Someday_ADE by Lynne Tillman Read Free Book Online

and that made him much too common, and in her fantasies, when she could cook one up, she would have had to compete with too many women—and men, probably—for him. There were so many she didn’t want to have sex with that sometimes going to the movies was as disappointing as real sex with actual non-actor—though, on occasion—acting men. But wanting to have sex with men she couldn’t have, because they weren’t around ever, and would ignore her in favor of another actor, male or female, was also all right, because she could easily have sex with men she didn’t necessarily want, and they weren’t so bad, really. She could ask them about what pictures they had in their minds every seven minutes, and she didn’t think she could do that with movie stars.

Dear Ollie

    Dear Ollie,
    It’s been a long time. I think of you sometimes, and I know you think of me. I take a perverse satisfaction in that, even in the jaded ways you disguise me in your so-called fictions. I really don’t care. But I just read your “manifesto against the past.” No one “votes for guilt.” I also have “funny mental pictures” of that mansion we lived in on the Hudson. It wasn’t “haunted,” except by an unghostly Timothy Leary. Everyone said he dropped acid there. Everyone said they used to have wild parties. Even back then the term wild parties bothered me. No one ever gave details.
    You and I were the only non-psych students living in the mansion. You and they were older, graduate students, but they were all research psychologists and thought everyone else was crazy, so they devised experiments to prove it. There was that one sullen guy who worked with rats. He had a big room near mine. I used to look in as I passed it. He kept his shoes under the chair of his desk in a certain way, everything in his room had a specific order, and if his shoes were moved even a quarter inch, he went crazy.
    Remember when he drove his car into a wall? Then he disappeared. Remember it’s my past, too, you want to “throw into the garbage, to be carted away by muscular men and sent floating on a barge to North Carolina.
    One night, you brought a friend home from Juilliard, a fellow student. If you recall, our dining room had dark walls and no electricity. We ate by candlelight—there were many candles in different states of meltdown on the long table that night. About ten, I think.
    Before dinner, one of the research psychologists suggested it’d be fun to put blue vegetable dye in the mashed potatoes. Your friend wouldn’t know. We’d act as if the potatoes weren’t blue, just the usual white, and even though your friend might protest and insist they were blue, we’d keeping insisting they were white. We’d just pretend he was crazy for thinking they were blue. We cooked this up in the kitchen. When you came in with him, someone took you aside and told you. You went along with it. Everyone has a streak of sadism, one of the psych guys said.
    I don’t remember who brought in the potatoes, we all participated, though, and then we all sat down around the big wooden table. The blue mashed potatoes were served in a glass bowl. Even by candlelight, they were bright blue.
    We passed the food. When the bowl of blue potatoes reached your friend, he reacted with delight. Blue mashed potatoes, he said. Someone said, They’re not blue. Your friend said, They’re not? They look blue. Someone else said, No, they’re not. You were sitting next to him.
    The potatoes kept going around. Your friend said, again, They really look blue. Everyone acted as if nothing was happening. Your friend kept looking at the bowl. He became visibly agitated. He said, They look blue. Someone said, Maybe it’s the candlelight. The flames have a bluish tinge. Your friend kept looking, squinting his eyes. Then he insisted, They look blue to me. Someone said, with annoyance, Would you stop it? They’re not blue. Your friend turned quiet. He kept looking, though, and we all