Stotan! Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’d lose too much to make up. Mom and Dadknow next to nothing about swimming—in fact, I can’t remember them going to a meet—but they know it’s important to me, and in the interest of letting me do and have anything I want, they let me beg off going to Seattle. Letting my orphan status out in the presence of Elaine’s mother was no difficult task either, so I ended up right where I wanted to be. It was probably a bad idea for my libido, but I couldn’t pass it up. I don’t think there’s a way to take care of this. In my wildest imagination I can’t see me telling Elaine I’m hot for her. If she did believe me, she’d punch me in the nose. She’s a tough one, that Elaine. It’s also going to be hard to explain to Devnee, my supposed girlfriend, why, with my parents out of town for the holiday, I didn’t spend it with her. Probably what I’ll do with that is lie. I’ve got to stop that one of these days—it seems like I lie pretty easily and convincingly to girls—but not right now. I’ve got my hands full figuring out how crazy I am even thinking about Elaine. Boy, I hope this stuff with girls gets easier when you get older. So far it’s a big pain in the butt.
    Under any circumstances Elaine and I are good friends, and dinner was really nice. Her mom is one of those people you’d adopt as a parent, given the choice. In fact, back in our AAU swimming days, when shedrove us to all the meets, I thought she was my mother. She’s a big, strong, smart, earthy woman with a huge heart and it’s a treat to be around her. If she has a fault, however, it’s her taste in men. You have to meet Elaine’s dad to believe him. Elaine’s been telling stories about him for years, and from what I saw yesterday, nothing has changed. The man’s a pack rat—a collector. The nooks and crannies of the house are filled with cases of canned food, scuba tanks, old car parts, an old plow blade, for Chrissakes, and enough telephone parts to start a medium-sized communication company. His holdings are much expanded from last time I was there. When I asked him what it was all for, he just smiled and said you never know when you might need some of that stuff. I pictured a flash flood where Mr. Ferral fights his way through the crashing wall of water raging through the kitchen, straps on his scuba tank and makes himself a telephone to call for help, thereby saving his entire family, which is cowering behind the plow blade for protection from the canned goods washing through the room.
    And he never leaves the couch. He lives on the couch. He has two TV sets within arm’s reach and Elaine says the only way on earth to get his attention is to walk in front of one of them. They’re both going allthe time and they’re set on different channels, the sound up on only one. He switches them back and forth at will, and I guarantee it’ll drive you stark raving berserk to watch a program with him. The master stroke in all this, however, is an adjustable, wide-angle rearview mirror mounted on the back of the couch. When I first saw it, several years ago, I thought it was just another of the legion of bizarre items strewn around the house, but when I accidentally bumped it, it didn’t fall over. It’s screwed right down into the frame so he can watch TV from either side.
    â€œIt doesn’t bother you that the titles come up backward, I guess,” I said.
    â€œThe human mind is a wonderful thing,” he said. “It can get used to almost anything. The Chinese read like that all the time.”
    I don’t think that’s exactly how the Chinese read, but I got the point.
    I stayed quite a ways into the evening and Elaine and I went for a walk around her neighborhood. Except for their house, which would be a blight on the poorest sections of Newark, New Jersey, because of all the junk Mr. Ferral has piled around,