A Dangerous Age Read Free

advanced. I want to personally catch and kill dope peddlers and child abusers. I swear I do. I think that way, but I know it’s because I watch too much television.”
    “You need to get laid,” she answered. “Well, so do I, for what that’s worth.”
    “Have you seen Bobby Tree?”
    “Not in a while. I still dream of fucking him. How’s that for a reminder of what’s really going on? He’s doing well, Louise. He’s out of the marines and he has a construction company. But don’t talk about him. Keep cataloging the ages of these men. I want to use it in the piece.”
    O LIVIA NEVER TALKS about her men. She’s had some great ones, including one of the best football players in the South and a bank president. But the main one has always been the one she married and divorced, a Cherokee with black hair who was her junior high boyfriend before my aunt Anna and uncle Daniel found her and brought her to Charlotte, North Carolina, to try to turn her into a southern debutante. That’s a long story and turned out okay in the end.
    Bobby Tree is the name of the man she can’t forget. He pops in and out of her life, no matter how much distance she puts between herself and those days. He joined the marines the last time she dumped him, and then came back in one piece and covered with medals. I don’t believe that’s over yet, no matter how much she won’t let anyone say his name to her. If it was over, she’d be able to talk about it, or that’s my theory. I don’t believe you ever stop loving anyone you ever really loved. You have them there like money in the bank just because you loved them and held them in your arms or dreamed you did. You can forget a lot of things in life, but not that honey to end all honeys.
    B ACK TO MY LAST failed video project. It lost a lot of money, including some of mine and some of my momma’s. I’m sorry about losing Momma’s money. That was retrograde. So now I have to find a better idea and a new backer and make a film that will get me some respect, or I have to admit I’m asecond-rate journalist who’d better start learning to live in the present. And maybe I’ll meditate.
    Unless I get married and have babies, an idea that’s starting to seem more and more like a really good one. Except who wants to bring a baby into a world that looks like it’s exploding, not to mention the stock market tanking. Olivia says you really don’t have to watch the news. Just turn on a financial channel and see what the markets are doing.
    More about me. My father is a stockbroker. My mother is a journalist who has written three bad novels that at least got published and stayed in print a few years.
    Do you remember I told you about Charles Kane’s identical twin cousins who joined the marines the day after the tragedy? Well, yesterday afternoon I got a call from Winifred that deepened all that sadness. “Brian Kane just had his chin blown away in Afghanistan,” she said. “Carl, his twin, is still stationed in California, but they sent Brian on because he was the star of their basic training. He was a star in telecommunications, and all he was doing was riding in a tank and running the computers to tell them where to look for weapons. That’s all I know except the tank ran over a mine and blew up, and what I want to know is why we can’t make tanks that can withstand mines if we are going to ride all the good-looking, strong young men around in them. They’re flying him to Walter Reed as soon as they get him stabilized. I’m going there to help. So can you help me get a job in Washington? Who do you know there?”
    “No,” I answered. “Oh, goddamn wars to hell. Are they those good-looking blond boys with the huge smiles who were at the funeral?”
    “They sent Brian over the day he finished basic training. He was a genius with computers. He was at Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he and Carl joined the marines.”
    “How old are they?”
    “I don’t know. So how about