The Age of Miracles Read Free

been thinking about you. How are you? Are you all right?”
    â€œSure. I’m fine.”
    â€œYou were a big hit. You did the series a lot of good. Several people told me they’d attend more of the events if all the speakers were as entertaining as you were.”
    â€œThat’s nice to hear. That cheers me up and makes my work seem worthwhile.”
    â€œI don’t suppose you’d like to come and visit me. I mean, visit in the country at my country house. It’s very nice. I think you’d like it.”
    â€œThe one with the antiques?”
    â€œOh, you really don’t like them?”
    â€œI don’t care if you like them. I just don’t want to have to dust them.”
    â€œOh, I see.” Was I actually having this scintillating conversation? Was I actually going to buy an airline ticket to go see this guy and have conversations like that for three days when I could pick up the phone in Jackson, Mississippi, and talk to writers, actresses, actors, television personalities, National Public Radio disc jockeys, either of my brothers, any of my nine nieces and plenty of other people who would have talked true to me and gotten down and dirty and done service to the language bequeathed to us by William Shakespeare and William Faulkner and Eudora Welty.
    You bet I was and that was not the worst of it. I was going to a wedding. “I’ll tell you what,” he proposed. “I’m having a wedding for my daughter in June. Would you come and be the hostess? She’s a lovely girl. I have four children. Two are my wife’s from a previous marriage. Two are my own, also from a previous marriage. It’s going to be a garden wedding in my country house.”
    â€œWith the antiques?”
    â€œVery old-fashioned. The girls will all wear garden hats. The gardens will be in bloom. Some other famous people are coming. You won’t be the only famous person there.”
    â€œI’m not famous.”
    â€œYes, you are. Everyone here has heard of you.”
    â€œWell, why not. Okay, I’ll come and be your hostess. I won’t have to do anything, will I?”
    â€œNo, just be here. Be my date.”
    â€œYour date?” I started getting horny. Can you believe it? Talking to this man I barely knew on the phone I started wanting to fuck him?
    Oh, yes. After the wedding, after the guests went away singing my praises, we would go upstairs and with his obstetrical skills he would make me come. Oh, life, oh, joy, oh, fecund and beautiful old world, oh, sexy, sexy world. “With everything either concave or convex, whatever we do will be something with sex.”
    The next morning two dozen yellow roses arrived with a note.
    I tried to lose a little weight. Every time he would call and do his husky can’t-wait-to-see-you thing on the phone I would not eat for hours. Remember, it was late spring and the world was blooming, blooming, blooming, “stirring dull roots with spring rain.”
    I had my white silk shantung suit cleaned and bought some new shoes. It is a very severe white suit with a mandarin jacket and I wear it with no jewelry except tiny pearl earrings and my hair pulled back in a bun like a dancer’s.
    â€œI want you to have gorgeous flowers,” he said on the phone one afternoon. It was raining outside. I was sprawled on a satin comforter flirting with him on the phone. “What are you going to wear?”
    â€œA severe white suit with my hair in a bun. All I could possibly wear would be a gardenia for my hair and I’m not sure I’ll wear that.”
    â€œOh, I thought you might wear a dress.”
    â€œI don’t like dresses. I like sophisticated suits. I might wear a Donna Karan pantsuit. Listen, Carter, I know what looks good on me.”
    â€œI thought you might like something like a Laura Ashley. I’d like to buy you one. Let me send you some dresses. What size do you wear?”
    â€œThose