The Dismal Science Read Online Free PDF

in order to squash the blooming awkwardness.
    â€œThank you,” he said.
    â€œWhy did you buy it all?”
    He shrugged. “It was just a shopping spree,” he said.
    She nodded. Did she really believe him? Did she not know him any better than that? No, probably not. How would she? He turned back to the toaster. He could hear the wires buzzing inside.

    The shopping spree had taken place on a Sunday, a day that had begun innocuously enough: over a slow brunch at the Four Seasons in Georgetown, he read an inch or so of the Sunday Times . Then he drove home the long way, along the canal, his window open, cold air numbing his ears. It was a bracing morning, autumn at its dazzling zenith, the oaksa nearly industrial yellow, while the maples ran fuchsia and the poplars deepened to dirty umber. Down in the woods by the canal he caught the faintest traces of smoke from the fireplaces burning the season’s first fires. He cruised up Nebraska and crossed over to Western, and saw the great white facades of Mazza Gallerie. Soon, he was corkscrewing too fast through the concrete tunnel and screeching onto the lowest level of the parking garage where he parked near the elevators, the only car that had ventured so low. Up at Neiman Marcus, he spent $461.08 on a pair of burgundy pajamas and calfskin house slippers. It was an odd whim for a man who, in spite of his vanity, had always been as frugal as any economist. But this was fun in a surprising, almost explosive, way—in a way that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Like being drunk and careless when everyone else was still sipping their way carefully through the cocktail party.
    Strolling through the mall afterward, he decided to stop in at Williams-Sonoma, where he browsed for a while and three women, all of them attractive and in their thirties or forties, approached him separately to ask if he wanted anything. He felt like telling them that he did want something, he definitely did—but he just shook his head. They had spotted his Neiman Marcus bag, of course, and thought he was in a buying mood, which he was.
    Everything in the store was pristine, just so—exactly like the catalog. He liked that about it. He liked it all a lot. He went back to one of the women, a voluptuous one with the wary expression of someone acquainted with the kind of loss that can disfigure a person.
    She asked if he had changed his mind, and he told her that he had.
    â€œLet me help you then,” she said and he was struck by the urge to kiss her, right there and then, but he resisted. She was just doing her job, after all.
    It took half an hour to decide that he would like a set of Belgian copper cookware; two Le Creuset cast-iron pots; an array of stoneware serving dishes and mixing bowls; a hand-carved olive-wood salad bowl; a full set of bubbly lime-green Biot glassware; eight full settings of dinnerware; designer pot holders; an unremarkable coffeemaker and an attractive toaster; a mighty roasting pan; an industrial-strength blender; a full set of Wüsthof knives; and a diamond-dusted sharpener. Taken together, the items presented a fearsome, if improbable, arsenal of blades and blunt instruments. The other saleswomen watched on, wide-eyed, as he kept going, kept picking up more and more things and the boxes started to pile up in the space beside the checkout counter. Eventually, it stopped. The grimacing woman spent a long time tallying it all and once she finally finished she seemed apologetic and flustered when she said that the total was $6,107.21. She worked on commission, no doubt, and he had just made her month, so he stared at her for too long, wanting to find some lightning bolt of connection, some paroxysm of uninhibited humanity to slap them both awake. But it was not forthcoming and—though she was clearly being as polite as she was able—he eventually looked away.
    With the help of a second saleswoman, she and Vincenzo hauled everything down to his