The Blonde Read Online Free PDF

Alexei just to get out of the way.
    By then her eyes were glazed with tears.
    How many photos like that had she carried around, from one apartment to another? Black-and-white snapshots of men posing with automobiles or marlins or doing whatever they did when they became fathers. There was the one of the man named Stanley who people said had been her mother’s lover in ’25, and after that a picture of Abe Lincoln, an idealized stand-in, staring at her with all the fortitude and intelligence in the world. The pulsation of her heart was loud and rhythmic as she moved, trancelike, back to the booth and sat down. She picked up the photograph, and her lips parted.
    “Who is he?” She knew what he was trying to tell her but she couldn’t believe it.
    “Your father.”
    Her hand flew to cover her mouth. The picture was black-and-white, the size of her palm, and it showed a young man wearing a white T-shirt smiling at the camera. He had a shotgun rested over his shoulder in an easy way, as though he had just been deer hunting, and he had a mop of light hair falling over his face. The way he gazed into the camera was the same way she gazed into a camera—searching, charged with life, and not to be looked away from. His face was so like her face she had to breathe deeply just to find a few words. It was like seeing your markings on another body and realizing you were part of a tribe. “But I’ve looked for him. I—I was sure he was dead. I’ve hired private dicks and spent I don’t know how much money trying to find him. I’ve made myself so conspicuous. I mean, what kind of person doesn’t seek out fame when they have the chance?”
    “Yes,” he replied carefully. “What kind of person?”
    She returned his stare blankly, tried not to show how much she wanted it to be true.
    “Don’t you think if your father were some ordinary person at least one of those detectives you hired would have found something? He’s one of ours.”
    “Oh, god. Is he in trouble?”
    “He’s all right. He wants to meet you.”
    “When? Wh-when can I meet him?”
    “In good time.”
    She felt faint with the thing she’d so long wanted, and before she could help it she had rested her head against Alexei’s shoulder. It was stronger, larger, than she had expected, and she let her eyelids drop and her muscles relax. She had gone through just about every emotion there was since waking up that morning, and already before that she had been exhausted for years. “But I’ve waited so long,” she said.
    He kissed her lightly on the forehead. “I know. But first I want you to go to Chicago. Don’t fret, my dear—I think this is a trip you’re going to enjoy.”

THREE
    Washington, D.C., March 1959
    WALLS was alive. The bed was unfamiliar; the sheets fragrantly feminine; the face on the pillow next to him obscured by heaps of strawberry blonde hair. As he blinked, scenes from the night before filtered back: the cocktail party in Georgetown to which his cousin Lucy (Mrs. Robert Bennington) had invited him; how he’d had two drinks fast, told himself to slow down, and immediately forgot the directive; the girl in the full, teal-colored skirt; how bright her eyes got when she told him it was late and she really ought to be going; how quickly she had accepted his subsequent offer of a ride home. When he remembered that, he had to suppress his instinct to make a noise—some hybrid sigh/groan. He would have given a whole month’s pay to get out of that bedroom without waking her.
    Her? She had a name, she must, and he was even confident that it was vaguely French. Renée, or Roxanne, though neither of those quite fit. In any case, she was a junior at Vassar, taking a semester at G.W. for reasons that she must have explained but were now lost to him, and her father, whom she plainly adored, was the principal of a New York advertising firm where one of his fraternity brothers was now employed. Her face, when she mentioned him, had led Walls to