Tied to the Tracks by Rosina Lippi Read Free Book Online

“I would like to see it.”
     
     
 
Later, John said, “She’s like a kitten, Caroline. You dangle yarn in front of her, of course she’s going to want to play.”
     
    They were sitting in John’s car, parked at the curb in front of Old Roses, where Caroline lived with her mother.
     
    “Kai Watanabe is more like a tiger than a kitten,” Caroline said. Her hand strayed toward the door handle. “I suppose I had best learn how to deal with her, and the sooner the better.”
     
    That was one of the things about Caroline that John liked best. She was uncomplicated in the ways that mattered most, logical where she might have been reactionary, calm at all costs. He had known her only by sight when they were children, but then last year she had come to Princeton to give a paper just about the same time he had accepted the Ogilvie offer, and they had had a lot to talk about. John had been taken in by what had seemed to him an odd combination of southern soft and academic sharp.
     
    John ran a finger down her arm, the skin cool and pale, her elbow a perfect right angle. “Do you want me to come in?”
     
    She smiled at him. “Harriet and Eunice are coming over in a half hour to look at bridal magazines with me.”
     
    John sat back. “What, just the two of them?”
     
    “The others will be by later.”
     
    When John thought of Caroline’s four older sisters it was always as a unit, one he thought of as the Army of the Thoroughly Married. Not happily married, all of them, but determined to draft new inductees nevertheless. Caroline went along with it because she loved them but also, John believed, because she actually liked all the wedding fuss. Not that she could admit that, even to herself, and it would have shocked her if he told her that he found this pocket of sentimentality a reassuring thing.
     
    “These planning meetings mean a lot to my sisters, you know.”
     
    “I’ve got paperwork to take care of, anyway.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “The film people and all that.”
     
    “Just as well,” she said. Then she leaned forward suddenly and kissed him. “Call me later.”
     
     
 
The English department was deserted, quiet, and cool in the hot of the day, and John closed himself in his office and fell onto the couch to watch the shadows of the trees play on the far wall.
     
    There was a television and DVD player on a portable stand between the windows, and the remote, usually so difficult to locate, was digging into his hindquarters. He shifted, and the television burped and buzzed and came to life.
     
    He really didn’t need to watch the damn documentary again. There was nothing productive to be gained by it. The contract was signed, the deal was done; Angeline Mangiamele was on her way here, along with Rivera Rosenblum—there was a name out of his past, one that made him smile in spite of himself—and this Tony Russo. Whoever that was. Maybe Angie’s husband, or boyfriend. She couldn’t have stayed alone, not for five years. Surely not.
     
    Except the documentary really was good, better than good; more than he had let himself hope for.
     
    On the television screen a clip of old film showed a train moving across a winter landscape in grainy black and white. And then the voice, the one he didn’t need to hear again, not just now.
     
    John got up and went to his desk, where he found a piece of bright pink paper with Patty-Cake’s handwriting: office assignments for the visiting faculty, and the paperwork for the payroll office, and the question she seemed to ask him twice a day: Would Ms. Mangiamele and Ms. Rosenblum be teaching the fall courses they had been offered? If not, they’d have to start looking for somebody else.
     
    John made himself sit down behind the desk to take care of the housing request, the one he had started to work on three days ago and hadn’t been able to finish past question ten.
     
    In order to best match available housing with visiting faculty,