes you a bit of a horn-dog, not
particularly ethical.”
    “ Carpe diem , that’s my motto.” He
wouldn’t admit that to anyone else, but what did it matter, he’d
probably never see her again.
    “Life line swings well out into the palm.
You’re very healthy.” She lowered her head to look closer. “But
there’s a line that branches off to meet your fate line, and a
little fish at the end of it.”
    “A fish? What’s that?”
    She didn’t answer him, but concentrated on
measuring his life line with the middle phalange of her little
finger. “You’ll have some sort of spiritual epiphany around age 50,
jump the tracks and go AWOL.”
    “That doesn’t sound likely.” Stanley had his
sights set on retirement at age 60, a nice government pension
fattened on 30 years of service.
    “How old are you now?”
    “Fifty.”
    She let go of his hand and cocked her head
toward the river, as if she’d just heard someone call her name.
When she turned back to him, her green eyes swept his face like a
searchlight.
    “Like some tea?”
    “Sure.” Anything to get the taste of fish
out of his mouth.
    She started a fresh fire and filled a
stainless-steel IKEA kettle from a four-liter container of water.
When the water had boiled, she dropped a handful of something into
it to steep. She took a pair of small Chinese cups from a plastic
milk crate and poured them each a cup of tea.
    After the wine, Stanley was quite thirsty,
and he drank three cups of tea. He didn’t really like it at first,
but it grew on him. It tasted like bong water with a hint of
peppermint. After the third cup, he felt his ears pop, as if he’d
just taken a fast ride up the elevator to the top of the CN Tower.
The tension in his head trickled out of his ears and ran down his
spine like the residue of an ayurvedic oil massage.
    After a few minutes, the ground beneath him
seemed to come alive. The dirt was shape-shifting. He saw his own
face smiling up at him, and then an ant crawled up his nose and he
faded away into the dirt. The earth was translucent and
three-dimensional. There were more faces down below, and he caught
fleeting glimpses of Martha and Isabel and Gary and Joan and a
woman with whom he’d had an affair during his depression, and other
lovers and people from his past all the way back to high school and
they were all naked and crawling over each