White Apples by Jonathan Carroll Read Free Book Online

She is coming here the day after tomorrow." "What? Why? Why is she coming now?"
    "You must ask her yourself, Vincent. She wants you to pick her up at the airport. I was going to call and tell you.
    Friday night, eight o'clock. Flight 622 Austrian Airlines." She patted his shoulder and started away. "Margaret?"
    "Yes, Vincent?"
    "Is there something you're not telling me?"
    She hesitated, nodded. Reaching into the pocket of her beautiful silk slacks, she pulled out a piece of folded paper and handed it to him. "She sent this to me last week. Said I should give it to you when I thought the time was right."
    He took it from her, eager to see what was there. "Why didn't you give it to me before?" "Because no matter what happens next, your life is about to change."
    He wanted to know what she meant, but more than anything he had to read Isabelle's note. They looked at each other a moment more and then Margaret left. Unfolding the paper he saw it was a poem. He hadn't heard from her in so long.

    You, on one foot

    Something I cannot forget nor do I want to
    is you, standing on one foot. Almost naked, your underpants a white blur in your hand.
    Looking at me, you slide them off your lifted leg.
    All skin you are then, except
    for that vivid touch of crumpled white in your fist. I loved you even more
    if you tottered a little, off balance before you stood again and came to bed, smiling. I saw you on one foot like that in many places.
    But I remember best at Miriam's because that is where it happened the first time.
    In that cluttered bedroom of hers— laundry hanging around, stuffed animals and the bed that was never friendly.
    How happy we were there!
    You lifted your leg, slid that white down and off and I thought—
    If a moment like this exists then there must be a God.

    I am pregnant, Vincent. Pregnant with your child. Our child. I haven't decided what I am going to do about it yet. I will be in touch.

    His mind raced around like a fly caught between two hands. She was coming. She was pregnant. How could it be? Why hadn't she told him? And when that first blast of questions had come and gone, the real one came. How is this possible if I was dead? He reached for the glass of whiskey and drank it all without tasting it. While his head was raised he happened to glance toward the bar and saw Margaret watching him. He could not read the expression on her
    face. There was no time for that now.
    Taking out his pocket notebook, he carefully wrote down Isabelle's flight number and when it was due. Without thinking he picked up the glass again and drank what was not there. He wanted another but wouldn't ask for it because that meant Margaret would bring it and he would have to say something to her. Not now. Not yet. The atomic bomb had just been dropped on his mind and the mushroom cloud was still rising and expanding outward. He stared at what he had written on the page and wiggled the pen up and down in his fingers.
    "Vincent? Fuck, man, sorry I'm late."
    Bruno pulled out a chair and sat down across the table from Ettrich. The man looked like he had run out of a burning house. His hair, always so carefully combed back flat and gelled to a seallike gleam, stood up all over his head. A meticulous dresser, who prided himself on the number of Kiton suits he owned, Bruno wore a rumpled sweatshirt with a rhinoceros on the chest and a pair of tattered carpenter's pants. Reaching down, he began to tie the laces on a pair of dirty tennis shoes. He pulled too hard and one of the laces broke off in his hand.
    "Fucking bastard. Fuck!" Holding up the frizzy piece, he stared at it with absolute hatred. "Take it easy, Bruno. What do you want to drink?"
    "Nothing. I've been drinking all day and it only gave me a fucking headache. Maybe when you're dead you can't get drunk. What do you think, Vincent? You think all the rules are different for us now?" His voice was both laconic and worried. He wanted to sound like a tough guy but it didn't