Breeder Douglas Clegg

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.Behind the silence and the dust, Rachel wondered what other people thought, what other couples meant when they weren't speaking.I want to scream." that must be what other couples thought when they had nothing to say, Rachel thought as she watched Hugh's face: the lines that hadn't been there two minutes ago.He was thinking about the sphere, too, but he's not thinking about it the way I am.He's thinking about it with relief.I want to scream, but I won't scream because you won't love me if I scream.Someone was honking their car horn in the alley, breaking through the brief silence.She smiled because she didn't want this to be a depressing repeat of the past year."Do you think that Mrs.Deerfield will still rent downstairs when we move in?""We can't really ask her to move, can we? We'd be doing the kind of thing the Old Man does when he thinks a neighborhood, like this one I might add, is ripe for gentrification.Kick the poor people out and bring on the yuppies." He tended to snap whenever he talked about anyone in his family.The front of Hugh's red T-shirt was blotched with sweat; his sandy blond hair was swept back in a shiny wave across his forehead, softening his aquiline features.“You are a yuppie, previously a preppie.The enemy is us.But I think it'll be nice to have someone living beneath us." Hugh went back to tugging at the window."How.Comfortable.Will.You," Hugh grunted in between his attempts, "feel… having a woman living in the basement who in her last life was a princess in the lost city of Atlantis?" Again, he gave up his fight with the window."Just great-if she likes the vibes here, and she pays the rent on the first of the month.It won't hurt the budget, will it? And I won't mind the company, either.""But," Hugh said jokingly, "I thought you were going to be too busy fixing this place up, and then let's not even mention your conventional seventy-hour workweek.""Oh, I know, I know, but there are those coffee breaks.More told me that her first few years of marriage she just had lunch with the girls and went shopping," Rachel sighed."Recherche du temps perdu," Hugh chuckled."This is what law school did for you, it made you want things you can't have." For a second, Rachel thought: you asshole, Hugh.She'd thought that when she first met him -you asshole -back when she was still Rachel Brennan and trying not to flunk out of law school.Although they had not exactly met, formally.She was working on the law review and Hugh edited it.Her father was dying of lung cancer, so she was taking most weekends and going home.This left little time for her law review duties, which included refiling material she used, and the editor, Hugh Adair, sent her a memo:Ms.Brennan, It seems that some of the staff have not been attending to their more clerical duties with regards to the review.Among the neglected dead are filing, returning office supplies to the supply room, and a veritable graveyard of notes which have not been trashed.(Are they valuable? Should we start an archives for your research?) Perhaps if your office skills need sharpening, we can provide a refresher course in orderliness.I hope this memo is sufficient.Thank you, Hugh Adair, Editor-in-ChiefThe words that had formed in her mind were not just you asshole, but prick as well.Rachel had seen Hugh in a few of her classes, but did not know the handsome man with the winning smile was the same geek who wrote the officious memo.She wrote back to him: Dear Mr.Editor, Thank you for the delightful reading.It really made my life, honest.How kind of you to fire such knowing bullets my way.How compassionate of you to take into account the extenuating circumstances of my having to return home on the weekends and some weekdays for my father's last hours on this earth, to say nothing of the fact that a few of us have to work our way through law school while others sit on their asses while daddy pays off all those nasty credit card bills.If you want a secretary, I would be happy to apply for the position, assuming, unlike the work many of us do on the review, secretarial work is PAID.Again, thank you for such a COMPASSIONATE and MOTIVATING memo.I promise to be a good Girl Scout from here on in.Warmly, Ms.BrennanThe next day, Rachel received this brief note: Scout, Well, I guess this means lunch is out.The Big Bad EditorThis struck her as funny -Rachel had a horrible time bearing a grudge, particularly when in the back of her mind she knew he was right.She had sloppy work habits.She was sure that her only salvation would come in a job where she had her own secretary to handle filing and neatness, because she was a mess.And then a good healthy dose of Catholic guilt had gotten the better of her.She'd been calling Hugh an asshole to everyone within earshot, and she felt bad about it.So one Sunday, she returned early from seeing her father, walked right up to Hugh and said: "Lunch would be great.""And you are?…""A good Girl Scout."She immediately saw his wedding ring.That was one of the first things she looked for in a man, that or a tan line where he'd removed the ring.For some reason married men had always been attracted to her, and single men were not interested.Rachel rarely dated.“You're married," she said."It's just lunch," he told her."I'm not only married, I'm, wonder of wonders, happily married.Can't an editor ask one of his staffers to lunch? I promise not to seduce you." too bad, she'd thought."Penny for your thoughts," Hugh said.He stood in silhouette against the blinding sunlight that filtered through the dust-streaked window.Rachel kissed him.I want to scream, she was thinking, but she knew this was not exactly the thought he wanted to hear.He held her tightly, and she looked out the dirty window, down on the park where a woman played catch with her three children while their father opened a picnic basket."It's so damn humid." Hugh sounded as annoyed as Rachel now felt.Rachel tugged herself free from him.She went over to the other window in the hall.She pulled upwards on the sill, and managed to open the window."There," she said, looking out over the patio and the alley behind the house, "get some fresh air in here.Hello down there!" she shouted in a singsong friendly voice, and then turning to Hugh, said,"Mrs.Deerfield looks so lonely, let's go down to the patio and be neighborly."CHAPTER THREEMRS.DEERFIELD"You believe in omens?" Mrs.Deerfield asked [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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