A Bird's Eye by Cary Fagan Read Free Book Online Page B

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    â€œBut he knows I’m here. He says that the difference in our faiths isn’t a problem for him. He doesn’t object to your conversion. My family has a good name, and that counts for something in this town. I want you to marry me, Hannah.”
    Her breaths came so quickly that she became almost faint. He had to support her arm. To be the deepest concern of a man. To escape this house. To be loved. Tears stung her eyes and sobs convulsed her. She felt absolutely stupid, but she just couldn’t stop.

Miss Pensler had told me to come during regular hours, but I would wait for her instead at the end of the day so that the two of us could have the library to ourselves. I think that it was already becoming my way, to operate in secrecy, in the shadows of near dark, and somewhere between the rules. Miss Pensler herself must have enjoyed our little conspiracy for, despite sighs and eye rolling, she always let us back in.
    It says something about my feelings that, instead of keeping these visits always to myself, I decided to bring Corinne with me. And Corinne was eager to go. She liked reading much more than me; I wasn’t interested in any story but the one I was trying to write for myself. But really she wanted to come because she was suspicious of this Miss Pensler who didn’t mind spending some of her free evening hours with me. “Just don’t tell me that she’s got literature on her mind,” Corinne said, stretching out the word: lit-a-ra-toor . This jealousy by my sixteen-year-old lover made me uncomfortable and proud at the same time, and I didn’t know if I should reassure her or encourage it, but in any case I was far too inexperienced to attempt either.
    And so one evening Corinne trailed behind me, suddenly unsure, as I went up to the door just as Miss Pensler was coming out.
    â€œI brought a friend with me,” I said.
    â€œNow Benjamin, you know the library has closed. Letting one person in is bending the rules enough. If Mr. Clare finds out, I could be dismissed.”
    â€œWho’s Mr. Clare?”
    â€œThe head of the branch.”
    â€œAren’t you the head?”
    â€œI certainly deserve to be. Well, come in, then, before somebody sees.”
    Corinne followed and I could feel her wariness even without looking back. We went through the workrooms to the stairs and up into the reading room.
    â€œGo turn on the lamp and I’ll get Professor Hoffmann for you.”
    After she left us, Corinne said, “I saw it.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œIn your hand. The coin. It caught the lamplight.”
    â€œAh, damn.”
    â€œHow long have you been doing it?”
    â€œMaybe half an hour. Passing it back and forth.”
    â€œPretty good. Anything else?”
    She never asked to see what I had been practising and I suspected she was trying to get on my good side. But I opened my hand to show her the quarter. Then passed my other hand over it and the coin was gone. Corinne nodded solemnly.
    Miss Pensler returned. “Here you go. We can’t stay too long, I have an engagement this evening. Would your friend like something to read? I’ve got a lovely illustrated book of Aesop’s fables just in. They’re very short.”
    â€œI’m a good reader,” Corinne said, sounding more herself. “I just read Daphne du Maurier, and before that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.”
    â€œI see. Then I’ll point you to our latest fiction.”
    I watched them go off. Corinne looked back at me and stuck out her tongue.

I see my father walking home, not with his usual stroll but hunched over from a pulsing headache. Maybe it was from all the smoke in the back of the coffee shop on Dupont when he’d lost his last five dollars on dice. He stopped to look at a window display of artificial limbs and, in spite of the headache, roll himself a cigarette. He could never roll them as clean and tight as I used to do for