Glaciers by Alexis Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

aware that someone in the corner has looked up at her. She looks toward the apple tree and there is Spoke, staring at her, caught. He smiles, but Isabel feels caught as well. She smiles back and mouths hello , but realizes that they are alone in the restaurant. The waitress, the owner’s wife (Isabel has always assumed), recognizes her and gestures to Spoke.
    Are you together? she asks.

    Isabel looks from the woman to Spoke.
    Yes? she says, to Spoke.
    He nods and she sits across from him at the small table. They shrug at each other almost simultaneously. They have never, in the last year, gone to lunch together—at least not alone, not to a restaurant. Everyone goes to the food carts sometimes, of course, and sits together in the park.
    Spoke has already ordered, and his big bowl of rice and mock duck arrives. Isabel orders the tofu special and tucks the menu back in the napkin holder.
    Though they often sit in the kitchenette, at the same table, with the saltshakers between them, where she can believe that the silence they share is mutually agreed upon, now, in a public place, mere inches apart, Isabel hopes one of them will start talking.
    She could bring up the party, she thinks. Some words form themselves in her mouth. They regard each other. She feels all of her abandoned places—
in her mouth, the tilt of her lower back, the bottom of her lungs—but she cannot fill them. The space around the two of them, sitting there together, accumulates details in her mind. She imagines the scene as if they were in a play: the laminated menus, hard vinyl chairs, plastic plants, spicy pickle in glass jars with little metal spoons, partial light through the window and fluorescent gleam from overhead. Her looking at him, that same inscrutable expression on his face, the way he looks her in the eye, his parted lips not quite saying what he could say. All the buttons running down his untucked red and blue plaid shirt. His sweater hangs on the back of his chair.
    It’s so warm in here, she thinks. Say something .
    Spoke isn’t eating, and she realizes this is probably because she doesn’t have any food yet, and he’s being polite. So she pours them both tea, and they drink.

    I didn’t know you were a vegetarian, she finally gets out.
    I’m not, Spoke says sheepishly, scratching his temple. I just feel like I ought to be sometimes.
    Why do you think you ought to be? she asks.
    Aren’t you a vegetarian?
    Since I was twelve, she says. But I guess I don’t feel like everyone should be. Unless they feel compelled.
    I guess sometimes I feel compelled, he says.
    By what?
    I spent a lot of time on farms, as a kid. I’ve seen a lot of animals up close.
    Did you raise livestock?
    No. I spent a lot of time—school vacations mostly—at my grandparents’ farm, a few miles from Chippewa Falls, where I grew up. My grandpa was a veterinarian. He converted a barn on the family farm and had a practice there. For years he was the only vet for miles. People brought animals to
him, and he drove around in an old pickup visiting farms, treating livestock. When I was staying out at the farm, I rode along.
    You watched him treat the animals? she asks.
    Sometimes. Mostly I played with whatever kids were around, or sat in the back of the truck, waiting, reading comic books and Jules Verne. I guess it was just seeing what my grandfather did all day, caring for sick animals. He respected the animals—not like he ever talked about it, but I think he felt for them. I think he understood how powerless they were, how, ultimately, everything is up to humans. We choose where they live, and how long, and, you know, what kind of sausage they become.
    Isabel’s food comes, and they begin to eat.
    Spoke looks out the window behind Isabel while he chews. They eat silently for a while, Spoke staring out the window, occasionally looking back
to his bowl, then up at Isabel. Just when Isabel thinks the