The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Read Free

What’s important is the time we have now. The present. Don’t you agree?”
    “Maybe. But I’d like some proof that you know me.”
    “What kind of proof?”
    “My age, say?”
    “Thirty,” she answered instantaneously. “Thirty and two months. Good enough?”
    That shut me up. She obviously did know me, but I had absolutely no memory of her voice.
    “Now it’s your turn,” she said, her voice seductive. “Try picturing me. From my voice. Imagine what I’m like. My age. Where I am. How I’m dressed. Go ahead.”
    “I have no idea,” I said.
    “Oh, come on,” she said. “Try.”
    I looked at my watch. Only a minute and five seconds had gone by. “I have no idea,” I said again.
    “Then let me help you,” she said. “I’m in bed. I just got out of the shower, and I’m not wearing a thing.”
    Oh, great. Telephone sex.
    “Or would you prefer me with something on? Something lacy. Or stockings. Would that work better for you?”
    “I don’t give a damn. Do what you like,” I said. “Put something on if you want to. Stay naked if you want to. Sorry, but I’m not interested in telephone games like this. I’ve got a lot of things I have to—”
    “Ten minutes,” she said. “Ten minutes won’t kill you. It won’t put a hole in your life. Just answer my question. Do you want me naked or with something on? I’ve got all kinds of things I could put on. Black lace panties …”
    “Naked is fine.”
    “Well, good. You want me naked.”
    “Yes. Naked. Good.”
    Four minutes.
    “My pubic hair is still wet,” she said. “I didn’t dry myself very well. Oh, I’m so wet! Warm and moist. And soft. Wonderfully soft and black. Touch me.”
    “Look, I’m sorry, but—”
    “And down below too. All the way down. It’s so warm down there, like butter cream. So warm. Mmm. And my legs. What position do you think my legs are in? My right knee is up, and my left leg is open just enough. Say, ten-oh-five on the clock.”
    I could tell from her voice that she was not faking it. She really did have her legs open to ten-oh-five, her sex warm and moist.
    “Touch the lips,” she said. “Slooowly. Now open them. That’s it. Slowly, slowly. Let your fingers caress them. Oh so slowly. Now, with your other hand, touch my left breast. Play with it. Caress it. Upward. And give the nipple a little squeeze. Do it again. And again. And again. Until I’m just about to come.”
    Without a word, I put the receiver down. Stretching out on the sofa, I stared at the clock and released a long, deep sigh. I had spoken with her for close to six minutes.
    The phone rang again ten minutes later, but I left it on the hook. It rang fifteen times. And when it stopped, a deep, cold silence descended upon the room.Just before two, I climbed over the cinder-block wall and down into the alley—or what we called the alley. It was not an “alley” in the proper sense of the word, but then, there was probably no word for what it was. It wasn’t a “road” or a “path” or even a “way.” Properly speaking, a “way” should be a pathway or channel with an entrance and an exit, which takes you somewhere if you follow it. But our “alley” had neither entrance nor exit. You couldn’t call it a cul-de-sac, either: a cul-de-sac has at least one open end. The alley had not one dead end but two. The people of the neighborhood called it “the alley” strictly as an expedient. It was some two hundred yards in length and threaded its way between the back gardens of the houses that lined either side. Barely over three feet in width, it had several spots at which you had to edge through sideways because of fences sticking out into the path or things that people had left in the way.
    About this alley, the story was—the story I heard from my uncle, who rented us our house for next to nothing—that it used to have both an entrance and an exit and actually served the purpose of providing a shortcut between two streets. But