Out of Orange by Cleary Wolters Read Free Book Online Page A

his eyes lit up and he poured my drink. He handed me the scotch and was about to say something.
    “Hey.” I looked over my shoulder, knowing full well who had whispered it. Joan sat down next to me, looking for a sign that it was all right to remain in the seat. I smiled and she slid the rest of theway onto the stool. “Can I buy you a drink?” she asked and grabbed my hand. I nodded and looked down at her lap, where her hand covered mine. “I’m so sorry.” I could swear she actually sighed this.
    I felt disgust and deep sadness simultaneously. I remembered the “I’m sorry” from months ago. I had felt completely blindsided. I had been sure that we were in love with each other, very in love with each other, not some one-sided obsession that the ultimate development in our relationship had suggested. It had been the most irrationally timed breakup imaginable. We had gone to Paris together. (This, by the way, had been my first trip overseas, not hers.) Joan had said something. I can’t recall exactly what, but it had meant our affair was ending, right there in the City of Love and on the morning I was to fly home. She had planned to stay behind for a few weeks, so I didn’t even have time to change her mind. I had hoped when she came back from Paris we would work it out. It seemed crazy that we would not. But by the time she’d come back, she didn’t want to see me.
    That was months before. I thought, mistakenly, that enough distance, absurdity, and time had passed that the only thing I felt for her would be spite and anger. I was wrong. It wasn’t spite or anger I felt as she spoke so alluringly about the trivial developments in her simple, perfect world. She was just so goddamned beautiful! Her watery blue eyes, perfect lips, and bubblegum tongue were cruel. My heart ached all over again.
    Before I realized it, she was done with our conciliatory drink and she was on her way to join her waiting companion outside. I knew the guy she was with; he was an older man I recognized as a professional contact of hers. “Call me.” Two whispery words in my ear and I was all hers again—her toy to break and discard. I probably should have picked up my fork and started stabbing, but instead we made a date.
    Joan left the restaurant, and Phillip walked into Spoleto about ten minutes later and found me at the bar, already slightly blurred with Dewar’s and soda. I was yacking away with Larry, the bartender, who had commented on my tan, my weight loss, and my outfit. Afew of my former coworkers had stopped by for hugs, kisses, or chatty banter. Phillip was patient for a minute. Then he sat down and ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks, shooing the bartender off. He wanted to know about my trip, why I hadn’t called, did I know how freaked out he had been? The little bit he did know guaranteed he would not settle for anything less than everything, not the bullshit lie he knew I had been telling the bartender.
    I didn’t lose forty pounds from being a bundle of chickenshit nerves, starved and sick with Giardia for six solid weeks. No, that was intentional, a strict diet. The way I told Phillip the story, the lackluster training by example Henry had afforded me became ninja warrior preparation. I had been to Paris, to Brussels, to the Ivory Coast of Africa, and to Soule. I hadn’t been to Soule; I just threw it in for color. I told him about my cover story. How I was pretending to work for an art expert at a publishing company in Paris. The story was I assisted a woman who was assembling an art anthology made up of graffiti from around the world, which I would find and photograph for her for comparison to current movements in art.
    I had adapted my tale from Henry’s artful cover story. I had known Henry for a long time. He had been my sister’s friend for years, and I had envied his existence for as long. Phillip knew who Henry was too. I guess from his Provincetown days. But almost everything we had thought we knew about