The Wonders by Paddy O'Reilly Read Free Book Online

download books.”
    â€œI’m an old-fashioned girl—I like paper books too. Let’s go, Leon.” Kathryn walked off ahead of him toward his apartment.
    His face heated up. He did read electronic books now. The physical books he had brought with him were from the old days. He kept them for comfort, for the spines that greeted him each day with their familiar typefaces and brand colors, their reassuring solidity. As well as his self-help library, which filled two long rows of bookshelf, he had books on the body, on biochemistry and surgery and prosthetics, and other medical texts he only partly understood but that had obsessed him as he underwent the surgery to implant his metal heart. He was a natural researcher, a habit that started when he was a child, hunting down every reference to the superheroes he longed to be. He had found solace in the joys of solitary study, in understanding the genesis, the history, the nature of a thing.
    The top shelves were stacked with war stories and biographies of triumph over adversity. As a boy he used to lie on the bed with his Guinness Book of World Records or a historyof the Peloponnesian wars pressed open beside him and his mind saturated with images of his heroic possibilities: Leon on horseback galloping through the low scrubby mountains toward Attica to deliver vital communications that would prove the turning point in the course of the war; Leon in a business suit dropping his ultimatum on the table in the boardroom, six gray-haired captains of industry begging him to save their reputations; Leon in the lab adjusting the fine controls of the electron microscope before calling over his busty and adoring lab assistant to point out to her with quiet pride that, yes, here it was before their very eyes, the cure for cancer.
    This was going to be Kathryn’s first real moment of getting to know him. He was convinced she would take one look at his library and crack up laughing.
    â€œIt’s all very tidy,” Kathryn said as she walked past Leon into his apartment.
    He waited behind her, his reddened cheeks reflected in the hall mirror beside him.
    â€œThese books aren’t what I read now,” he said.
    â€œSure,” Kathryn said. She moved to the wall of bookshelves and began to scan each row.
    Outside the windows of Leon’s apartment a man in overalls walked by with a chimp riding his shoulder. A blue jay fossicked in the leftover snow on the side of the garden bed while the sun spilled a trapezoid of light through the glass and onto the wooden floor. Leon skirted past Kathryn to the bench that divided the kitchen from the living area.
    â€œWould you, um, like a cup of tea? I’m having one.”
    â€œNo, thanks.” She bent to look more closely at the bottom rows. “ Seven Steps to Self-Confidence ?” she read.
    Leon switched on the electric kettle. The grumble of the heating element thrummed through the countertop.
    â€œ You Can Be a Better Lover, Emotional Intelligence, Mood Therapy for the Introvert, The Power of You, Who Moved My Cheese? So, Leon, have you found the power of you yet? And more important, are you a better lover?”
    He felt a sudden urge to bare his feet in the trapezoid of light. The sun through glass licking his toes, heat rising through his body until he melted into an innocuous pool of butter.
    â€œOh jaysus, this is a good one.” Kathryn stooped sideways to read the title. “ The Wounded Heart . Could be written for you, Leon.” She tipped the book out of the shelf.
    The kettle was billowing steam beside Leon. It was supposed to turn off automatically but it seemed to have been boiling forever, clouding the air and dampening his face. He knocked the switch to off. The man in overalls walked past the window again, going the opposite way, this time without the monkey.
    When Leon returned from the fridge with the milk, Kathryn was standing on the other side of the bench. The Wounded Heart