You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem Read Free Book Online Page A

you ought to be interested in anything really gloomy, the first thing they tell you is how it’s actually quite funny?”
    “What about the girl in your story? Did she find it depressing, or funny?”
    “I don’t think it counted for that much one way or the other. We were only one another’s astronaut food.”
    “What’s astronaut food?”
    “You know, stuff in little packets that you keep lying on the shelf. Everyone has some lying around. The people you imagine you might be with but you know you never really will be. The people who if you’re in a couple but you’re a little bored or restless you meet them for coffee a lot and the other half of your couple isn’t really thrilled about it. Or if you’re single, they’re the people you’re keeping on a mental list just so you don’t feel like there aren’t any possibilities. Friends who are almost more than friends but really, they’re just friends. Astronaut food, bomb-shelter provisions. If you were ever going to have anything with them it would have happened already. Sometimes you even fall into bed with them, but it doesn’t count for much. It’s always a mistake to try to get any nourishment out of that stuff. But not a big mistake. That’s the beautiful part, how the stakes are so low.”
    “Only if everyone agrees that they’re mutual astronaut food.”
    “Oh, absolutely. You can screw up your astronaut food a million ways. Even just letting them know. Though they sense it at a certain level, nobody wants to be told. The worst is when someone falls in love and then gets all self-righteous about breaking up with their astronaut food, as if there’s anything to break up about.”
    “What about the situation when someone is acting like they’re only astronaut food, but really has hopes of something more.”
    “Yes.”
    “Would you say I’m astronaut food for you?” The question tumbled from her lips. He’d never asked her whether there was anyone in her life, never asked her age or name or what she looked like. But then what had she learned about him?
    “I don’t know,” he said tenderly. “It’s possible. Am I astronaut food for you?”
    “I almost called you from my apartment last night,” she said, hearing her breath interfere with the syllables, knowing he heard it too.
    “Why didn’t you?”
    “The foot said no.”
    He hesitated. “Is the foot a friend of yours?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, then you should listen to him.”
    “The foot’s not a he.”
    “Oh.”
    “I have to go now,” she said, suddenly abashed.
    “Why?”
    “I haven’t eaten dinner.”
    “Are you going to masturbate?”
    “Not on the telephone.”

    b edwin opened his door with a shocked look on his face. Lucinda stood with a white, grease-spotty bag containing two piping slices fetched from Hard Times, the pizzeria at the base of the hill above which Bedwin’s tiny cottage apartment was perched, hoping to bribe her way into his digs. The nature of his home life had been a subject of keen speculation among the other members of the band.
    “Want something to eat?”
    Bedwin only stared. He was fully dressed in his usual costume: sneakers, plaid shirt buttoned to his Adam’s apple, analog wristwatch, glasses. Lucinda imagined him sleeping in it.
    “Can I come in?”
    “Oh, sure.”
    “Did I interrupt something?”
    “No, I was just, uh, watching a movie.”
    “What movie?” She followed him through his door, into a low passage lined with book-tumbled shelves, claustrophobically close.
    “It’s called Human Desire . By Fritz Lang.”
    Bedwin lifted the takeout bag from Lucinda’s hands and scuttled into the kitchen, stranding her in a room whose every surface was crazed with media. Records and videotapes and compact discs strained every shelf to its limit, along walls layered with ephemera: concert tickets, 45s thumbtacked through their spindle holes, and Magic Markered set lists retrieved from the floors of concert stages, many with chunks of