Begin to Exit Here Read Online Free Page A

looked at me and laughed. “You sound like a heretic,” she said. “You could go to hell for not believing in hell, you know.”
    â€œI worry about that. Maybe on Judgment Day I’ll bring a lawyer with me. You know, stand around with a few billion sinners from all of history, waiting for your turn to be held accountable for every instant of your life, and while everybody else around you is crying and whimpering, waiting to see if their names are written in the Book of Life or not, I’d say, ‘Look at me. I brought an attorney. Ha, ha.’”
    It made Janice spit wine again and laugh.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “In a way, though, I like watching you spit wine. It’s either sensual or sensuous. I forget which.”
    As people down in the yard and the driveway wanderedaround the bonfire, moving in and out of the light like ghosts in summer clothes, dancing and, I assumed, preparing in some cases to go copulate, Janice and I talked among the pine needles, beginning to know each other. She said she moved here in 1978 to study archaeology at the University at St. Beaujolais.
    â€œBones?” I said.
    â€œWhen people die, that’s frequently what they become,” she said. “But you know what you’re more apt to find than bones?”
    Of course I didn’t, but I at least wanted to guess. “Dirt?” I asked.
    â€œTrash,” she said. “The one thing that all ancient and modern cultures produced with universal proficiency was trash. I went into archaeology, my God, with the usual vague dreams of helping discover profoundly interesting and stunning Indian villages and burial sites filled with relics and artifacts and maybe even world-crushing evidence of esoteric religions or fantastic jewels and things.”
    â€œLike
Raiders of the Lost Ark?”
I wondered.
    â€œI love that movie, but, archaeologically, it sucks,” she said.
    â€œSucks. You’re using academic terms.”
    â€œBy the time I got my degree in 1982 and spent time at local Indian digs, I realized that much of what we’d ever find in the search for important knowledge of lost cultures was just real old trash, like burned-up animal bones,charred beans, and the general discarded crud from prehistoric dinners.”
    â€œReally? And then what did you do? Do you teach?”
    â€œI used to, for a little while, but the pay is so horrible. I could barely afford to live in squalor.”
    â€œAh, squalor. I was probably one of your neighbors.”
    â€œHave you lived in squalor?”
    â€œNext door to it. Several times.”
    â€œAnyway, where was I?” she asked.
    â€œIn squalor. I was your neighbor.”
    â€œYes, yes. And when I kept realizing I’d picked a profession where jobs are extremely hard to find, and when you get one you have a master’s degree and the salary of a dishwasher, I finally became something people never heard of. I hate to say it. It sounds so abstract and unreal.” She kind of grinned and grimaced at the same time.
    â€œTell me, tell me,” I said, because I didn’t care what she was. I liked her, and I’d like anything she told me.
    â€œI’m a statistical research assistant in viral epidemiology,” she said.
    It took a while to think about such a long title. I patted her leg and said, “John Keats wrote a poem about that: ‘Ode on a Statistical Research Assistant in Viral Epidemiology.’”
    She thumped my cheek with her finger. “You’re a charming lunatic. Annie told me you were. I see no reason to disagree with her.”
    â€œThat’s almost like being complimented, isn’t it?”
    â€œAlmost.”
    After I walked down the hill to get some more blush wine and root beer and happily walked back up the hill to sit next to Janice and wonder if she’d undress and pin me to the ground where I wouldn’t resist, I looked up at the almost-full