Summer Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

described to Susan were the orchestra rehearsals and performances, the flautist who practiced with him from time to time, the children of the aunt who’d emigrated to New Jersey with a GI after the war, the fact that he was learning Spanish but not with whom, and that he went to a fitness center, but not where. He hadn’t intended to keep secrets from her. It had just happened that way.
12
    The taxi set him down in front of his building. It was warm, mothers with their babies were sitting out on the stoops, children were playing hide-and-seek between the parked cars, old men had set up folding chairs and brought cans of beer with them, a few boys were trying to walk as if they were grown up, and some girls were watching them and giggling. “Hola, flauta,” his neighbor greeted him, “back from your trip?”
    Richard looked up and down the street, sat down on the steps, put his suitcase next to him, and propped his arms on his knees. This was his world: the street, the neat houses and the shabby ones, the Italian restaurant on one corner where he met the oboist and at the other corner the street with the food shops, the newsstand, and the fitness center, and above the buildings the towers of the church that was next door to his Spanish teacher. He hadn’t just got used to this world. He loved it. Since coming to New York, he hadn’t had any lasting relationship with a woman. What kept him there was work, his friends, the people who lived on the street and in the buildings, the routine of shopping for groceries, going to the gym, always eating in the same restaurants. A day spent fetching the newspapers in the morning and exchanging three sentences about the weather with Amir, the owner of the newsstand, then reading the paper in the café, where they’d learned to bring him two soft-boiled eggs in a glass with chives and whole-wheat toast for breakfast, then practicing for a few hours before cleaning the apartment or doing the laundry, then exercising, then teaching Maria and getting a hug, then eating spaghetti Bolognese at the Italian place, then having agame of chess before going to bed—a day like that left nothing to be desired.
    He looked at the building and up at the windows of his apartment. The morning glories were flowering; maybe Maria had actually watered them. He had started with window boxes, and now they were climbing in front of several of the windows. Had Maria also checked the bucket that collected the drips from the broken pipe? He would have to get it repaired, he hadn’t had time to take care of it before he left on his trip.
    He got to his feet, intending to go upstairs. But then he sat down again. Pulling the mail out of his box, climbing the stairs, unlocking the door, airing out the apartment, unpacking his bag, going through his mail and answering one or two e-mails, then taking a hot shower, throwing his dirty clothes into the laundry basket and getting clean clothes out of the cupboard, then finding a message on his answering machine from the oboist asking if he’d like to meet up tonight and calling him back to say yes—if he stepped back into his old life again it would never let go of him.
    What had he been thinking? That he could carry his old life into a new life with Susan? That he could cross the city several times a week to go to the fitness center and his Spanish lesson? That then he would have chance encounters with Maria and the kids? That the old man from his building would occasionally take a taxi to the duplex on Fifth Avenue and play a game of chess with him in the drawing room under a genuine Gerhard Richter? That the oboist would feel comfortable in a restaurant on the East Side? He had had good reason to keep quiet with Susan about all the sides of his life he couldn’t bring into their life together. He hadn’t wanted to confront the fact that the new life would require him giving up the old one.
    So? He loved Susan. He had had her all those days on theCape and had