The Affinities Read Online Free PDF Page B

Fisk.
    Jenny and I talked about Grammy Fisk over egg rolls. “She was always the family beatnik,” I said. “She showed me her high school yearbook one time. Class of fifty-seven. Some school in Allentown.” Which was where my grandfather had found her, a few years later, tending a booth at the Allentown Fair. “She was pretty amazing looking, actually. Long black hair, lots of attitude. She dropped out of state college and spent a couple of years doing the bohemian thing—big into folk music, at least until she got married, and even then she would sometimes sneak out to shows with her old girlfriends. There were all these ticket stubs tucked into her photo album.”
    â€œSeriously? She never mentioned any of that to me.”
    For obvious reasons. My grandfather had venerated Barry Goldwater, and there had never been a word of dissent from Grammy Fisk. By the time my father was born, her Charlie Parker and Bob Dylan records had gone into permanent storage. But she saw things the other Fisks were blind to. If the world was a puzzle, she was drawn to the pieces that didn’t fit. “You know how she was.”
    â€œYeah.”
    Jenny was five-foot-three in stocking feet and dressed as if she wanted to be ignored: jeans and a cotton shirt and blond hair tied back so tightly it hurt to look at. A mouth that gave out smiles like party favors but had been made somber by Grammy Fisk’s illness. She cocked her head at me. “How are you really doing, up there in Canada? And what happened to your face?”
    I told her about the incident at the demo. At the end she said, “So are you a cop-hating lefty now?”
    â€œHonestly? What I remember about that cop is how he looked. Pissed off, obviously, you know, all wound up, but also scared. Like what he did to me was something he might not be proud of. Maybe something he wouldn’t mention when he went home to his wife.”
    â€œOr maybe he was just an asshole.”
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œHe had a choice. He could have told you to move on.”
    â€œSure, but the situation was pushing him hard in one direction. Which made me think about how fucked up and really arbitrary it is, the way we conduct ourselves with other people. There has to be a better way.” And because this was Jenny, to whom I could say almost anything, I told her I had taken the Affinity test.
    After a pause she said, “Those Affinity groups … they’re what, some kind of dating service?”
    â€œNo, no, nothing like that.” I explained about Meir Klein and InterAlia. “Basically, I was tired of not having anybody to talk to except a couple of guys from my classes at Sheridan.”
    â€œSo they sort of design a social circle for you?”
    â€œNot exactly, but yeah, you end up with a bunch of new friends.”
    â€œUh-huh. And it really works?”
    â€œSupposedly. I don’t know yet.”
    â€œWell, well, well.” Which was classic Jenny. It meant, I don’t like what I’m hearing but I’m not prepared to argue about it. “Maybe I should join one of those groups.”
    â€œThere might not be any in Schuyler just yet.”
    â€œMm. Bad luck for you, then. When you move back home.”
    â€œWhich won’t be anytime soon.”
    Her eyebrows went up. “But I thought—”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWith Grammy Fisk and all—”
    â€œI’ll be here a few days more, but I can’t stay much longer than that. I need to set up a summer internship, for one thing.”
    â€œBut Grammy Fisk was paying your tuition.”
    Because my father had refused to. He didn’t approve of what he called my “artistic side,” and he considered any degree that wasn’t an MBA a concession to limp-wristed liberalism. But Grammy Fisk had fought him on that one. She couldn’t dictate how he spent his money, but she had money of her own, and she had been