Charades Read Free

the same,” she says, “I will admit to a strong sense of the ludicrous, I admit I feel ridiculous — not uneasy, or indecent, just ridiculous — pacing around your living room naked while you sit there watching. Do you always dress so quickly afterwards? The pipe, yes, I’m used to that. It’s the first thing all academics do afterwards, but a great many, you know, are quite content to sit there propped up on pillows, with maybe the sheet pulled part way up, puffing away contentedly and talking, sometimes for hours. What’s really getting to me is that now you’re even putting your tie back on, which I think has to be construed as the most pompous, the most heavy-handed … No?”
    He is staring, puzzled, at his own hands knotting his tie. He still has a dazed sense of her voice hurtling on and on, but what startles him is the realisation that the last thing he wants her to do is leave; the last thing he wants to find his hands doing is dropping heavy and involuntary hints.
    â€œStill,” she says, “if you could just toss me my shirt, I’d feel a little less … Thanks.”
    While she does up a button or two at her midriff (not bothering with any other item of clothing), he loosens his tie, removes it, and throws it onto the bed.
    â€œHow daring,” she laughs. She curls up in his armchair and hooks her legs over one side. That maddening knowing little smile of hers flutters in his direction, then rests on the abandoned tie for several seconds, then turns inward again.
    He waits.
    â€œYou know,” she says at last, “I can’t stop thinking about the implications of your lecture last week. Heisenberg’s theory, wasn’t it? — about uncertainty as the essence of science, about the necessity of uncertainty, about how we simply have to accept that electrons are always in only a partially defined state, that there is, in fact, no other way they can be. That’s right, isn’t it? Yes, I copied it down, because it seems to me to have a bearing on my life. Philosophically speaking, that is.
    â€œAnd on yours too, right? All that energy pro and con, the things that did, that absolutely without question did happen; but which also, according to other people, couldn’t have happened. I mean, you know, your former wife Rachel, and the trial in Toronto.”
    Something alarming happens to Koenig’s breathing, he takes quick little in-out in-out in-out breaths, counts to ten, inhales slowly (from the diaphragm), holds, exhales, wills his muscles to unclench.
    She swings her legs across to the other arm of the chair.
    â€œKatherine says either we’re all slightly mad, we’ve all hallucinated our own pasts (which is a reasonably tenable theory, I think) or else there’s a perfectly rational explanation if we could just put our fingers on it. Katherine thinks — I say Katherine for reasons of formality, but in fact she’s my Aunt Kay. Well, strictly speaking, she’s not really my aunt, but we do that in Australia, you see. I mean, I don’t feel comfortable calling her just Kay. We’re still rather shocked at the casual way American children do that, call their elders by first names — even for total strangers they’ve just met, right?” She leans toward him, eyebrows raised. “Did you realise we find that abrasive?”
    He tries to concentrate on the question.
    â€œAnyway, in Australia, we don’t do that. Give kids free rein,
I mean. Give them absolute social rights.
    â€œSpeaking of children.” She gestures toward the kitchen. “I saw the drawings on your fridge door. Second marriage obviously.”
    He is mildly startled, but makes a non-committal sound.
    â€œIt’s Joey, isn’t it? — yes, he’s signed his name — who drew that crayon rainbow over a number of green teddy bears. Was it you or your