A Working Theory of Love Read Online Free Page A

tiny room and tugs at her boots like an exhausted farmhand.
     “Talking computers,” she says, swaying under the exposed bulb. I tried to explain
     my work (minus its location) on the freezing walk over. She said she wanted to know,
     but she hasn’t absorbed much. She’s so drunk she looks deboned.
    “You want some water?” I say. I hold her calf in my hand and pull the boot free. Then
     the other. Free and easy. I’m about to say we don’t have to do this, but why wouldn’t
     we? What else would two people, similarly situated, do? I put my hand under the heavy
     band of her sweatshirt and help her take it off, feeling the ridges of her ribs. A
     clavichord, a scallop shell. Her deodorant smells warmly of cloves. “One more,” she
     says, and I roll her top up like an inner tube.
    “Are you sad she’s gone?” she asks.
    “Who?”
    “Good answer.”
    I stand up and flick off the light switch. In the sudden, blue darkness, the weak
     glow of Sausalito comes into focus, bobbing in the tree branches. I approach the window,
     lean my forehead against the cool glass. It’s just a little town across the bay, but
     right now it looks like a holy city in the distance, a mirage.
    “Your computer,” Rachel says. “Does it have a weird robot voice?”
    “He doesn’t actually talk. He text chats.”
    “Do you tell him everything? Are you going to tell him about your trip?”
    “I don’t know.” The wind whips reedlike through the trees, a thousand knives on a
     thousand whetstones. Sausalito is erased. I turn to look at her. “What’s there to
     tell?”
    “You could tell him you met a really cool girl,” she says. “Moving to California to
     start a new life.”
    “You’re moving to SF.”
    “Bolinas. I’m going to live with my aunt and uncle in Bolinas. I’m going to finish
     high school.”
    The wind stops, turned off like a spigot. The noises of the hostel clarify—the mumble
     of the television, the clinking of bottles.
    “Jesus. How old are you?”
    “Twenty. Don’t ask me why I haven’t finished already.”
    “Twenty,” I say.
    She collapses back on the mattress with a thump. The springs wheeze. “Promise me you’ll
     tell him that. A really cool girl moving to California. New start on life.”
    “New start on life.”
    “You got it.” She pushes herself up, reaches a hand out for me, signaling for me to
     come over. “I need to tell you something.”
    “I hope I can share it with my computer.” I push off the window. She’s a warm dark
     form on the white bed, and this close I can smell her, touch her wavy hair. She looks
     up at me, serious, as if we’re about to make a pact.
    “First, you have to tell me your fantasy.” She speaks quietly but firmly—not ashamed,
     not abashed. In the dark, her body is a monochrome ivory, clearly visible. Her small
     breasts, the slight chubbiness at her waist, her long legs, the dull maroon flash
     of her underwear. But I can’t discern her face. Above the neck, she’s all shadows.
    “You can tell me anything you want,” I say. I’ll carry her secret—it’s something strangers
     can do for each other.
    “Your fantasy. Tell me
yours
.”
    I lean in close. There’s no blush of blood in her cheeks; her eyes are not green.
     Her face is white, black, grey—a mask. A fantasy, I think. Any old fantasy. Just one
     thing I dream about in bed alone, one way I want to be touched. Where I want her hands,
     where I want her mouth, what I want her to say. Something. I just have to come up
     with something.

2
    L YING IN BED M ONDAY MORNING, the idea of work—work, with its immense banality—strikes me as so absurd I wonder
     how the economy lurches on. Does anyone, anywhere, perform daily tasks of value? Even
     doctors treat boredom and loneliness as much as any real physical complaint. What
     do the rest of us do? Make useless shit to sell to each other so we can buy more useless
     shit. I buy a venti latte so the Starbucks employee can