Revolution Number 9 Read Online Free Page B

to life by the cold wave over
Straight Arrow
’s bow, Charlie was acutely aware of her presence. The first thing he noticed was the melting snowflakes on her eyelashes: she was the skier in the black tights. He glanced out and saw her skis leaning against the window. Then she took off her backpack and her jacket and Charlie smelled her smell: lemon, wool, and the faintest hint of fresh sweat. He breathed it in, let it linger in his nostrils. He was thinking of doing it again when the warning went off in his mind. Charlie picked up the rest of his sandwich.
    A minute before he’d been ravenous, on the point of ordering a second. Now he wasn’t hungry at all. He took a bite and listened to the music. He couldn’t get into it.
    “I’ll have a Guinness and a hamburger,” the woman said. “No, make that an egg salad sandwich.”
    She had a nice voice, not a work of art like Dinah Washington’s, but clear and quiet, with the suggestion of reserves of power. Or was he imagining that? Charlie wasn’t sure. It had been a long time since he’d known a woman. Not getting close to women, or anyone, was one of his habits.
    Charlie glanced at her profile. A damp lock of sandy hair curled down from under her tuque around a well-shaped earlobe, still white from the cold. He guessed she was about ten years younger than himself, around thirty.
So what?
he thought, and picked up his sandwich again.
Eat and get out of here
.
    The woman took the
New York Times Magazine
out of her backpack and turned to the crossword. It was half-done, in ink. Charlie could see the title: “Tools of the Trade.” The woman took out a ballpoint, quickly filled in seventeen down, nineteen down, twenty-two across. She tapped her pen on twenty-six across a few times. Then her beer came. She took a drink—not a gulp, but a lot more than a sip. It left a golden mustache of froth on her upper lip. Charlie had a mad vision of leaning over and licking it off. He went cold, and at that moment understood as never before how stunted the life of Charlie Ochs had been. At the same time, he had no intention of doing anything aboutit.
Get out
, he said to himself, and motioned for the bartender. The bartender came over and Charlie opened his mouth to ask for the bill.
    “I’ll have a Guinness,” he said. The words came out, unbidden.
    Charlie sat hunched over the remains of his sandwich, staring at the caraway seeds in the rye and knowing that if he didn’t get up, his habit-shell, his carapace, might crack at last. But he didn’t get up. He listened to the woman’s pen
tap-tapping
on the page. Then beer came, froth quivering over the frosted rim. Charlie reached for it, picked it up, drank. It was wonderful, the mad, sensual power of the earth, in a glass. Charlie looked over toward the woman, a look, not a glance, saw her tapping the pen, still over the clue to twenty-six across. The answer was one of those long ones that relate to the puzzle title. Charlie read the clue: “Lord Acton’s power saw.”
    He said: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Said it right out.
    The woman snapped her fingers. “ ‘Saw’—saying,” she said, and rapidly filled in the empty spaces. “Of course. God, I’m a dunce.” She turned to him with a big smile.
    “No, no,” said Charlie, or something like that. “I hope you don’t mind me—”
    “Hell, no,” said the woman, looking directly at him, taking him in. Her eyes, the color of the sea on a day just like this, were up to the task—more than up to it, dangerously so. This realization zipped through his mind, almost unnoted. “Two heads, after all,” she added.
    “Yeah,” said Charlie. “Two heads.”
    She took a drink. “Are you at the center?”
    “Nope,” said Charlie. “I’m a lobsterman.”
    He waited for her to say, “You’re well educated for a lobsterman” or more probably, “I guess that leaves you time for reading,” or at least to see some version of that thought flicker in her