Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [134]
At first I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.
“I lost my book,” I managed to say, finally identifying the source of my tears. The thought of old Doctor Dee vainly arranging his sticks in the grass had made me feel terrible pity, and not—naturally—for him. “I lost Wonder Boys.”
“All of it?”
“Except for seven pages.”
“Oh, Grady.” She knelt down on the floor beside my chair and pulled to her bosom the addled head in which vast shrieking universes were flying apart. She lay her cool palm against my forehead as if checking for fever. Her tone was acerbic but tender. “You’re such a putz.”
“I know.”
She began to search my temples for gray hairs. When she found one she gave it a ruthless yank.
“Ouch. How many?”
“Dozens. It’s very sad.”
“I’m old.”
“Very old.” She yanked another one, and held it out before her with a philosophic air like a conventional Hamlet with his skull. “So I told Walter everything.”
“I figured. Ow. He already knew, right?”
“He said not.”
I lifted my head and looked at her.
“Does he still love you?”
She considered this question. She poked her tongue in her cheek and thought it over. She rocked back on her heels and rolled her eyes, trying to recollect their conversation.
“It didn’t come up,” she said. “Do you—still love Emily? Don’t answer that. What did she say when you told her about us?”
Had I told Emily about Sara and me? All at once I couldn’t remember. I could still feel the cool imprint of Sara’s hand on my forehead.
“No,” she said, when she saw that an answer was not going to emerge anytime soon from my spavined brain. “Don’t answer that either. Just—just tell me what you’re going to do.”
I was suddenly aware of my lungs, of their inexplicable and regular functioning, of the rhythm of my breath that was always there, audible, visible, palpable. Why didn’t my lungs just stop? What would happen if they did? What if the only thing that had kept my lungs working all these years was the simple fact that I never gave them a moment’s thought?
“Grady?”
“I can’t breathe,” I said.
That good academician Sara Gaskell read something more into this statement than I had intended. She scrambled to her feet and jumped back, away from me, as if I had taken a swing at her. I was saying, she thought, that I felt smothered by her and by the spawn of Grady. Perhaps I was.
“Okay,” she said, waving me to the door. “Out. Goodbye.”
“No. I’m sorry.” I extended a conciliatory hand to her. “I didn’t mean it, I—I’m just so tired.”
“Just so stoned, you mean.”
“No! I only had one hit! Truthfully! Then I put it back!”
“What a breakthrough!” she said. She checked her watch. “Quarter to two! Jesus. The Farewell.” When she looked up at me again her eyes were narrow and cold and not entirely devoid of hatred. I had been wasting her time, and that was the worst thing you could have done to Sara Gaskell.
“All right, Grady, you stay, I’ll go. I have to take care of this whole James Leer thing before the Farewell. You can just sit here and breathe, all right? Do a lot of breathing. Breathe, and smoke pot, and sit here, and see if you can squeeze out a few more of those absurd little tears of yours.”
“Sara—”
I stood up, took a step toward her, and made the cynical and pathetic last attempt those who knew me well would have learned by now to expect.
“Sara,” I said, “what if I told you that I wanted to marry you?”
She flattened her left hand against my stomach and held it there a moment, keeping me literally at arm’s length. Then, as if I were teetering on a narrow shelf of rock, high above a canyon, with my back to the blue abyss, she gave me the gentlest of shoves. Before I fell I noticed, with a pang, the pale glint of her wedding band. Then I hit the floor, hard.
She stepped over me, into the outer office, and then strode off toward the Hurley Room, her heels knocking marble, the hem of her pleated skirt flicking at the air behind her like the tooth of a lash. After a moment I heard voices echoing in the hall and the chime of the elevator.