Summer Lies Read Online Free Page A

possibility that Susan’s abandon and passion when she made love to him weren’t about him at all.
    “Don’t be afraid. I just say what’s on my mind. That doesn’t mean it’s my last word on anything. You censor what you say.
    “Again, that’s European.”
    He didn’t want a conversation about his fear. She was right: he censored what he said, while she said directly whatever she was thinking or feeling. No, she didn’t want to plan a visit with him to the fertility farm. But she did want to plan the future with him, and although he too wanted it more with every day that passed, he had so much less to bring to the relationship than she did: no apartment, no houses, no money. If he and the woman at the first desk of the second violin section had fallen in love, then they would have looked for an apartmenttogether and decided together which of his furniture and which of her furniture would go into the new apartment and what they would have to find at a thrift store. Susan was certainly ready to fill a room or two with his furniture. But he knew it wouldn’t fit in.
    He’d be able to bring his flute and his sheet music, and practice at the music stand that would certainly exist among all her furniture. He could put his books in her bookcases, order his papers in her father’s filing cabinet, and write his letters at her father’s desk. He would best leave his clothes in the closet here in the country; in the city, he wouldn’t look so good in them when he was with her. She would be delighted to use her sense of fashion to buy him new ones.
    He practiced a lot. Most of the time “dry,” as he called it, when he simply curled and stretched his little finger. But more and more frequently on the flute itself. It was becoming a part of him in a way it never had before. It belonged to him, it was worth a lot, with it he created music and made money, he could take it wherever he went, he was at home with it anywhere. And when he played, he offered Susan something that no one else could offer her. When he improvised, he made melodies that fit her moods.
9
    The corner room in the big house was their favorite. The many windows reached down to the floor and could be slid aside in good weather and protected with shutters when it was bad. When rain prevented them from walking on the beach, this was where they could still feel in touch with the ocean, the waves, the seagulls, and the occasional passing ship. Sometimeswhen they were out on the sand, the cold rain lashed their faces so sharply that it hurt.
    The room was furnished with cane recliners, big chairs and tables, with soft cushions against the hard-woven surfaces. “Pity,” he said when she led him through the house and he saw the recliners, which were only wide enough for one person. Two days later, as they were having breakfast in the little salon, a truck pulled up and two men in blue coveralls carried a double recliner into the house. It matched the other furniture, and the cushions had the same flower pattern as the other cushions.
    The weather made every day like every other. It rained day after day, sometimes rising to the level of a storm, sometimes stopping for hours or sometimes mere minutes, and sometimes the skies cleared for a moment and the rooftops made sheets of light. When the weather allowed, Susan and Richard walked on the beach; if they ran out of supplies they drove to the supermarket, otherwise they stayed in the big house. When they switched from the little house to the big one, Susan had called Clark’s wife, Mita, who came for a few hours every day to take care of cleaning and washing and cooking. She was so discreet that it was several days before Richard met her.
    One evening they invited Linda and John to dinner. Susan and Richard cooked, having no idea how, so that they even found it difficult to follow the cookbook. But they finally managed to serve steaks with potatoes and salad and felt good about being able to cope in a crisis