Pepsi Bears and Other Stories Read Online Free Page A

from one Amish community to the next and he gets to this river he has to cross and he sees Betsy coming up the road behind him and she’s all made up and in a miniskirt with her cleavage showing, holding a bottle of Champagne. Trouble with a capital T. On the hunt for Nevetus Levitus. The ferry across the river is so small only one person and one hog can fit in. So he gets in and ferries across one hog. Then he comes back and ferries across another hog. Then he comes back and ferries across another hog. You keep count of the hogs he ferries, Salman. It’s important. So he comes back for another hog and another, all the while Betsy is getting closer. He comes back for another …’
    â€˜Just say he ferried them all or the fucking fatwa will expire before he gets them across.’
    â€˜How many have gone across so far?’ Tommy John asks.
    â€˜Jesus. How do I know?’
    â€˜I told you to keep count, Salman. Shit, I thought you Indians were supreme mathematicians. Well … the story’s buggered. There’s no way I can tell it now.’
    â€˜How can it be buggered? Is it so important to keep exact count of this idiot’s hogs?’
    â€˜I can’t go on. When I asked you how many hogs and you said you didn’t know I forgot the rest of the story. But I’ll tell you what, it was suspenseful and riveting, that much I do remember.’
    â€˜But now it’s finished?’ Salman props himself up on his elbows, squinting at Tommy John.
    â€˜As finished as the Eurobeaver,’ says Tommy John.
    â€˜Well, to tell you the truth, that’s one of the stupidest stories I ever heard. But from a lad who’s always boasting about his half novel I suppose I should have been prepared for half a story. Indeed, why did I expect a denouement? What on earth made me think there might be a climax?’
    â€˜Hey, Salman. You fucked it up by not counting the hogs.’
    â€˜I don’t believe you had an ending. Not one that was riveting and suspenseful.’
    â€˜Oh, I did. Resonant.’

    You see, their arguments have become as familiar and mundane as those of a lighthouse-keeper and his wife. But Salman has begun to worry about Tommy John. Fatwa isn’t unbearable for Salman, at his age and wealth. He can helicopter golden-haired strumpets and silver-tongued friends like Amis and Hitchens and McEwan in to visit and talk and play poker and drinkBeaujolais and strip off their clothes. (The golden-haired strumpets, this last, not the silver-tongued friends.) But Tommy John is deeper in exile than this. He does not have the means to bring his friends and family to him. And a man of twenty has more to grieve over in a lost world than a man of fifty. A man of fifty might be done with nightclubs and music and dancing and drugs and learning and love and a career and the hundred gilded paths life could lead him down. But a man of twenty is not done with such things. He shouldn’t be interred here in fatwa like a mammoth in a tar pit.
    Tommy John is brave, but at times Salman watches him staring out across the Bay of X. Out there in the green waters Tommy John sees the many, many glories, both imagined and real, of the people and world he has known. Tommy John can’t take much more fatwa, much more exile, Salman believes.
    So Salman decides to save him. One evening at the time they would normally meet for cocktails on the veranda of their safe house, Salman emerges from his bulletproof room and announces he will be unable to join Tommy John at dinner. ‘Tell Cookie to bring it to my room, would you? Just lay the tray outside the door and knock softly once. I will be writing.’
    â€˜But I thought you couldn’t write in this hellhole.’
    â€˜I have found a need.’ He spins on his heel, his Hawaiian shirt flaring at its hem, and makes for his room, heavy purpose in his tread. Tommy John feels a thrill of excitement at Salman’s obvious