Life by Gwyneth Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

her, Ramone again. Who’d have thought she would become his virtual chaperone? He felt guilty, but ruthlessly set her to work. “She says she’s a feminist but doesn’t seem to get anything out of it, except angry all the time. You know she claims she’s in love with Daz? D’you think she’s really a lesbian?”
    Anna hesitated, smiled faintly, and shook her head.
    Spence turned to follow the direction of her gaze. Rob and Daz were playing table-footie, against Flynn and Simon, while their supporters yelled encouragement and inconsiderately blocked everybody’s access to the toilets. There was Ramone, dancing up and down and shrieking, her attention furtively fixed on the campus hunk. The poor kid. It was kind of cunning to pretend she had a crush on his girlfriend, but transparent…Rob had done it with Ramone once, for the experience. Spence had been there when he reported on the ride. She was highly sexed, made strange noises, and kept herself none too clean. Okay if you were desperate, was the alpha-male verdict: and he’d probably never even wondered why the ferocious soi-disant lesbian had come willingly to his bed.
    Spence and Anna nodded at each other. No need to say it. Poor Ramone. Campus life was full of pitiful secrets, absurd sorrows.
    “I guess we’re lucky to be fancy free,” said Spence.
    She agreed. “D’you want another?” She stood up, touching the rim of her empty glass to his. “Drink up.” He drank. She took the glass, with a speculative look that sent shivers down his spine. And walked away: straight back, small waist, round bottom. He imagined those firm cheeks pressed against his crotch. His balls ached; sweat broke out all over. What did she mean by that look? Was it time to make a move? What move did he want to make?

    Ramone had taken The Sleepwalkers back to her lair, to join the awesome stack of volumes she devoured there nightly and pathologically failed to return to the library. She’d dismissed Koestler with contempt. She preferred The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: if you like that sort of thing. Dead science is dead, she had told Anna. Whereas dead art never dies. Reading about dead science is like fucking a corpse, but less interesting. Anyway, how can you read Koestler? Do you know what kind of amateur rapist the bastard was in real life? In revenge, Anna had sought out George MacDonald, and been appalled and bored in about equal parts by Phantastes and Lilith. But it was so conventional, under the weirdness: all these pure hearts, true knights, womanly sacrifices, wicked female enchantments. Oh Ramone, she thought. Is that what’s hiding under your carapace? A heart full of Victorian goo? But she didn’t ask this aloud. It would have been too mean. So they tracked each other, without exactly becoming friends. Ramone would confide passionately in Daz, in Rosey, in Lucy Freeman, even in Spence. She’ll tell you absolutely anything, marveled her favorites. Anything but the truth, thought Anna. She admired the core of reticence and the wild whirling of the outer shell, but she didn’t feel drawn. Yet from their first meeting they had shared something (besides the secret crush on Rob) unknown to their friends: a purpose that Anna had hardly recognized in herself, before that night under the beech tree.
    Deep in the English stacks, Anna had found a row of desks that was miraculously quiet. But what is it that I think I’ve got? she wondered, gazing at the back of the reading stall, half-conscious of the immemorial graffiti: sex, smells like fish and tastes like marmite; literature is internalized oppression; Elvis is king. I’m not Ramone, I don’t want to be famous. So why do I work so hard? Why do I dream of doing something important, even if it’s something only another nerd would understand? It was inexplicable.
    That’s why I like her, she thought. Even if she doesn’t like me. They call me Mr Spock and think I’m unemotional: but I like marvels. I have a