One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Read Free Book Online Page B

moved? He imagined her scuttling crablike through the debris into the far recesses of the office, where she disappeared. Then he was disconcerted at having conjured up such a bizarre image. But that’s how it had been since she had landed in the emergency room: whenever he didn’t know what she was doing, his brain, usually so clear and orderly, ran amuck.
    His fingers tightened around the lighter in his pocket. A cigarette—even a few puffs—would have calmed him. An entire pack of Dunhills sat in his other pocket, but smoking was impossible. The African American sergeant was right about the dangers of a broken gas line.
    “Mr. Pritchett,” the young woman with the broken arm whispered. She sat on the floor two feet away from him, leaning against the bottom of the customer-service counter. Her arm hung stiffly in a makeshift sling the color of Lake Tahoe on a sunny day. He had visited that lake as a child, the only vacation his mother and he had ever taken.
    “Are you all right?” the young woman whispered.
    He felt a frisson of irritation. Of course he wasn’t all right.
    “Mr. Pritchett?”
    He felt at a disadvantage because she remembered his name while he had let hers slip away. But he had to admit that it was kind of her to be concerned for him when she must be in significant pain herself. Hurting made most people selfish. Hadn’t that been the case with Mrs. Pritchett?
    “I’m fine,” he said. To indicate appreciation, he added, “Call me Lance.”
    If Mrs. Pritchett had been nearby, she would have raised an eyebrow; he was not a man for rapid verbal intimacies. He liked formality. That is why he loved being an accountant. Early in their marriage, Mrs. Pritchett had protested that he wanted even the plants in their garden in neat rows, like entries in a ledger.
    “Lance? Like a spear?”
    “My full name is Lancelot,” he found himself saying, to his surprise. Throughout his youth, he had insisted—in vain—that people call him Lance. When he moved away to college, he introduced himself only as Lance, and as soon as he was old enough to have his name changed legally, he had done so.
    “Lancelot, like from King Arthur’s court?” the young woman asked. She laughed in delight. In the dark, the sound was like a bell or a bird. He wondered that anyone could laugh under conditions like theirs. He surely was incapable of such—what would one call it? Strength? Levity?
    “My mother was fond of the Camelot stories,” he offered sheepishly, and this surprised him most of all because he never spoke of his mother.
    “I am, too,” the girl said. “I love the old tales—I have one with me right now.” She patted her backpack. “Lancelot was my favorite among the knights, anyway.”
    “I’m not like him,” Mr. Pritchett said. He considered romantic excesses undignified. He didn’t like adventures.
    “Sometimes we grow into a name,” the girl said. “You might surprise yourself, Sir Knight.”
    Maybe she was right. Now that he thought of it, didn’t he love the thrill of manipulating numbers, of balancing on the razor-edge of the law?
    “It was embarrassing,” he found himself saying. He wanted to say more. How boys had made fun of his name, how once they had put his head in a toilet. Where did that ancient memory spring from? He couldn’t believe the things he wanted to pour out into this forgiving, pillowy dark!
    His fingers twitched without a cigarette to hold. He marveled at the human mind, its tendency to crave what it could not have. Under normal circumstances, he smoked only two cigarettes a day, one after lunch and one while driving home from work. Mrs. Pritchett didn’t like the smell, so on weekends he went out into the yard to smoke.
    And she—what had she done in return? Betrayed him by trying to kill herself, that’s what.
    “I know about embarrassing,” the young woman said. “My parents named me after a goddess. I’m going to India to see them. Why are you going?”
    He