The Days of Anna Madrigal Read Online Free PDF

both had something to share today. If so, it was probably best to let him go first.
    â€œI wanna tell you about Wren,” he said.
    Oh shit . Here we go. She’s younger than I am . She’s painfully shy. She’s a raving fundamentalist who was horrified by my degenerate novel.
    â€œBeautiful name,” she offered at last. “Wren, like the bird?”
    â€œYeah.” He took a slug of his scotch. “We hooked up on Facebook.”
    â€œMmm . . . racy.”
    â€œJust shut up and listen, smarty-pants.”
    â€œOkay . . . sorry.”
    â€œHere’s the deal: I met her years ago—when you were still a kid, and I was with Mary Ann. We never—you know—did anything, but . . . we had a moment.”
    She seriously doubted this. Her dad had a princely heart, and certainly more than a few “moments” over the years—but they had traditionally come after he bagged someone, not before. “C’mon, Dad. I don’t care if you did anything.”
    â€œYou may not care, but I want you to know why we didn’t. Sex was the last thing on my mind. I thought I had AIDS, and . . . Wren was wonderful about it. Gallant, really. I never forgot how kind she was.”
    That stopped her cold. “Why did you think you had AIDS?”
    â€œI was sleeping with someone who had it. Who died of it.” He hesitated a moment. “It was nothing serious—for either of us. She was just—you know . . .”
    â€œA fuck buddy.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œDid she know about it?”
    â€œDid who know about what?”
    â€œDid Mary Ann know about the fuck buddy?”
    â€œNo, never—as far as I know. I was planning to tell her, but . . . she left me. She left us . It was kind of a moot point by then.”
    â€œSo why have you never told me?” This was what bugged her: he had violated their full disclosure contract. There was nothing he didn’t know about her , after all, thanks to her former blog, Grrrl on the Loose . He knew about her playmates, male and female, during her undergraduate days at Stanford. He knew about her stint selling dildos at Mr. S Leathers, and the peep show in North Beach where—briefly, very briefly, for journalistic purposes—she had dressed as a Catholic schoolgirl and diddled herself in a booth for the pleasure of customers at the Lusty Lady. He knew about her bout with chlamydia, for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t fair. His unnecessary little secret left her feeling oddly betrayed.
    â€œI’m not some delicate flower, Dad.” She took a sturdy sip of her scotch, as if to prove the point.
    â€œI know. I should have told you, but—there was very little reason to bring it up. I thought that chapter was closed forever.”
    â€œUntil—what? You saw her on Facebook?”
    â€œYouTube, actually.”
    â€œDoing what ?”
    â€œShe was on Johnny Carson —once upon a time.” He gazed at her like a soulful spaniel. “Do you even remember Johnny Carson?”
    â€œI’m twenty-nine, Dad, not twelve. What was she doing on Johnny Carson?”
    â€œShe was a model. A big one. A large one, I mean.” He made an expansive gesture with his hands.
    â€œLike—plus size?”
    â€œYeah, except they didn’t have ’em back then. Wren was sort of a pioneer. She was all over the tube for a while. Carson . The Donahue Show . They called her ‘The World’s Most Beautiful Fat Woman.’ ”
    She was certain he was fucking with her. “Shut the front door.”
    When Shawna was a kid, her dad had claimed that there were miles of secret tunnels under Chinatown, that some of the city’s wild parrots were over a hundred years old, that Coit Tower had been designed to resemble the nozzle of a fire hose. These were widespread San Francisco myths, so her dad had left them blithely unchallenged. He had been