Lies You Wanted to Hear by James Whitfield Thomson Read Free Book Online

products.”
    “Do you enjoy it?”
    “It can be interesting. Depends on the client. Sometimes I can’t believe how much people pay me to tell them things they could have easily figured out for themselves. I’ve got plenty of work, but I’ve been getting antsy lately. I’m thinking about trying something new.”
    “Like what?”
    “I don’t know. See if I can get into promoting. Write the great American screenplay. Go out to Hollywood and try to swim with the sharks.”
    “What will your screenplay be about?”
    “Serendipity. A tragically bored young man meets a beautiful girl while he’s talking on a pay phone, and they connect for one magical afternoon before fate intervenes.”
    “I can’t wait to find out the rest of the story.”
    “A happy ending, for sure. That’s what sells.”
    “Let’s go back to the part about fate. Why did you leave me by the river like that?”
    “Sorry, the dog with the Frisbee got into a fight with a schnauzer, and I had to help the guy take him to the vet.”
    I grinned. “Please. You can do better than that.
    “No, really. I knew where to find you.”
    “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
    “You want to know the truth?” He fixed those pale blue eyes on me. “When I came over and saw you sleeping on the grass, I felt like I’d stepped into a dream. You had one hand folded under your chin, your hair spread out around you like a silk cape. You looked so amazing . Like a pre-Raphaelite painting or a vision out of a Fellini film. I stood there for about five minutes just watching you sleep, thinking, ‘Be careful, Griff. This is the real deal. You’ve never known a woman like this before. One kiss and all your hard-earned insouciance could be gone in a heartbeat.’ I don’t have any excuses, Lucy. I wasn’t sure I could handle it, so I just…” He made a motion with his hand like an airplane taking off.
    I narrowed my eyes for a second, then burst out laughing. “I can see why you went into PR.”
    “A little heavy-handed, was it?”
    “Better than a sharp stick in the eye.” I leaned over, kissed him softly on the lips, and waved bye-bye. “There goes all your hard-earned insouciance.”
    He flicked his hand. “Good riddance.”
    We kissed again on the stairs leading up to my apartment, then tumbled in the door and made love on the couch. His body was lean and wiry, almost no hair on his freckled skin. He had a tattoo on the back of his left shoulder, the first I’d seen on someone of his ilk—a lion with an eagle’s head and wings, the gryphon from Alice in Wonderland . I traced the black lines with my fingernail. He took out a joint, and we smoked and drank wine and made love again.
    It was after nine when we went out to dinner at a little Greek restaurant. Alan Griffin Chandler III told me he had grown up in Cincinnati and, like his father and grandfather before him, had gone to St. Mark’s then Princeton. He said he’d majored in partying with a minor in English literature, his only regret being that he was never quite good enough to make the varsity tennis team. His father wanted him to go to law school and join the family firm, but Griffin said he had no interest in the law and even less in living in Cincinnati. Two weeks after graduation, he married his longtime girlfriend.
    “I think we did it out of inertia,” he said. “We came home from our honeymoon, moved into an apartment, looked at each other, and said, Now what? She worked as a buyer for a department store; I got a job with an ad agency. I don’t think we had one whole week when we were really happy. We had so little in common. I wanted to travel; she didn’t. She wanted kids; I didn’t. Thank God, she never got pregnant. We lasted almost two years before calling it quits.”
    “Do you ever see her now?”
    “About once a year. She lives in Belmont with her perfectly boring husband, cute little twin daughters, and a fat chocolate Lab. Everything she ever wanted.”
    When