Love Always by Ann Beattie Read Free Book Online Page B

gross,” she said. “Sometimes I like poppers.”
    “Maybe we ought to suggest to the toy manufacturer that they stuff the Nicole Nelson doll’s purse with them,” Edward said.
    Nicole laughed.
    “Who else do you like?” Edward said.
    “How come you don’t tell me who you like?”
    “I don’t go out with anybody famous,” Edward said.
    “Oh,” Nicole said.
    In the house, the phone was ringing. Lucy decided to let it ring. Since Nicole was staying through July, she should have a separate telephone number. All of the people who called from the Coast simply began talking when she picked up the phone. At first she thought they might have mistaken her voice for Nicole’s, but that didn’t seem to be it at all. They simply assumed that she would relay the message—that, like a secretary, she was to pass the word along.
    St. Francis was stalking a bird. Just as he got within pouncing distance, the bird flew away. St. Francis had a little temper tantrum, sniffing the ground where the bird had been, then digging up dirt until Lucy told him to stop. A jogger in green shorts passed by on the dirt road. It was a breezy day, but graying over as if it might rain. The sky, mottled with dark clouds, looked like an enormous x-ray that had been hung out to dry. St. Francis settled down in his gully beside the rhododendron bush and closed his eyes. When another runner came by, the dog sensed it and his head shot up. He dropped his head again as the runner panted by.
    Edward made them tabouli burgers for lunch. He had brought these, frozen, in a cooler that said It’s Miller Time!, from Los Angeles.
    Over lunch, he gave Nicole pointers on how to be popular. “First of all, if you’re lucky enough to be an object to people, you can’t go wrong. They just care about what you look like—they don’t want to hear what you have to say, and they don’t not want to hear what you have to say. So with them, you’re just talking to amuse yourself. I find that two things are veryuseful when you want to put yourself across. The first one is to know about a dozen pieces of misinformation, and then to know what the correct information is. Take this for an example: Most people think that Humphrey Bogart said, ‘Drop the gun, Louis.’ What did he really say?”
    Nicole frowned. “Lauren Bacall was married to him, wasn’t she?” she said.
    “What did he say?” Lucy said.
    “He said, ‘Not so fast, Louis.’ ” Edward looked at Lucy. “Now here’s what you do to make an impression. You work the conversation around to Humphrey Bogart, and when somebody comes out with a famous line—everybody loves to do their Bogart routine, so you’re usually in luck—you mention that he didn’t say that at all, but that it’s always misquoted. Say it casually, so you don’t seem like a snot. Tell them the right line. And this part is crucial: if they ask you where you found something out, never tell them. Make them think that you always knew it. You have to be nice about that, too, or they’ll think you’re a snot. Obviously, you can go wrong with this routine, so you’ve got to be careful.”
    “Do you do this stuff?” Nicole asked.
    “If I have to. To tell you the truth, it works better for women than for men. But the other thing I’m going to tell you will work for anybody. Everybody talks about the weather, right? And if they don’t, it’s the easiest thing in the world to make them talk about it. So what you do is you really know something about the weather. Say you’re with a bunch of people and a wind blows up. Or there’s no wind at all—you can still use it. You get the subject around to the wind, and then you mention the Worcester tornado of 1953. You lead up to it, actually, by not naming it so officially, so that people think you memorized some arcane information. You say, ‘This reminds me of that tornado in Massachusetts,” and of course somebody’ll ask what you’re talking about. Tell them the one that