Electric City: A Novel by Elizabeth Rosner Read Free Book Online

off to a neighboring town where there was a modified yeshiva.
    Then again, she had to endure her own family obligations in Hebrew school. “Two afternoons a week,” she explained to Henry. Ithad to do with her father’s fervent commitment to all things Jewish, especially education.
    “But you really don’t look Jewish,” Henry said.
    She reflexively leaned away, startled by his words. Simon had told her that one of his college roommates had openly searched the back of her brother’s head for horns. Surely Henry wasn’t . . .
    “Damn,” Henry said, smacking himself surprisingly hard on his forehead. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
    “Um,” Sophie managed, getting up from the bench to retrieve her bike.
    Henry leaped up too. “Why didn’t you tell me to shut up?” he demanded.
    When she reached for her wobbling handlebars, Henry put his hands on top of hers, his good one as well as the one wrapped in plaster. She noticed there was a navy blue drawing of a dog on the cast that hadn’t been there at the picnic. His fingernails were bitten down to the quick.
    “I’m not as idiotic as this all the time,” he said. “Crazy from the heat.”
    He surrendered the bike to Sophie, and tried shoving his hands into his pockets, except that the one with the cast didn’t fit. The fabric ripped a little but wouldn’t yield.
    “It’s okay,” Sophie said. “I figure you couldn’t possibly mean it the way it sounded.”
    Henry shook his head, squinting up at the sky with a mournful expression.
    “Okay,” she said again, though she was not entirely sure that it was. Her hands tingled where he had touched her.
    To Sophie this seemed the right moment to climb back onto her bike and skip past yet another potentially awkward goodbye. She was only half-surprised when Henry continued to speak.
    “Hey, there’s a sun dog,” he said. “See?” He pointed to the huge radiant halo adorning the sun.
    “Atmospheric ice crystals,” Sophie said in her father’s voice.
    Henry exhaled loudly, as though given a reprieve. “Rain tomorrow,” he said.

    Instead of returning to the dentist’s office where he’d parked his car, Henry chose a meandering route in the opposite direction. The upbeat mood at Friendly’s yielded abruptly to a grittier scene: pizza parlor with dusty windows; two matching rusted station wagons side by side in front of the liquor store; a bakery with a padlocked front door and a handwritten sign announcing its farewells to the neighborhood: THANKS FOR YOUR BUSIENESS .
    Though he usually avoided the place, Henry found himself turning several corners in a semiconscious daze, until he slowed down to face the still-majestic ivy-covered brick house where his family had once lived. An enthusiastic sprinkler blasted mist across the wide front lawn, and the spray of water looked so inviting, Henry imagined Sophie beside him, suggesting they make a dash through it.
    Oh, I don’t think so , he would have had to say.

    The water aimed in staccato bursts against the trunk of a massive elm whose sturdy limbs reached out and up, almost dwarfing the house itself. Henry couldn’t take his gaze off the branches, whose density seemed to pull at his attention with an irresistible force. At the same time, theweight of the day pressed down so hard he felt as though he might pass out. No matter that shade was spreading in a generous pool below the tree; approaching it was forbidden in a way he couldn’t have admitted to anyone. When he detected the shadow of someone moving around inside the leaded-glass entryway, and felt the warning bass drum of his heartbeat, he rallied himself and turned away, sprinting in the direction of his car.
    The next morning, a summer thunderstorm hit, with delirious sheet lightning and enough heavy rain to flood the drains and spill with abandon across the streets. The day was warm, but Henry stayed inside to view it all from the couch beside his living room window; he watched the sky