A Kind of Flying: Selected Stories by Ron Carlson Read Free Book Online Page A

She could say, “We’ll pick up my car tomorrow or the day after that,” and steam up the dark with her laugh. I hadn’t realized how lonely I was until I saw his face, his moist eyes, the bone grain of his antlers.
    I pushed the door inward and said, “Hey, come see this deer.” Cindy’s face appeared in the opening. Behind her the party seemed to rage; Ellen was singing “Satisfaction,” and the din of conversation was loud and raw and alien.
    “What?”
    “Look at this deer.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    I let the door close and stepped back out. She followed me. “What are you talking about?”
    “This deer.” I turned and he was gone. I stepped to the corner of the house and was able to glimpse his gray back pass under a yard lamp two houses up.
    “Right,” Cindy said, taking my arm. “The deer.” She lobbed her drink, glass and all, into the snowbank, and turned fully to me. Her mouth was warm with tequila, and I could feel the flesh of her back perfectly through the cold silk of her dress. She rose against me, ignoring the cold, or frantic against it, I couldn’t tell which. It was funny there outside the party. When she went for me, I did nothing to stop her. I had made it outside, leaving early, but that was all I could do.

LIFE BEFORE SCIENCE

    “Yeah, I know about babies.”
    —J OHN W AYNE
    in The Sands of Iwo Jima
    I N FEBRUARY , I drove Story to New Haven for the post-coital. It was Sunday, and if you want a definition of sterility, try downtown New Haven on the second Sunday in February. The clouds were frozen like old newspapers into the sky, and the small parking lot of the clinic was blasted with frozen litter too. I remember there were a pair of old work gloves in the ice. Looked like somebody trying to get out.
    Dr. Binderwitz was meeting us on Sunday because Story had been keeping the basal charts for three months and we had to do the post-coital before Binderwitz, the most prominent fertility expert in the known world, flew off to Houston, Rio, Paris, and Frankfurt to deliver papers at conventions. It was a dark day and the doctor had all the lights in the clinic turned on. The doctor himself is one of the least healthy human beings I have ever met. He is a person who has literally spent years indoors, not grooming. When we shook hands, I was surprised at how soft his hand was, and up close, I could see that his hair was sprinkled with dandruff and larger particles I took to be bits of paper and pillow feather. So there we were with this force-ten genius, anxious to hear what he’d say.
    The doctor took Story into the examination room, and I sat with a copy of Sports Afield, for a moment angry with the cover artist for making his rearing grizzly so predictable. He’d used all his light in the mouth, even spraying some white points of saliva, and that, coupled with the point of view (from below, as a victim) cancelled any real life or sympathy from the work. It was a cheap shot done in half a day by some ad illustrator. There was no setting for the portrait, except a single pine, and that had been drawn melodramatically small. It looked like a folded umbrella.
    I was daydreaming. It was still early in the morning. Story had moved to me long before dawn and we’d made lost, unconscious love. It wasn’t until after I’d rolled out of bed and stood under the shower that I realized we were participating in an experiment.
    Story returned, calling me back to the doctor’s office, and then Dr. Binderwitz himself shuffled in, carrying the small prepared slide. He had taken a smear from Story’s cervix, and we watched as he positioned the slide under the microscope. Dr. Binderwitz studied the slide for a minute or two and then asked Story if she wanted to have a look. He told her what knob to rotate for focus.
    Then it was my turn. By slowly rotating the control, I was suddenly able to see dozens, maybe hundreds of sperm swimming around. I could see the problem right away.