Animal Husbandry by Laura Zigman Read Free Book Online Page B

type.”
    I looked at him. “Oh? And what is your type?”
    He took my hand and squeezed it hard. “You.” He smiled. “You’re my type.”
    “Can I ask you something else?” I said. Darkness had fallen almost completely, and I looked up through the branches at what was left of the sky. Despite Joan’s advice, I needed to know where things stood—where I stood—no matter how impossibly premature it was to form the question or trust the answer. And no matter how well I knew that asking was against the rules (read:
their
rules)—that it could tip yourhand enough for the game to stop, I suddenly decided that I’d had enough of keeping myself in the dark until it was too late. So I asked.
    “Have you told Mia anything about this? About—” I hesitated for a moment and decided not to use the word
us
.
    Ray kicked at the gravel under his feet. “No. Not yet. I’m her only friend, really, and somehow I feel like she would be devastated if I abandoned her.”
    I paused, feeling another rush of New-Cow hormones coming on. “Are you going to tell her?”
    He looked at me. “Of course,” he said. “Of course I’m going to tell her. I have to.”
    I smiled, relieved.
New Cows always believe everything Bulls tell them
.
    He stood up and I stood up and we started walking. It was almost nine o’clock and the park was silent, except for the sound of distant cars and the wind rustling through the tops of the trees. Ray put his arm around me and kissed my forehead.
    “Let’s go home,” he said, and though I didn’t know which home he was referring to, his or mine, I leaned against him and followed him out of the park and into a cab.
    That night, when we were in bed, in my apartment, as it turned out, lying under the sheet, Ray said, “Tell me about your old boyfriends.”
    (It is only a matter of time before they ask you this.
    Men are obsessed with this question, and they delude themselves—and you—with the idea that their interest in asking and your answering is purely clinical and informational: that is, that the details you disclose during warm, fuzzy moments like these will never come back to haunt you.)
    So I refused.
    “Why not?” Ray asked.
    “Because.”
    “Because there are too many?”
    “No. Because there were too few.”
    “Tell me about Michael, then.”
    “I already told you about him.”
    “Tell me more.”
    I turned away from Ray and stared at the wall. “Why?”
    “Because,” he said, pulling me back toward him, “I’m curious.”
    Curious George. My long-lost monkey crush.
    I pulled the sheet up under my arms and looked at the ceiling. “There’s not much more to tell,” I lied. “We lived together for three years. We used to talk about getting married, but it didn’t work out.”
    Ray rested his head on his hand and leaned his elbow into the pillow. Obviously he wasn’t going anywhere. “Why not?”
    “We argued a lot.”
    “About what?”
    “About sex mostly.”
    Ray raised an eyebrow. “What about sex?”
    I rolled my eyes and exhaled loudly. “About how we didn’t do it enough.”
    Ray nudged me under the sheet. “I think we do it enough.”
    “You would, considering that ‘doing it’ hasn’t exactly been the mainstay of your
other
relationship.”
    He laughed but wouldn’t be distracted from the question at hand. “Go on,” he said.
    I closed my eyes and tried to think of a way to say the rest of it without really saying it, but because Ray was always tellingme about how unhappy he was with Mia and because I felt somehow that if anyone would understand, he would, I finally just said this: “I think he wanted someone smarter.”
    Ray looked at me. “
Smarter?
”
    I nodded.
    “Than
you?
”
    I shrugged, pretending it hadn’t registered that he’d taken it for granted that I was smart. But it had registered. As sharply and as deeply as Michael’s belief had that I wasn’t.
    “What was he, fucking chapter president of
Mensa?
”
    I shrugged