The Art of Forgetting Read Free Page A

forehead. The man’s eyes opened wide at the site of the large police officer stepping out of the confessional and he began to finger the well-worn fedora he held by his paunch, turning it in his hands as if it were a steering wheel. Andrew stopped in front of him and said, “Give a man a chance to pull his pants back up, will you?”
                  Roy greeted the next penitent in the confessional but his mind remained on his brother. How was it possible to feel such dread and deliverance, contempt and gratitude, guilt and utter relief all in the same breath?  He had witnessed souls under severe strain shift from throes of laughter to sobs of despair in the span of a few seconds and always wondered how this was possible. But now he understood. He rested his head in his hands, elbows digging in his thighs, and tried to catch his breath.
                  A sound like a hollow crack startled him. Not the sound of a kneeler. It must have come from outside. It brought his focus back on the words of the old gentleman who confessed that he lied to his wife about going to Cicero and losing fifty bucks at the Hawthorne race course, and that he harbored less than charitable feelings towards the Negroes who were moving westward into good Irish neighborhoods.
                  The murmur of voices reverberated off the church’s arched ceilings. Then a single plaintive voice: “Someone call an ambulance. A cop’s been shot!”
                   
                  Chapter 1
     
                  May 27, 2012
                  “ W ill you hand me the condom, Dr. Copeland?”
                  “Don’t call me that” Lloyd said with a flat voice.
                  The Asian girl sat straddled between his legs, facing him, stroking him slowly with both hands. She cocked her head to the side and flashed a licentious smile. “Why not?  Does it make you feel dirty?”
                  Lloyd stretched to reach the top of the nightstand, grabbed the square blue packet and tossed it with a jerk of his wrist. It spun, pitched and yawed, colliding on her bare bosom where she trapped it with one hand.
                  “When’s your fiancé coming back?” Lloyd asked.
                  The girl gave a playful frown. “I got it, Professor. Don’t worry. I’ll be a good little medical student and just shut up.”
                  “I didn’t mean it like that.”
                  “Yes you did. It’s okay. I don’t want anything from you, Lloyd.” Her voice was steady, composed. “I don’t need anything from you,” she opened the packet with her teeth, spit out the corner of foil, “except this right now.” She grabbed the base of his erect phallus a bit too firmly for his liking. “And when Craig flies back tomorrow, I won’t need this either.”
                  Lloyd offered her a conciliatory smile but she didn’t look back. He could see that it pained her to have uttered her boyfriend’s name while she was in bed with another man. She rolled the condom on him with deliberate clinical professionalism, with the same concentration and detachment she might have used when practicing a medical procedure.
                  Say what you will about medical students in the sack, Lloyd thought, they certainly weren’t squeamish. And they had few hang-ups when it came to the naked human body. Even the act of sex was often treated more like a didactic exercise rather than passionate love-making, which fit Lloyd just fine.
                  Most other women had a natural inclination, almost a biological prerogative to form attachments after a roll on the hay – the nesting instinct. Screw them a couple of times and they’re romping around the apartment in your dress shirts, cooing in baby talk, dripping a sassy coziness as they smile that coy