The Golem of Paris by Jonathan Kellerman, Jesse Kellerman Read Free Book Online

Vincent’s Academy? In Věra’s mind, it could have just as easily been the Nazis or the Communists.
    Either way, it wasn’t worth arguing about. Barbara went to her room and pulled out the stitching, leaving the skirt raggedy and misshapen.
    Sometimes Cindy offers her stuff she never wears anymore.
It’s not like you’re up to the minute, baby.
Barbara declines. In the first place, her parents would never approve, of the clothes or the charity.
    Plus she’d look ridiculous. As it is, Cindy’s half a foot shorter than her. Two of her minis wouldn’t begin to cover Barbara’s tush.
    “Oof,”
Cindy says, hefting the knapsack. “What’s in here, bricks?”
    “Books,” Barbara says.
    “I know you’re going for
realism
, baby, but come
on.
”
    Barbara smiles. She left the flap undone for effect. If her mother had been paying attention, she might have thought to question what class required textbooks for four different subjects. Or wondered how in the world Barbara could already have an exam when today is Wednesday and registration was on Monday.
    Cindy drops the knapsack on the sidewalk and begins fiddling with Barbara’s hair.
    “You ought to use a little makeup, baby. You’re so pale.”
    Barbara shrugs.
    “I
wish
I had eyes like yours. You got it, flaunt it . . . you know what, hang on.” Cindy rummages in her handbag for a bottle of liquid eyeliner. “Hold still.”
    As she gets to work, Barbara thinks what an odd spectacle theymust make, the Groovy Gal and the Flying Nun. Last spring they shared a dissection table in Introduction to Vertebrate Anatomy, making up a full two-thirds of the class’s female population. Of course Barbara ended up doing all the dirty work. Cindy couldn’t bring herself to lift a scalpel, she’d get one whiff of formaldehyde and break for the ladies’. The next day, Barbara would hand her a copy of the finished report.
    Thanks, baby. I owe you one.
    As a premed, Barbara had to take VA. Cindy, on the other hand, was then a junior without portfolio, flirting with becoming a nurse, although that went out the window the minute she met Stan, cause, baby, he’s the one. Not ashamed to want that, husband-house-kids, the whole shebang, she’s no crazy man-hating feminist, no way.
    You got a boyfriend?
she asked Barbara.
    No.
Then, sensing this was the wrong answer:
Not yet.
    Don’t worry, baby. You’re young.
    That’s the problem. She’s too young for her life.
    High school was hard enough; she skipped two grades and still her parents called the principal weekly to complain she wasn’t being sufficiently challenged. The schedule they set left little time for socializing, and she spent her first semester at Brooklyn College more or less alone.
    Irrelevant, her parents say. You go to college for one purpose: to learn.
    You learn for one purpose: to get a good job.
    A good job ensures that you owe nobody nothing. It guarantees money. It guarantees your survival when civilization collapses, as it inevitably will. People will always need doctors. Even more so during the Apocalypse.
    But it’s her—not her parents—walking the halls, adrift in a sea of hormones and freedom, mismatched in every conceivable way.
    Her sophomore math professor, an elderly Austrian, looked her up and down and said
The face is fourteen, but the body is twenty
.
    She felt humiliated. She didn’t know what to do. She told Cindy, who brayed a laugh.
You’ll probably get an A.
    She got an A+.
    Now, as Cindy continues to work on Barbara’s right eye, foot traffic streams around them, folks barking to get off the damn sidewalk, quit blocking the steps.
    “Shove it,” Cindy says pleasantly. With a confident hand, she starts on the left eye. It’s too bad she can’t handle blood and guts; she’d make a terrific surgeon. “Sooo,” she says. “When do I get to meet him?”
    “Who.”
    “
Who?
Don Juan, dummy.”
    It’s a reasonable assumption. The need for secrecy; the cover story.
    Sure, why