My Life in Heavy Metal by Steve Almond Read Free Book Online Page B

said the right words, but these somehow had the effectof underscoring the unnaturalness of his attempts. Knowing her affinity for sun, he cursed the gray days of autumn until he felt his throat rip.
    And then the study; that afternoon in the study. She had done well the previous day, eaten all her potatoes and even a bite or two of chicken. In the morning he had seen a trace of color in her face. To find her like that, still and unbreathing, her hand clenched against her white cheek—he simply shut down. It was only the phone calls and later a visit from his neighbor that allowed things to move forward.
    One by one his children came into the kitchen until he was surrounded. They were here now, his sweet son and daughters, asking what was wrong and their voices, all going at once, composed a child’s chant. “Are-you-okay-are-you-okay-Dad-what-is-it-Dad-what-is-it?” He tried to tell them, “Don’t be scared,” but could not. He understood that it was his role, as father, to provide some reassurance, to subdue the tide of sorrow that now threatened them all. It was only this business of breath that held him back, the loss of breath.
    To calm himself, Rodgers closed his eyes. The baby was whimpering and Ken was apologizing and someone was stroking his poor old bald head and the youngest, Amy, she was even weeping. He felt hands being laid upon him, one pair then another, the hot cling of his children’s fingers. They were good children, more than he deserved, because within them lived some link to her; it was this link to which he attached his hopes.
    There was quite a lot of commotion, you would have to say that, a lot of crying, a lot of noise, and he could feel his children crowding in on him and he heard the baby nearby, crying now, and he must have reached out for her or made some indication of hisneed, because someone placed her in his lap. Rodgers opened his eyes. She stared up at him with sleepy eyes, a tiny fist worked loose from her swaddling and pressed against her cheek. Rodgers examined the intricacy of her face and hands and straightened up a bit and then quietly said, “Why do these crazy people cry so much? Can you tell me that? Why is everybody crying so much, baby girl?”

Geek Player, Love Slayer
    Computer Boy swaggers over to my cube to help me open this one knucklehead email Phoenix sent me and within about, oh, two seconds, I’m ready to whip off his khakis and blow him right there. He’s leaning over my keyboard, tappy-tap-tap, with his lousy beautiful sideburns and his Right Guard wafting all over the place, and underneath that this kind of wounded musk that tends to make my nipples go
boing,
and his teeth which I could fucking eat they look so healthy. I have, mind you, already offered him my seat. But he can’t allow that. No-no-no. Don’t you move your pretty little self, he tells me, which is when neighbor Brisby starts snarking away and I’m like, Oh for Chrissakes, why does this obnoxious creature, this dopey slab of masculine grace, whose name is (try not to laugh) Lance, and whom I have taken to calling Lancelot, Sir Lance-me-a-lot, why does this totally throat-lickable hottie have to be such a shitbrain?
    So I just sit there smelling him and watching his unreasonably defined triceps pulse and unpulse and noticing the blond hairs on his earlobe, like tiny spears of wheat, and the way his firm little rump tenses up when he gets a systems error. And the worst part of it is that he keeps running these lines about how I must be doing something to my machine, my keystrokes must be pretty vigorous—key
strokes
,get it?—and even though I’m actually kind of impressed by his use of the word
vigorous,
there’s no way I can flirt back without losing total office cred with Brisby, who’s outright laughing at this point. It’s not like I have time for this crap anyway; I’m on deadline. Though actually, the worst part is