Whenever You Call by Anna King Read Free Book Online Page B

way.”
    “You don’t know for a fact that I’ve been celibate!”
    “It’s obvious.”
    “Oh, great.” I drained the Tom Collins and got up to ferociously jab at the fire before throwing in two more logs and watching with satisfaction as they burst into flames. I whirled around and pointed the poker at him. “Whether or not I’ve been celibate is none of your business and whatever I’ve done has nothing to do with showing you the way!”
    “I disagree. And I do agree that I was running from love by using sex. The really surprising thing is that I was running from God’s love when, if anything, I figured I was running from your love.”
    “Isaac, you don’t believe in God. You told me so yourself, many times. Anyway, I thought Buddhism was anti-God.”
    “I believe in God,” he said firmly, finishing the Scotch and standing up to head over to the cabinet, where he poured himself another.
    “You won’t be drinking Scotch when you’re a monk.”
    “That’s why I’m doing it now.” He grinned mischievously and for the first time that evening I saw the old devil dog, Isaac.
    I shouted, “I’m not going to bed with you!”
    “I have to admit it did occur to me, but I know it would be wrong. There are degrees of difference between sex and Scotch.”
    “ Love and Scotch.”
    He looked confused. “Yeah, but weren’t we talking about sex?”
    I shook my head. “The stuff for a Tom Collins is in the kitchen—I’ll be right back.”
    I stirred the tomato sauce, added a little red wine, and left it simmering. It had started to smell good to me again. After I made the second Tom Collins, I went back downstairs. Isaac was stretched out on the couch, reminding me of Jenny earlier that day, when I’d arrived at her apartment. Briefly, I wondered how her date was going. I still had irrationally positive feelings about it. Please, let her find happiness in love .
    Now, if you’d asked me to whom I’d directed that little prayer, I wouldn’t have anything logical to say, other than to explain that, when desperate, we human beings have a tendency to say and do dumb things. I meant well by asking, but I can’t say I believed I would be answered. Not a chance.
    Meanwhile, it appeared that Isaac had actually fallen asleep. The nearly full glass of Scotch sat sweating on the coffee table. His hands were folded across his chest, like a dead person laid out in a coffin. I sat in an armchair close to the fire and sipped my drink. I studied him, up and down his body, trying to imagine him in the robes of a monk. Then I imagined going over and unzipping his fly. I zipped it back up again, pronto. Finally, in a moment of pure nuttiness, I began to laugh. I laughed so hard and long that I woke him up. He started to laugh with me.
    He said, “When are you making the spaghetti? I’m getting hungry.”
    “Monks don’t eat spaghetti, either.”
    “You don’t know thing-one about what monks do.”
    I sighed. “Okay, I’ll go make the pasta, but you have to do the salad.”
    We spent a pleasant couple of hours, but even the nostalgic experience of having dinner alone together didn’t, in the end, create intimacy between us, for which I was surprised, but grateful.
    After Isaac left, I curled up in the living room, nursing a cup of tea in front of the fire’s deep glowing coals. The good news was that I’d enjoyed talking with him about his crazy plans to become a Buddhist monk. I’d even told him that I thought he’d look handsome with a shaved head and orange robe, but that I doubted he’d survive very long without sex. He tried to convince me that the point was to do something you believed you were incapable of doing. I didn’t get the rationale for that, but I’d stopped disagreeing with Isaac years earlier, and even his reincarnation as a Buddhist monk couldn’t alter my resolve on that one.
    I wanted to call Jenny, except it was only ten o’clock and I knew it was too early. Instead, I did what any sane