Love Always by Ann Beattie Read Free Book Online

his own juicer with him. That morning he had concocted, for the three of them, a mixture of fresh orange juice, lemon, Perrier, ice, bananas and protein powder. With his, he swallowed some vitamins in the shape of Flintstones characters. He washed Fred and Wilma down the alimentary and went out into the backyard to do aerobics. When he finished, he changed from his sweatsuit to his business clothes: khaki cut-offs, Nikes, and a recently purchased T-shirt that said: VERMONT—CAN 339,000 cows BE WRONG?
    Move over, Michelangelo: Edward Grant Bartlett III, born L.A., California, September 1, 1950; B.A. Cal State L.A.; M.F.A. Parsons School of Design; favorite hobby, dirt bike racing; last book read,
Foot Reflexology;
most admired American, Phil Spector; was (in the service of a major toy manufacturer) about to capture, for all time, on the sketch pad propped on his easel, the likeness of Nicole Nelson. Less than three months from this very day, the foot-high Nicole would be plastic perfect, dressed, boxed, and shipped—suitable toy or
objet
for any desirous child or dream-struck man who wasn’t into inflatables and who didn’t already have a paper dolly all his own.
    As he sketched, Edward listened, through the earphones of his Sony Walkman, to a tape of conversational Swahili. As she stood in the yard, shielded by a striped beach umbrella, Nicole listened to Duran Duran through her earphones, keeping the beat by tapping the toe of her pink jellies.
    Nicole had been in Vermont for two days, and already Lucy’s life was in a state of chaos. Jane said that only important people had been given the number, and they had been told to call only if it was essential. So far, this morning’s essential calls had come from Nicole’s broker, who wanted to say goodbye before he left for a Club Med vacation on Paradise Island, and Nicole’s agent, P. G. “Piggy” Proctor, who wanted to finalize plans for Nicole’s dangling from the rope of a helicopter with Bobby Blue over the beach at Malibu on behalf of a campaign to raise money for children afflicted with sleep apnea. The last call was a total fluke: a woman selling the World Book encyclopedia.
    Lucy was writing her column. She had pulled a stool up to the kitchen counter. Out the window she could see Nicole under the umbrella. The sun was stronger now; Edward had put on a coonskin cap and rubbed zinc oxide over his nose. He wore sunglasses with rectangular black lenses. He looked clinically insane.
    Dear Cindi Coeur,
    I want to be a nurse, but my boyfriend says that this will embarrass him, because nurses all have a reputation for being loose. He thinks I should be a computer programmer instead. My reason for wanting to be a nurse is that I have juvenile onset diabetes, and becoming a nurse would be a way of thanking the people who helped me all my life and of helping others. I just think my boyfriend has a dirty mind. I told him that if he had a heart attack and went to the hospital, he would be a lot happier to see a nurse than a computer programmer. Our relationship has been horrible since I said this because he thought that I wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t been thinking about him being dead. Cindi, I never think about anybody or anything being dead. When I was thirteen I got in trouble with my father because I couldn’t face the fact that my goldfish was dead and flush it down the toilet. I know better than to say this to him, though. I need your advice about what I should do with my life.
    Diabetic Debbi
    Dear Debbi,
    Sometimes when you are in doubt about what you should do, it is best, before you act, to imagine the worst possible scenario thatcould happen. Let’s say that you did become a nurse, and that you were on duty when your boyfriend was brought in with a heart attack. Let’s say that he died, but before he did, he looked up and saw you, and his last words were that you should have become a computer programmer. Can you imagine keeping it together, and just