The Troubled Air by Irwin Shaw Read Free Book Online

said. “Everything amuses her, even her parents. I know if my mother had started to swell when I was eighteen, I’d have hidden in the corner of the church for days.”
    “You were pregnant yourself by the time you were nineteen,” Archer said. “Let me remind you.”
    “That’s an entirely different matter,” Kitty said primly. “Aren’t you going to wash your teeth before you go to bed?”
    Archer rubbed a finger reflectively over his front teeth. “No,” he decided.
    “Why not?”
    “My mouth tastes so good,” he said. “All the nice food I’ve had, all the good liquor. I like to wake up during the night and run my tongue around my teeth and remember how well I’ve eaten all day. Instead of that miserable peppermint and disinfectant flavor.”
    “You’re a dirty man,” Kitty said. “I’m married to a real dirty man. Isn’t this nice?” she said. “Isn’t this the best part of the day, just sitting here gossiping like this at night?”
    “Yes, dearest,” Archer said gently.
    “I think I’m going to stay in bed most of the time now,” Kitty said. “I get tired when I walk around and I don’t want anything bad to happen. And I’m not interested in anything else. I just want to lie here and doze and wait for you to come home.”
    “You ought to take up something,” Archer said. “Knitting, needlepoint, something. A hobby.”
    “I only have one hobby,” Kitty said.
    “What’s that?”
    “You.”
    They chuckled together.
    Archer reached over and put out the light.
    “You coming in here for awhile?” Kitty’s voice was elaborately arch in the darkness.
    “I can’t sleep that way.”
    “But I can.” Kitty giggled, as Archer got into bed beside her.
    She lay on his outthrown arm and kissed his neck. “Clement, Clement,” she whispered, then stretched out on her back. “I feel so good today,” she said. “This is the first day I felt really good. I could even bear the taste of the lipstick today and I tried smelling my perfume and there were actually two bottles I could stand.” Her voice rambled off and in a moment or two, close beside him, she was asleep.
    Archer listened to her breathing and the domestic rustle of the curtains at the window. No wonder women live longer than men, he thought. They know how to sleep.
    Conscientiously, he closed his eyes and pretended to himself that he was drowsy. I mustn’t think about it now, he thought. I’ll be up all night and then, tomorrow, when I really have to make decisions, I’ll be uncertain and exhausted. Not now, he thought, not now. O’Neill. Pokorny, Weller, Atlas, Motherwell, Herres. Archer. Herres. Keep your eyes closed. You have two weeks. Take ten deep breaths and put your hands flat on the blanket. Archer. Herres. What do you really know about your friend? Is accuracy possible after the blunting years of habit and affection? Who knows his friend? Who dares to add up the facts of fifteen years, the jokes, the conversations at night, the journeys, the parties, the crises and disasters, and say at the end—“Here he is. This is what he is like …”?
    Archer had first seen Vic Herres in History 22, Europe from the Renaissance to the Congress of Vienna, Required for Degree. An Indian summer afternoon, with the windows of the classroom all open and the trees still deep green and everybody a little sleepy after lunch. Fifteen years ago, with the old creased map of Europe in 1600 hanging from a hook behind Archer and the smell of the lawn and all the girls with bare brown arms. The academic year lurking ahead like a beartrap. Everybody dreamy and still attached to the memories of summer and wishing they were swimming or taking a nap in the sun or walking through the woods. Everybody resentful of Europe from the Renaissance to the Congress of Vienna. Archer, thirty years old, fiddling with his notes on his desk, waited for the bell to ring and the year begin, glancing surreptitiously out over the class, wondering what they