The Dismal Science Read Online Free PDF Page B

car in two trips.
    Back at the house he spent hours replacing the old with the new. He unloaded the new supplies onto the counters and floors, took all of the old supplies and loaded them into the Williams-Sonoma bags, and carried them out to the car. Then he started unpacking the new things and putting them in their places. It was hard work, hauling it all to and fro, and by the time he was done it was three in the afternoon and he was exhausted. It was the most manual labor he’d done in years.
    Styrofoam peanuts and pills had escaped and touched down on the floor gingerly and now dashed away from him when he hurried past to fill one of his new glasses with water. He called Walter, his closest, if not to say only, friend. They met occasionally for lunch and lightning rounds of chess in the pocket park beside the World Bank, the café on the Bank’s mezzanine when the weather was hostile to chess. Walter had never stocked up the kitchen of his post-divorce apartment; he ate cereal out of his disintegrating Teflon sauté pan in the morning, drank everything out of the three mugs he’d picked up at recent conferences. The open maw of the baking soda container at the back of Walter’s refrigerator appeared, to Vincenzo, to be cackling at the overlit emptiness.
    â€œWalter,” Vincenzo said, “I have something in my car that I think you will want. Will you be there in half an hour?”
    â€œHalf an hour?” Walter said and moaned slightly under his breath. “I’m trawling chess chat rooms for single women. It’s safe to say I’ll be here for the rest of my life.”

    The city’s Metro system was built by forward-thinking people and had barely changed since the 1970s. Nor had many of its passengers, apparently. When Vincenzo and Leonora boarded the southbound red line at Bethesda that morning, he saw a number of familiar faces. Some glanced at him and smiled weakly before averting their eyes. He and Leonora stood in silence until Dupont Circle, where Cristina would have debarked. The doors opened and some people got off, a few others boarded. The doors chimed twice and slid shut. Vincenzo watched this intently. He was wondering if he’d ever see it again when Leonora leaned over and whispered, “Hey Dad?”
    â€œYes.” He swallowed the lump in his throat, looked at their feet.
    â€œWill you do me a favor?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œWill you tell Paul Wolfowitz to go fuck himself?” she said, and laughed exactly like her mother, slightly too loud for the setting, which shattered something else he’d been guarding.
    â€œI don’t think Paul would like that,” he whispered, and made himself chuckle. He looked up at her. No one spoke on the train except for them, and it was crowded enough that, whispering or not, people could overhear. He wondered if any of them were Bank employees.
    â€œDo you think he cares?” she said.
    â€œOh,” Vincenzo said. He shrugged. “Yes, definitely. He’s not inhuman .”
    A woman he did not recognize looked up, stared blankly at him, as if he weren’t even there, and then looked down again.
    They said nothing else until the train pulled into Farragut North. Metro Center was next and if she got off there, she could walk to the protest and he’d never know.
    He leaned in, kissed her on both cheeks. “ Stammi bene cara. Mi chiamerai presto ?”
    â€œSì Papi. Ciao.” She squeezed his arm and he felt the lump return to his throat.
    The doors parted and he was swept up in the current rushing toward the escalators.
    Once on the escalator, the pace slowed and he rose steadily toward the day, listening to the baritone sax. The musician had been there for fifteen years and his dreadlocks were like long tubes of cigar ash—Vincenzo’s hair, what was left of it, had also gone gray. The nakedness of the musician’s emotion as he played there every morning