Stray Love by Kyo Maclear Read Free Book Online Page A

outstretched hand. Then, at last, he said, “I’m Oliver.”
    “I’m Marcel,” I said.
    She nodded as if she already knew this, and gave my hand a gentle shake with her long fingers. When she let go of my hand, we stood for a moment without speaking. I eyed her coat,which was delicately pleated at the shoulders like seashells, then looked down at her rubber boots, so immense that they might have belonged to a fisherman.
    Finally, Oliver said: “Well, I guess we’ll be on our way, then.” He explained that we were just heading over to the swings. For some reason, he seemed nervous.
    “All set, Marcel?” said Oliver, jerking his head towards the playground.
    Pippa turned to me. “Do you mind if I join you?”
    I glanced over at Oliver, who was now blushing.
    “Would that be okay?” she said.
    Oliver stared intensely at the ground, having evidently discovered something there of great interest. I looked back at Pippa. I didn’t know why Oliver was behaving so rudely.
    “It would be our pleasure,” I said.
    Together we set off for the playground. Unable to decide on a proper strolling arrangement, we proceeded in single file. Oliver. Pippa. Myself. As we walked, Oliver moving briskly ahead, Pippa advancing with a slight bounce in her step, I noticed how the wind lifted her hair and whipped it about like silk ribbons.
    At the playground, Pippa offered to push me on the swings. I said, “Yes,” without hesitation, though I was too old for it.
    She pushed gently at first, then she pushed me higher, and higher. Before long I felt myself riding on waves of air. I looked down and saw Oliver sitting on the bench with Pippa’s camera bag, a glazed look on his face.
    When I stopped swinging, Pippa bent over and picked up two index cards that had fallen from my jacket pocket onto the ground.
    “What does this say? ‘Acquiesce’? ‘Resign’? Well, these aren’t very happy words, are they.”
    I shrugged and reached my hand out for the cards, then slipped them back into my pocket.
    “I can see you’re a funny, serious boy. A nice mish-mash of the two. Hmm … Mish. I like the way that sounds. Do you mind if I call you ‘Mish’? Now tell me, why did you bring your spelling homework to the park?”
    “Because Oliver said I could.”
    I watched a bird a few feet away. It pecked at a twig. It hopped onto a rock. It hopped down.
    “He did, did he?” she said. “And I suppose you took
could
to mean
should.”
    “I don’t mind it,” I said with a shrug. “I’m working on my word power.”
    I was still sitting on the swing. To my pleasure and embarrassment, Pippa bent over and retied my laces. When she was done, she tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear. I looked around and saw that the other mums in the playground had sculpted hair, hair that didn’t move. No one else had hair that flew about their faces in silky strips. There was something girlish about Pippa. And the warm way she called me “Mish” made me feel strangely proud.
    I wanted to ask her questions. I wanted to know if she was married, if she had children. But the sky was beginning to darken and it was time to say goodbye.
    “That was lovely,” said Pippa, giving us each a kiss on the cheek.
    Oliver, usually so articulate, barely managed a whisper. “Thank you … Pippa, was it?”
    We watched her walk away, her camera swinging against her hip. When she reached the road, she stopped and turned around, as though sensing us. She gave a wave. I waved back.
    Oliver and I looked at each other.
    “That was nice,” I said, just as he said, “That was strange.”
    “Nice and strange,” he murmured as a compromise.
    On the way home, Oliver pointed out Pippa’s door. Other than its blueness, it was an unremarkable door. But how remarkable it seems now that I failed to question:
How did he know she lived there?
    That night I sat in the bathroom with Oliver while he shaved, applying a few deft strokes of the razor to his pale jawline. With his