Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd Read Free Book Online

a slang word had been used that he wasn’t familiar with. She realized that he couldn’t believe she was talking about his clothes.
    â€œOh…my clothes , I see.”
    â€œNot exactly the cutting edge of haute couture.”
    â€œI’m sorry, I’m not interested in clothes.”
    Under further questioning he told her that he shopped about once every five years, when he tended to buy a dozen of everything—shoes, jackets, trousers. He held up a sleeve to expose a hole in the jacket elbow.
    â€œActually, this is almost ten years old. Wasn’t much call for jackets in California.”
    â€œSo what did you wear, when you lived there?”
    â€œJesus Christ.” He laughed. Then he added more politely, “Ah…I don’t know. I didn’t wear jackets.”
    â€œWhat about the beach? The sun?”
    â€œI was working. I wasn’t on holiday. Anyway, what would I want to go to a beach for?”
    â€œFun?”
    â€œListen, I’m thirty-five. Time’s running out for me.”
    She laughed at this, too long, the drink making her uncontrolled. Then he started to laugh at her laughing at him. It wasn’t for a long time that she realized he had been deadly serious.
    By the end of the evening he had asked her to go out with him. He did go out, he admitted, and he did drink, in phases, usually when he was changing “areas of study,” as he put it. It was lucky for her, he said without any condescension, that she had caught him on the cusp.
    They had sex for the first time about a week later, in the bedroom of her flat in South Kensington. He was living in the Oxford and Cambridge Club, vaguely looking for somewhere to live within walking distance of Imperial College, where his research post was. He came back to her flat the next night and stayed, and the night after that, and stayed. After a dozen nights she offered to put him up until he could find his own place. It seemed sensible. He was still living there in August when, three months and five days after their first meeting, he asked her to marry him.
    Â 
    They had been married for nearly eight weeks when Hope noticed the first change. Summer was over, autumn was well advanced. She came home one cold and frosty evening and opened a bottle of red wine.
    â€œDo you want a glass, Johnny?” she called.
    He came through to the kitchen.
    â€œNo thanks,” he said. “I’ve stopped.”
    â€œStopped what?”
    â€œThe booze.”
    â€œSince when?”
    â€œSince now.”
    He opened the fridge. Hope saw what looked like half a dozen pints of milk. He poured himself a glass. He grinned at her. He seemed in an unusually good mood.
    â€œGot to keep my strength up.”
    â€œWhat’s going on?”
    â€œI’ve found it,” he said. “I know what I’m going to do next.” He made a little turning motion with his hand. “Full of amazing—The potential. The excitement.”
    She felt happy for him. At least, that was what she told herself she felt.
    â€œGreat. What is it? Tell me.”
    â€œTurbulence,” he said. “Turbulence.”
    THE ZERO-SUM GAME
    Turbulence is John Clearwater’s new passion. Hope knows that his old passion, his old love for many years, was Game Theory. He spent four years at Cal Tech working on Game Theory: the theory of rational conflict. John Clearwater has told her a certain amount about the work he did at Cal Tech. He started with two-person games—two-person zero-sum games, as he put it. A zero-sum game is a game where one person’s win is necessarily the other person’s loss. “Like marriage,” Hope said. “Well, no,” John said. “Marriage is a non-zero-sum game. And emotions come into play. One person’s loss may not necessarily be another person’s gain.” John told her there was another factor too: he was particularly interested in games of perfect