When the Messenger Is Hot by Elizabeth Crane Read Free Book Online

him. You realize you have not measured age in quarter-years since you were eleven. You wonder if this thought means anything, if this thought possibly averages your mental age closer to his real age. You notice that he is still talking. You check back in to what he’s saying about some philosopher you’ve never read and you think, I don’t even understand philosophy he’s smarter than I am I am a terrible harsh judgmental ageist .
    He has roommates.
    You have furniture. You put photos in frames. You have a TV schedule. You have seen The Brady Bunch in prime time.
    He goes out. He is schedule-free. He is spontaneous. You take naps.
    He talks to strangers.
    You are from New York.
    He has a tendency to be late.
    You have a tendency to be there before it opens.
    He thinks five hundred dollars is a lot of money.
    You think five hundred dollars is a beaded handbag with a picture of a pug embroidered on it.
    He says Wow a lot when you tell your stories. You wonder if this is because he doesn’t have that many stories yet or because he’s from the suburbs. You wonder why none of those stories seemed Wow to you at the time. You frankly wish for a little less Wow . He’s likely to seek it out.
    He worries about things.
    You used to worry about things. You stopped worrying about things a few years ago when you finally figured out that both marvelous and tragic things happened whether or not you worried about them. When he tells you his worries you suppress an instinct to use phrases that begin with When I was your age or Oh, honey . When he tells you his parents are driving him crazy you suppress both those phrases as well as any information about how dealing with one’s parents gets simultaneously better and worse as time goes by.
    He kisses you sweetly, but you would believe it if you found out it was his first time.
    You swear you will not sleep at his house.
    You sleep at his house. With makeup on. You have not gone to bed with your makeup on since you quit drinking. You get up to leave early. You try not to be seen at that hour with your actual face, but he walks you to the door.
    You have experience.
    He has hope.
    You have hope too.
    But you hate a cheesy ending. So you amend that; You have hope too, but maybe not for the same things. You want the ending to be neither cheesy nor gloomy. You want the ending to be open. You want an open ending. You want an open, hopeful ending whether it involves you being with the young man, or not being with the young man. An ending where, at the very least, the young man walks away having discovered the rejuvenating revitalizing benefits of the afternoon nap. An ending where it’s more likely that you and/or the young man learned something useful and/or possibly had a great love affair than an ending where no learning took place or that a learning of a bitter nature took place where one or both of you made note that there are no great love affairs and that even couples born on the same day of the same year who think they’re in love are kidding themselves. You want an ending of hope tempered only in the slightest way by experience. You want an ending of cautious hope.
    Better.

Josie and Hyman Differ in Their Use of the Word Fuck
    S CHOOL IS TAKING a little longer than expected.
    Most of her friends have graduated, so she spends a lot of weekends in New York. She doesn’t want to be where she is. Her salary from the bank (she knows nothing about banking; she answers the phones) affords her a ticket on the Metroliner every other weekend. It doesn’t occur to her to save it. Josie is not thinking that far ahead.
    She has a fucking buddy (she doesn’t much like that term but likes lover even less especially when there’s not much love) from the senior class who sometimes comes over on weekends when she hangs around Philly, but although he’s good at getting the job done well and quickly, lately he’s gotten into a thing where he likes