Astonish Me Read Free Page A

shakes her head. “All your men are handsome.”
    “I would not call this guy one of my men. I would call him … Christopher? I’m not sure. I should have asked when I saw him again, but it seemed impolite. Maybe we can delicately find out from someone here.”
    “Except Mr. K. He’s not handsome.”
    “Mr. K doesn’t have to be handsome. He’s a genius. You should know. Arslan doesn’t have to be handsome either.”
    “Arslan is handsome.”
    “No, Arslan’s sexy. Anyway, he’s not a genius the way Mr. K is. Mr. K creates . Mr. K has changed everything.”
    “Please, tell me more about your boyfriend, your old, gay boyfriend.”
    Elaine taps her cigarette into an empty wine bottle, unflappable. “Labels are a waste of time. So is possessiveness. I know what he is.”
    “God,” Joan says on a long breath. “I can’t believe how liberating it is not to care anymore. I watched Arslan walk out the stage door with Ludmilla tonight and didn’t want to kill myself. Finally. I’m cured. It’s heaven.”
    “Hmm.” Elaine drags on her cigarette, drops it into the wine bottle. “I think you’re pregnant.”
    Joan smiles at the linoleum floor. She draws her toe across it in an arc. “Because of the waffles?”
    “Lately you seem like you’re saying good-bye all the time, like you’re about to go catch a bus.” Elaine studies her. “Have you told Jacob?”
    “No.” Joan watches the tentatively identified Christopher as he walks around with a jug of red wine, filling people’s glasses and mugs. This is the first time she has spoken about the pregnancyexcept with the doctor who gave her prenatal vitamins, and Jacob’s name is loaded with a heavy, sudden future.
    In high school, she had decided her mild sexual curiosity about Jacob was nothing more than a generic offshoot of her general sexual curiosity. He was younger, which was not sexy, and wore little wire-rimmed glasses, which had seemed to signify something important then, and he was transparently devoted to her, which was not sexy, and he was academically brilliant and a little insecure (not sexy, not sexy). Joan, however, had the mystique of ballet to trade on, her tininess and her suppleness, the grace that had been drilled into her until she was physically unable to be awkward. Lots of boys wanted to date her, and dating them was simple, while dating Jacob would not have been.
    But when they were sitting side by side at the movies or watching TV on the couch when her mother was out, not speaking and not looking at each other, he would stay so still that she sensed he was restraining himself, wary of any movement that would betray what he wanted, and some hidden sensory organ in her would rotate toward him, probing, considering.
    “Did you do it on purpose?” Elaine asks.
    “Of course not.”
    “You can’t do this if it’s only about running away from Arslan.”
    Since she got pregnant, the cattle prod jolt of Arslan’s name has worn off, become only a faint zap, two weak wires touched together. “It’s not. It’s really not. I might be running from everything else, but I have to go. I have to find something else. You’ll make it. I was never going to.”
    “You did it on purpose.”
    “I didn’t!”
    “It doesn’t matter. It’s done. But you don’t have to … you could, you know, just quit the company. Not have a baby. Get a job. Do something else.”
    Solemnly, Joan shakes her head. “I couldn’t just decide to stop. I thought about it. But I’m too much of a coward. I can’t stay in thecity if I’m not dancing, and I wouldn’t know where else to go. Or what to do, generally.”
    “So you’re counting on Jacob to figure all that out for you. This all seems really elaborate, Joan. I feel sorry for Jacob. He’s walking around Chicago right now with no idea he’s a marked man.”
    “He’s getting what he wants.”
    “Oh yeah?” Elaine takes another cigarette from her pack. “Well then. You’re a Good