After the Plague by T. C. Boyle Read Free Book Online Page B

week. She was always like that when it was coming down to the wire, and he didn’t blame her. Or yes, yes, he did blame her. And he resented it too. What was the big deal? It wasn’t like she was playing ball or anything that took any skill, and why lock him out for that? She was like his over-achieving, straight-arrow parents, Type A personalities, early risers, joggers, let’s go out and beat the world. God, that was anal. But she had some body on her, as firm and flawless as the Illustrated Man’s—or Woman’s, actually. He thought about that and about the way her face softened when they were in bed together, and he stood at the pay phone seeing her in the hazy soft-focus glow of some made-for-TV movie. Maybe he shouldn’t call. Maybe he should just … surprise her.
    She answered the door in an oversized sweatshirt and shorts, barefooted, and with the half-full pitcher from the blender in herhand. She looked surprised, all right, but not pleasantly surprised. In fact, she scowled at him and set the pitcher down on the bookcase before pulling back the door and ushering him in. He didn’t even get the chance to tell her he loved her or to wish her luck before she started in on him. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “You know I can’t see you tonight, of all nights. What’s with you? Are you drunk? Is that it?”
    What could he say? He stared at the brown gloop in the pitcher for half a beat and then gave her his best simmering droopy-eyed smile and a shrug that radiated down from his shoulders to his hips. “I just wanted to see you. To wish you luck, you know?” He stepped forward to kiss her, but she dodged away from him, snatching up the pitcher full of gloop like a shield. “A kiss for luck?” he said.
    She hesitated. He could see something go in and out of her eyes, the flicker of a worry, competitive anxiety, butterflies, and then she smiled and pecked him a kiss on the lips that tasted of soy and honey and whatever else was in that concoction she drank. “Luck,” she said, “but no excitement.”
    â€œAnd no sex,” he said, trying to make a joke of it. “I know.”
    She laughed then, a high girlish tinkle of a laugh that broke the spell. “No sex,” she said. “But I was just going to watch a movie if you want to join me—”
    He found one of the beers he’d left in the refrigerator for just such an emergency as this and settled in beside her on the couch to watch the movie—some inspirational crap about a demi-cripple who wins the hurdle event in the Swedish Special Olympics—but he was hot, he couldn’t help it, and his fingers kept wandering from her shoulder to her breast, from her waist to her inner thigh. At least she kissed him when she pushed him away. “Tomorrow,” she promised, but it was only a promise, and they both knew it. She’d been so devastated after the Houston thing she wouldn’t sleep with him for a week and a half, strung tight as a bow every time he touched her. The memory of it chewed at him, and he sipped his beer moodily. “Bullshit,” he said.
    â€œBullshit what?”
    â€œBullshit you’ll sleep with me tomorrow. Remember Houston? Remember Zinny Bauer?”
    Her face changed suddenly and she flicked the remote angrily at the screen and the picture went blank. “I think you better go,” she said.
    But he didn’t want to go. She was his girlfriend, wasn’t she? And what good did it do him if she kicked him out every time some chickenshit race came up? Didn’t he matter to her, didn’t he matter at all? “I don’t want to go,” he said.
    She stood, put her hands on her hips, and glared at him. “I have to go to bed now.”
    He didn’t budge. Didn’t move a muscle. “That’s what I mean,” he said, and his face was ugly, he couldn’t help it. “I