This Perfect Day by Ira Levin Read Free Book Online

Saturday night—early Sunday morning, really—as Chip was coming back quietly from Yin DW’s cubicle to his own, he saw Karl sitting in his. He was on the side of the bed in pajamas, holding his pad tilted toward a flashlight on the corner of the desk and working at it with brisk chopping hand movements. The flashlight’s lens was masked in some way so that only a small beam of light shone out.
    Chip went closer and said, “No girl this week?”
    Karl started, and closed the pad. A stick of charcoal was in his hand.
    “I’m sorry I surprised you,” Chip said.
    “That’s all right,” Karl said, his face only faint glints at chin and cheekbones. “I finished early. Peace KG. Aren’t you staying all night with Yin?”
    “She’s snoring,” Chip said.
    Karl made an amused sound. “I’m turning in now,” he said.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Just some gene diagrams,” Karl said. He turned back the cover of the pad and showed the top page. Chip went close and bent and looked—at cross sections of genes in the B3 locus, carefully drawn and shaded, done with a pen. “I was trying some with charcoal,” Karl said, “but it’s no good.” He closed the pad and put the charcoal on the desk and switched off the flashlight. “Sleep well,” he said.
    “Thanks,” Chip said. “You too.”
    He went into his own cubicle and groped his way into bed, wondering whether Karl had in fact been drawing gene diagrams, for which charcoal hardly even seemed worth a trial. Probably he should speak to his adviser, Li YB, about Karl’s secretiveness and occasional unmemberlike behavior, but he decided to wait awhile, until he was sure that Karl needed help and that he wouldn’t be wasting Li YB’s time and Karl’s and his own. There was no point in being an alarmist.
    Wei’s Birthday came a few weeks later, and after the parade Chip and a dozen or so other students railed out to the Amusement Gardens for the afternoon. They rowed boats for a while and then strolled through the zoo. While they were gathered at a water fountain, Chip saw Karl WL sitting on the railing in front of the horse compound, holding his pad on his knees and drawing. Chip excused himself from the group and went over.
    Karl saw him coming and smiled at him, closing his pad. “Wasn’t that a great parade?” he said.
    “It was really top speed,” Chip said. “Are you drawing the horses?”
    “Trying to.”
    “May I see?”
    Karl looked him in the eye for a moment and then said, “Sure, why not?” He riffled the bottom of the pad and, opening it partway through, turned back the upper section and let Chip look at a rearing stallion that crammed the page, charcoaled darkly and vigorously. Muscles bulked under its gleaming hide; its eye was wild and rolling; its forelegs quivered. The drawing surprised Chip with its vitality and power. He had never seen a picture of a horse that came anywhere near it. He sought words, and could only come up with, “This is— great, Karl! Top speed!”
    “It’s not accurate,” Karl said.
    “It is!”
    “No it isn’t,” Karl said. “If it were accurate I’d be at the Academy of Art.”
    Chip looked at the real horses in the compound and at Karl’s drawing again; at the horses again, and saw the greater thickness of their legs, the lesser width of their chests.
    “You’re right,” he said, looking at the drawing again. “It’s not accurate. But it’s—it’s somehow better than accurate.”
    “Thanks,” Karl said. “That’s what I’d like it to be. I’m not finished yet.”
    Looking at him, Chip said, “Have you done others?”
    Karl turned down the preceding page and showed him a seated lion, proud and watchful. In the lower right-hand corner of the page there was an A with a circle around it. “Marvelous!” Chip said. Karl turned down other pages; there were two deer, a monkey, a soaring eagle, two dogs sniffing each other, a crouching leopard.
    Chip laughed. “You’ve got the whole