The Origin of Waves Read Online Free PDF Page B

have it written down. I even walk with it in my wallet. Been doing that for years! Right here. When we sit down, I’ll show you the note, the reminder I wrote to myself, December the twenty-six, nineteen eighty-seven.”
    “Goddamn!”
    We are walking slowly now. We are looking for the nearest bar. The snow is deep, and fresh and beautiful like clouds you see from the windows of planes travelling to the West Indies. The snow is pure and enervating as a morning sea bath, when you enter the water first, and here no human foot has touched the long unsullied stretch ahead of us. Our footsteps are slipping still, from the hidden ice. But we are in no hurry to get anywhere.John’s hand is on my shoulder as we walk, as we used to stand on the school pasture talking, at lunch and after school, while he prepared to take batting practice in the nets: he to bat, and I to watch. “You shoulda seen the length of those needles from the cobbler that came outta my foot that night! One inch long, at least, every one o’ them. But, getting back to you …”
    “Here we are!” I say, and we enter the bar we are standing beside.
    The bar is almost empty. We move to the rear, in the semi-darkness, away from the entrance, from the sudden blasts of cold, and to give rein and space to the explosion of our happiness in our dramatic chance meeting. When we get accustomed to the new, subdued light in the bar, we see two other men, younger than ourselves, sitting at opposite ends of the long bar itself, drinking draught beer. One of them has just said, “Another Bud, eh, Bud?” And the man behind the bar comes out of the darkness, whistling a tune, and nods in our direction.
    “In all this time, in all these years, you ever wondered what happen to me, or where I was?” John asks. “I never wrote, not even a card, ’cause I didn’t know how to track you down. In all this goddamn time.” He slaps me on the back, hard, and says, “I’m here for a few days only. Came in two nights ago.”
    “Never,” I say, about the writing.
    “I never wrote you a letter. From all those different foreign countries!” John says. “Knew, though. KnewI’ll bump into you, one o’ these days. Here, or back home. Perhaps, on the beach back home.”
    “Ever thought of going back home?”
    “Three times. After each divorce. Three times, but never tried it. Thought of it though,” John says, “to relax, and to dead. That’s all home means to me!”
    “Can’t decide myself, either.”
    “Get married? Ever get married?” John says.
    “Going back? I’m not going back, even to die.”
    “Shit, I can’t even ask you what you’re drinking these days,” John says, “ ’cause when we last was together, neither you nor me was drinking liquor, To me, though, you look like a Scotch man. Right?”
    “Scotch and soda,” I tell him. The other man drinking draught raises his hand towards the barman, who says, “Another draught?” And the man says, “Yeah, Bud.”
    “Goddamn! You know something?” John says. “Something I been watching on television lately, that have to do with twins. Two twins. I never had twin-brothers, as you know. Nor twin-thrildren. I know you don’t have twins in your family. But this thing about twins and their habits. Generical twins, they call it. Where one go, the other is sure to go. Goddamn! Just like that nursery rhyme we had to learn by heart in elementary school!
Mary had a little lamb, the lamb was white as snow, and every goddamn way that Mary split to, the goddamn lamb was sure to go!
These generic twins. Where one goes, even in secret, the other twin was sure to go! Whoone
foops
, the other one is
sure
to
foop
. Ain’t that a motherfucker? Now, I axe you,
how
goddamn would I, even though I am a therapist who haven’t seen you in forty-something, fifty-somebody years, how would I
know
that your drink is Scotch, not seeing you after all this goddamn time? Forty years? Or fifty?”
    “Forty-fifty,” I say. But