Man Camp Read Online Free Page B

into your mother,” Martha says.
    “Lately, Mom likes to ask if I find Adam
interesting,
” Lucy says, imitating the way her mother drags out the word. “What she really means by that is that Adam doesn’t make
her
feel interesting.”
    “I don’t get it,” Martha says. “Adam’s supposed to laugh more at her jokes?”
    “No, that would mean he has a wonderful sense of humor,” Lucy explains. “To be
interesting,
he must hang on her every word.”
    “Poor Adam. He’s no match for Virginia.” Martha signals for the check. “How’s he doing, anyway?”
    “He’s
okay,
” Lucy says, but her voice lingers on all that’s mediocre in the word.
    “What’s going on?”
    “He didn’t get the fellowship he was hoping for, so he has to TA again this semester: Freshman Economics 101. I think he’s discouraged. And possibly humiliated.”
    Martha imagines that having a girlfriend who’s the rising superstar in her department can’t make things easier. “How are you feeling about him these days?” she asks.
    “I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t having my doubts,” Lucy says. “Adam drags his insecurity around with him like it’s mud on his shoes, and I want to scream, ‘Don’t track that shit in here!’ ”
    Martha almost laughs, but sees how serious Lucy is.
    “I don’t know how often a guy can tell you that he isn’t worthy of you before some part of you starts to believe it. What’s worse is, I think it’s changing the way he feels about me, too.” Lucy’s eyes start to water and she looks up, blinking.
    “Are you crazy?” Martha asks. “The man leaves Post-it love notes all over your apartment, for God’s sake. He might be going through a rough time, but he’s not backing off.” She puts her hand on Lucy’s. “You guys still going away over Valentine’s Day?”
    Lucy nods, brightening at the thought of the rustic yellow farmhouse her colleagues, the Wolfs, are loaning them for a long weekend. The house is two hours up the Hudson and she and Adam will spend four days in the woods with only a Franklin stove to cook on.
    “My idea of hell,” Martha says. She flips over the check and her eyes widen. “Lucy Stone, I hope you feel guilty making your poor single friend pay for her spinsterhood.” She slaps down a credit card and looks at her watch. She was supposed to meet Jesse ten minutes ago.
    MARTHA HEARS LA BOHÈME blaring in the hallway before she even reaches her apartment door and feels inexplicably annoyed that Jesse has brought his own music. Is hers all that bad? Her brother’s love of opera started at the age of fourteen (a particularly inopportune moment in a boy’s life to develop such a passion), while Martha was at Boston College. At the time, she cursed her parents’ influence and did her best to intervene, sending Jesse tapes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and R.E.M., none of which had the intended effect.
    Martha turns the key, but her door won’t open. She tries again, this time jiggling the lock, but still nothing. Then it occurs to her that her nervous brother has dead-bolted it from the inside. She pounds on the door and calls his name, but the music is too loud for him to hear her. She wonders whom exactly he thinks he’s keeping out, but Jesse’s been high-strung his whole life.
    Martha goes down to the concierge and gets her spare key. As soon as she walks into her apartment, she hits the eject button on her CD player and the machine spits out
La Bohème
and swallows up Bob Marley. She calms herself by practicing a square breathing technique an acting coach taught her: in on four, hold for four, out on four, hold for four. Immediately she feels better, listening to “No Woman, No Cry,” anticipating her first glass of wine and glancing around her apartment, which feels more like a lounge with its plush velvet sofas, dim lighting, and ever-present smell of cigarette smoke. “It’s all about mood,” Martha explained to Lucy the first time she visited after