Crows Read Online Free Page A

your job, I can understand it. But I’ve been showing your stuff around here—­not even your best stuff, either, I don’t want to make myself look bad—­and it knocks them out every time. They want you, Robby. If you get your résumé here they’ll hire you in a flash. But they won’t come to you.”
    Robert shifted the phone again. “No desire, Al.”
    â€œGive it time. You’re the best I ever read. You can’t turn your back on that.”
    â€œThat’s nice of you to say, Al,” Robert replied, “but the paper closing has not been a bad thing. I didn’t like what I was doing and I didn’t have the nerve to quit. This has been great.”
    He heard Al take a deep breath. He was a much better writer than Al, but Al worker harder, enjoyed talking to athletes and coaches, wasn’t afraid to ask questions, loved the work. Robert’s writing talent didn’t stand a chance.
    â€œGive it some time, Rob,” Al Gasconade said. “Put it out of your mind for a week. Take walks. Sleep late. You sound like you’re in shock. Go to the movies. You need time to get over it.”
    â€œI’m over it now, Al. Believe me.”
    â€œCall me in a week. Better yet, I’ll call you.”
    â€œI’m thinking about going back to M.C. and getting my degree,” Robert said.
    â€œThat’s the idea. Look to the future. You’ll need that degree to get another job.”
    â€œI’ve thought of that,” Robert said, but only to please his friend.
    He would get the science credit, and the degree, because it filled an awkward space of time and circumstance. School would allow him to stay in town, but not become conspicuous by his idleness. Everyone knew his parents; his life was monitored and reported, not in a malicious way, but as part of a natural benign disregard for privacy in a town the size of Mozart. He would go to school, then see what happened next.
    O LIVE REACHED THE front of the classroom and placed a brown paper bag on the desk. She and her father exchanged words, evidently instructions, for she picked up the sack and carried it through a door to the right of the blackboards.
    Robert had not seen her face. He did not know her name, her age, anything about her; only that her hair was wet in the middle of the day and she displayed a tantalizing weight shift from side to side when she walked.
    A minute remained in the class, the first of the semester. The teacher said he was an associate professor, but had asked that they call him Ben.
    At the bell, Robert went through the door into the back room, his mind and heart already setting limits on how far he would pursue the girl. If she was in the room, and pretty, he might smile at her; if she smiled back, he might say hello.
    But the room was empty except for a gray slate-­topped table and a half-­dozen turquoise plastic-­backed chairs. Coffee cups on the table and cigarettes in the cups. The girl was gone. Her briny smell was very faint, going out another door at the opposite end of the room. No sign of the teacher’s lunch. She would be awaiting the man named Ben, perhaps just beyond that second door.
    But Robert had reached the limit he had set for himself. He was pleased with himself for venturing as far as he had. The girl had moved beyond him. He wouldn’t follow.
    He ran into the teacher going back out the door.
    â€œGiving up already?” Ben asked.
    â€œI think I’m lost,” Robert said. He turned his shoulders in the doorway to slide past; he was thinner then. He was not diving in the lake, not playing tennis, not doing anything of interest to himself. He had had a job chronicling the athletic feats of others, but now that was gone. He left the room, climbed the steps, walked out of the sciences building, and home.
    The girl returned in two weeks, again with her father’s lunch. It was a hot late September day and she wore