The Distinguished Guest Read Online Free

deck into the trees and talking lazily of their two sons, speculating on how they were changing, on what life would hold for
them. (They have spent hours this way over the years, lying here and in other bedrooms of their marriage, talking about their children, always seeing them as in progress—as people who both
are, and yet are still becoming who they are.)
    He feels far away from that moment now, and he has doubly the feeling of spying on Gaby. First, because he is: watching her when she doesn’t know she’s being watched. And second,
because he has a secret he’s been keeping from her. That isn’t, of course, how he’s framed it to himself. He feels he’s waiting for the right moment to talk about it with
her. But it’s on this account that he has a sense of being uncomfortably distant from her, aware that even the physical world she’s immediately conscious of—the bright hot
kitchen, the sound of water running from the tap, the clash and gong of dishes and pots as she handles them—is utterly different from his.
    And how odd, he thinks, that his mother appeared at their table tonight, unbidden—consciously anyhow—by him. For that is the secret, that’s what it is: that Lily is going to
have to come and stay with them for a while.

Chapter 2
    Thomas wasn’t home. Alan rang three times, then sat down to wait on the stoop. Then he got up, and although he knew this was futile (but maybe Thomas had fallen asleep,
was deep in that late-adolescent sleep), he rang again. He was picturing his son as he’d so often seen him, the long body angled across a bed or a couch, sometimes just slouched back in a
comfortable chair—mouth open, dark hair wildly matted—gone, gone in exhaustion. From the open window to the first-floor apartment, he could hear voices raised in argument over the music
playing on the stereo. He shaded his face and peered through the glass of the outer doorway to the inner door and the darkened hallway beyond that. No one.
    He sat down again. The stoop was in sunlight. The stone touched his buttocks with warmth. He bent his knees up and rested his elbows on them. Alan was a tall man, tall and fair, as his father
had been. As he’d aged, he’d gotten almost gaunt. Sitting on the stoop this way, he looked awkward, ill-at-ease in his body, all angles and bones. The music on the first floor throbbed,
a pulsing adagio. Baroque, Alan thought. He could hear the voices too, the slapping venom in them, but not what they were saying. For this he was grateful.
    He surveyed the sunstruck street. Boston itself seemed breathless and exhausted today in the heat. Not a car moved on this street, though every parking place was full. Alan had had to park more
than a block away, even then illegally, in a spot designated for residents only. In fact, there didn’t seem to be a legal place for a visitor to park in Thomas’s neighborhood, and this
annoyed him with its unreasonableness. If he got a ticket, he’d give it to Thomas for making him wait.
    No, he wouldn’t. He could hear Thomas’s voice: “I mean, I know you’re pissed, Dad, but does this seem logical to you?” Logic, logic. Thomas thought he owned it. He
thought of Alan, and maybe even Gaby, as old and arbitrary creatures.
    Two students walked by, carrying instrument cases. Flat, rectangular. Alan thought horns maybe. Clarinet? Oboe? They were dressed the way Thomas dressed, with an unerring instinct for the
homely. As though they were farmers, or carpenters. The girl wore no makeup, and her stringy hair was only slightly longer than the boy’s. Both wore clunky work shoes. Or maybe she
wasn’t a girl. Alan watched their backs moving away. Was that a girl’s walk? Da
dump
, da
dump
. No, in Alan’s book. As he was watching them, the boy tossed a
cigarette into the street.
    The street was littered with junk, in fact. This neighborhood was on the edge of the ghetto. It had been infiltrated by students from the conservatory and