The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. Read Free Page B

article about the obesity epidemic, to be called “Don’t Let Them Eat Cake.”
    Before Nate could respond, Hannah turned to him. She was cradling the wine bottle in one arm and gingerly twisting the ludicrous corkscrew with the other. “When people voluntarily pay more to shop at Whole Foods, aren’t they, by your logic, trying to be responsible?” she asked. “Aren’t they paying more so as not to take advantage of cheap labor?”
    “Absolutely,” Nate said appreciatively. (Someone, it seemed, was actually listening.) “But do those marked-up prices really benefit anyone other than Whole Foods shareholders? All they have to do is put some picture of an earnest lesbian couple on a cereal box and we just assume it comes from some free-love workers’ paradise. It’s in our self-interest to think so because it allows us to buy good conscience, just like we buy everything else.” He paused before concluding. “It’s basically a Marxian argument, about the inexorability of exploitation under capitalism.”
    Aurit frowned. “Who’s this essay for, Nate?”
    “I don’t know yet,” Nate said. “I want to write it before I start worrying about whether it will advance my career.”
    Aurit scrutinized him the way a doctor studies a protuberance he suspects is malignant. “Also, don’t people shop at Whole Foods because the food is healthier?”
    The wine bottle whooshed as Hannah removed the cork.
    “ I think your idea sounds interesting,” Elisa said.
    Elisa, Nate thought, was being extremely, even uncharacteristically, nice to him. Maybe they really were, as she had said, turning a corner?
    “I think it sounds interesting as well,” said the guy half of the couple, whose name, Kevin or Devon, Nate had by now also forgotten but who had, Nate noticed, found his voice as the wine beganflowing more freely. “I haven’t heard anyone call an idea Marxist and mean it as a good thing in a long time,” he said as Elisa “refreshed” his glass. “Not since college.”
    Nate nudged his own glass into Elisa’s line of sight.
    While she poured, chair legs scraped the floorboards, ice cubes cracked between molars, and silverware clattered against plates. Nate scanned the books on Elisa’s shelf. Her collection was impressive, suggestive of seriousness and good taste. The chick lit and the women’s magazines, she kept in the bedroom.
    “So, what is the difference between racialism and racism?” Kevin/Devon’s girlfriend finally asked.
    “Racialism,” Aurit began enthusiastically, “is not so much dislike or prejudice against a group but the—”
    “Hey, guess who I heard got a four-hundred-thousand-dollar book advance?” Jason interrupted. Out of courtesy to Aurit, no one responded.
    “—attribution of personal qualities or”—Aurit looked pointedly at Jason—“ beliefs to a person’s membership in—”
    “Greer Cohen,” Jason finished.
    “—a racial group.” Aurit’s words were orphans. She grimaced when she heard Greer’s name. Even Hannah, who had indeed struck Nate this evening as nice as well as smart, raised her eyebrows.
    “Good for Greer,” Elisa said, like some kind of Stepford hostess whose good manners extend even to those who aren’t present.
    “Who’s Greer Cohen?”
    “A writer. Of sorts,” Aurit said to Kevin/Devon and his lawyer girlfriend.
    Nate’s friends then began offering up various, mostly uncharitable assessments of Greer’s talent and speculating about whom she’d slept with and whom she’d merely flirted with.
    “I do think she’s a good writer,” Hannah conceded.
    “It’s not so much her writing I object to,” Aurit said. “It’s her willingness to trade on her sexuality and call it feminism.”
    Nate leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs under thetable. He felt no inclination to join in. He, too, had recently received a sizable book advance (though nowhere near four hundred thousand dollars). He could afford to be magnanimous.
    His