Where the God of Love Hangs Out: Fiction Read Online Free PDF

glass of water, or worse. It’s very pleasant, it is just very warming, to have poor, good Charles on the receiving end of Isabel’s disapproval for a change, and Clare throws her shoulders back and down to lengthen her neck and smiles up at William, who smiles back with relief, thinking, She’s all right, she’s just sick of being Charles’s little cripple, as who wouldn’t be.
    William stands in front of Clare.
    “Sit,” Clare says, and he sits in the armchair across from David, miles away from Clare, close enough to David to pat him on the knee or, alternatively, smash him in the throat and kill him.
    “Sitting,” William says. “Shall I roll over, too?”
    “What’s with the cane?”
    “It helps me walk more comfortably.” The thought of discussing his rheumatoid arthritis with Clare is disheartening. It is unbearable.
    “Oh,” Clare says. She looks down at the bag of books Isabel has brought and pulls one out. “God bless Isabel. I like this series.”
    William smiles politely.
    “I never read them,” he says. “You know, Isabel goes through hundreds.”
    “Are you in pain?” Clare says accusingly.
    “Yes,” he says, and Clare thinks, Oh, God, he’s dying.
    “I’m just in pain,” he says. “I’m not dying.”
    He shouldn’t have come. He should have let Isabel come down by herself, and the women could have had some girl talk and clucked their tongues over the stupidity or cupidity of men, about which he would never argue, and have a few measured glasses of white wine (which is completely untrue to his memory of Clare, who pulled a bottle of Balvenie out of her suitcase when they were still twenty miles from their motel). He’s not going to tell Clare, least of all when she’s lying there like the little match girl, and certainly least of all while her uncle David sits before them like a cross between Cerberus and Mel Brooks, that he feels like he’s been dying for some time. He has not been happy to see daylight any morning that he can remember, and he falls into sleep as if he’s been wrapped in chains and tossed overboard.
    “I’m not dying,” he says again.
    “I hope not,” Clare says, and shifts her weight to look at him more closely.
    “For the love of Jesus,” David says. “He’s limping, he’s not dying. Who are you, Dr. Kevorkian?”
    Clare looks at William and smiles. David sees. He could sit here all night, is how David feels, keeping an eye on this big fat smoothie who’s just as crazy about Clare as he ever was. Clare’s feelings he can’t read. She looks old and tired, and in David’s experience old and tired is not a breeding ground for illicit love. Not in women. In men, sometimes it makes them try a little harder, to get the woman to chase the old and tired away.
    “So, what a pair,” David says. “Pair of lame ducks.” They shrug, like a pair.
    “Since my ankle,” Clare says, “I’m only reading about the ambulatory. Cowgirls, lady mountain climbers. Strong-minded women paddling down the Amazon, with their bare hands. Shrunken heads in their lace reticules. Banana leaves on their feet.”
    “Really,” William says.
    “Your mother was a great walker,” David says. Evoking Clare’s mother seems like a good idea. His sister was hell on hanky-panky, and everybody knew it. She threw David out of her house on four different occasions because of hanky-panky. He was sitting on the curb after one Thanksgiving, up to his ass in dead leaves, in front of that house they had in, where, Lake Success, and it was little Clare who came out with his coat, his hat on her head, carrying a beer and a handful of pigs-in-blankets. Life is short, David thinks, and walks out.
    “Why don’t you just sit by me?” Clare says. “You can provide the elevation.” She would ask for more ice, she could actually use some more ice, but if William goes to get it, Isabel will intercept him and want it done properly and bring it herself, knowing that William will bring back