Lullaby for the Rain Girl by Christopher Conlon Read Free Book Online Page A

many of the same intensities. “And I’m not getting laid much, by the way. Too busy writing.”
    “Writing.” She nodded. “I remember your novel. That was a nice little book.” For a moment, the sister I knew was returned to me—that note of disdain had crept into her voice. But it vanished as quickly as it had surfaced, and I realized that Alice was making a concerted effort to be nice—to not be the sister I knew. “But do you mean to tell me you don’t have women channeling in and out of that little apartment of yours? That’s not the Ben Fall I remember.”
    I wanted to say, Sis, the Ben Fall you remember is dead and gone, but I said: “That was a long time ago, Alice.”
    “Not so long. You were a good-looking kid. You’d still be good-looking, if you took care of yourself.”
    “Thanks.”
    But she was right. Once upon a time, for a period of a few years between the end of my last big relationship and the beginning of my marriage, I’d been what my students would call a player. It shocked me, now. My behavior seemed to belong to someone else’s past life, not mine. There had been dozens of women, young ladies who were attracted to me at least in part because I was in mourning, and it showed: but then, when I and the world were young, it showed on a svelte, graceful guy in his twenties, a published writer, a seemingly sweet, sensitive, melancholy boy with a tendency toward black clothing and poetic utterings. Oh, that boy was me all right—he was no act. But I learned fairly quickly that something in my persona brought out a motherly feeling in girls my age, and after an initial period of astonishment at my good fortune I took every advantage I could of this realization. There were one-night stands, one-day liaisons, one-week relationships. Lots of them. For years. It was hard to remember most of them now. A pale arm reaching up to my face; the sound of sighing, rumpled sheets, bare feet padding off to the bathroom; happy whispers from girls who didn’t know that our relationship would end within hours. 
    Well, with Kate I’d at last reaped the whirlwind. By the time she was finished with me—though truly, she wasn’t finished even now—that period belonged to my distant past. It would never come again. I was old now, tired, fifty pounds heavier; I could feel my slack belly pressing over the top of my belt. Running my hand through my hair, I noticed for the thousandth time how little of it there was left.
    At last we pulled up to the familiar two-story architectural marvel that was my sister’s house, all glass and angled planes and beams of steel and redwood. I’d always thought it a curious-looking place, but my knowledge of architecture is nonexistent. Hell, it was featured in Architectural Digest. That’s something, I guess. And passing through the high front doors I couldn’t deny an airiness, a quality of light that was striking. With so much glass everywhere you felt practically bathed in sun when you stepped in. The hallway was festooned with little multicolored Christmas lights. They reminded me that I needed to buy a Christmas card to send to her and her family.
    “Dad’s in the TV room, I think,” Alice said, leading the way.
    It was a shock to see him. I knew he’d declined since we’d last been together a few months before, but I still wasn’t prepared for the sagging, sack-like skin, the gray pallor, the generally shriveled, sunken, hunched-over quality of the man. His eyes, drooping and red-rimmed, glanced up from the television (a gigantic home-theater unit, of course) without interest.
    “Daddy,” Alice said, advancing toward him, “Ben’s here to see you. Isn’t that nice?”
    “Hm.” His eyes showed no sign of recognition, but then Dad had always acted indifferent whenever I entered a room. His eyes returned to the TV screen. The sound, I noticed, seemed to be off. “Waitin’ for the game.”
    “What game’s that, Dad?” I asked, moving forward, trying to