The Law of Similars by Chris Bohjalian Read Free Book Online Page A

legs in exactly the spots outside the house where I'm scraping and painting. It's inevitable. I'll be at the top of a thirty-two-foot ladder, underneath the eaves maybe, a scraper in one hand and a brush in the other, and there's Charlotte, staring right at me. Big and fat and about to unleash into the world a gazillion little Charlottes. I'm amazed I haven't stared up at one and fallen to my death."
    "What do you do?"
    "Well, I kill them. Sometimes I try to sort of bat them intact to the ground. I've always figured spiders don't mind falling thirty-two feet. And it's probably better than being squashed. I really don't want to kill them, because I know it's supposed to be bad luck to kill a spider, and the last thing I need at the top of a thirty-two-foot ladder is bad luck."
    She laughed, and I took more pleasure from that than I thought was appropriate. It made me want to flirt. Seriously flirt. Tell her how much I liked her socks. The fact that the fabric was thin. And flowery. I wondered if socks were like lingerie.
    "Do you have other superstitions?" she asked.
    "Yeah, probably. But most of the time I'm not sure if they're superstitions or part of an undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive personality disorder."
    "Such as?"
    "Well, whenever I leave my office, I have to tap the light switch four times. Whenever I leave my house, I tend to check the stove a zillion times to make sure it's off. And whenever I'm in Courtroom 3A--like I was a big part of this morning and afternoon--I have to sit in the chair with the small white stain on the cushion. That's my stain, I put it there. It's from this cinnamon bun I was eating one morning before a trial began."
    "Why do you have to have that specific chair? Did you win that case?"
    "I did. But it wasn't just that we sent the guy away for a long time--though we did. It's that I was good. I mean really good. Clarence Darrow good."
    "What else? What other aversions do you have?"
    I thought for a moment, returning to the image of spiders with egg sacs the size of my eyeballs, and began an eclectic litany that included mushrooms and flying and finding my shaving stubble in the sink. I told her I was afraid of singing in public--even in church if I wasn't in the very first pew--and of dying. Death scared the hell out of me. Prostate cancer and pancreatic cancer really terrified me, the former because it might leave me impotent, my bottom bagged, before I finally withered away, and the latter because it was just so horrifically incurable.
    "What about cravings?" she asked when it seemed I was through.
    "Are you thirsty?" I asked. I knew I was.
    "Ah, right now you crave water." She got up for the first time, stretched the leg that had been underneath her--toes pressing against the thin cotton sock, and in my mind I saw the smooth sole of her foot, her arch, her ankle--and went to a water cooler on the far side of her desk.
    "Yeah, I really am thirsty. I'm not used to...to talking about myself so much. I feel like a bore--like a guy in a bar who meets a woman for the first time and just spends hours talking about himself. I'm really sorry, Carissa."
    "You're very entertaining," she said.
    "I know this is your job and all, but...but still."
    She handed me a coffee mug filled with water and returned to her chair.
    "Want to tell me about your cravings?"
    You, I thought as I took a long swallow. Right now I really crave you.
    The consultation lasted almost two hours. It was past eight o'clock by the time we left the Octagon and discovered how cold it had become while we'd been talking inside. There were no stars in the sky, and I saw the first flakes of snow were starting to fall.
    "Your house is on the Huntington Road?" she asked as she turned up the collar on her parka.
    "It is," I said. "I thought long and hard about selling the place after Elizabeth died, and moving into Burlington. It would have saved more than an hour of driving each day--which would have given me more time for Abby. And any