The Portable Veblen Read Online Free

fast.
    “Basically I’m moving toward a breakthrough for brain injury treatment,” he concluded, smoothing down his hair, and it was at that moment she realized how adorable he was. “I’m a little obsessed right now. I dream about it at night.”
    “Is that all you dream about?” she asked.
    He might have blushed. “Well, maybe I need a new dream,” he said, with an endearing look on his face.
    “ Oh, well. Sorry to cause such a ruckus,” she said, wondering why she had to sound so weird. Who said ruckus these days? “It was for this,” she said, handing him the envelope.
    “Oh, from Chaudhry. Finally.”
    As he glanced into the envelope, she picked up the product literature for the Voltar bone band saw.
    “Wow, are these features really great or something?”
    “What features?”
    She read them off: “Diamond-coated blade has no teeth and will not cut fingers! Cleans up quick and easy! Wet blade eliminates bone dust! Splash guards and bone screens included!”
    “It’s always a little shocking to see the commercial underbelly of research,” he agreed. He had dimples, and friendly eyes. “There’s this whole parallel consumer reality in the medical and defense industries; it takes some getting used to.”
    And right there, Veblen had been lobbed one of her favorite topics: the gargoyle of marketing and advertising. “I believe it. Butwhat’s weird about this—marketing is supposed to kindle the anticipatory daydream, supposedly the most exciting phase of acquisition. But here, what would be the daydream?”
    “Freedom from bone dust, of course—which is very exciting. Look at this thing,” he added, springing over to open a drawer from which he removed a two-and-a-half-inch disk that resembled the strainer for a shower drain. “This is the titanium plate we screw on after a craniotomy.”
    “Oh, really?” From the sleeve she read: “Reconstruct large, vulnerable openings (LVOs) in the cranium! Fully inert in the human body, immune to attack from bodily fluids! Cosmetic deformity correction to acceptable levels!”
    They both laughed nervously.
    “Weird. Are ‘large, vulnerable openings’ so common they need an acronym?” she asked, suddenly blushing.
    “Um, yes, as a matter of fact, they are.”
    “Oh.”
    “And it’s good,” he added.
    “Why?”
    “Well, I mean, if the LVO is the result of a procedure to improve the condition, then it’s good.” He tossed the plate back into the drawer, and went to the sink to wash his hands.
    “I’ve seen those at the hardware store for about ninety-five cents,” Veblen said.
    “Try between two and three thousand for us.”
    “That’s crazy!”
    “Yeah. So. I was about to take a break. Want to get something in the café?” he asked, looking away.
    “Oh? Sure, why not.”
    They had coffee and oatmeal raisin cookies together, on the palm-potted atrium where the staff went for air. This was early October, warm and bright. Veblen wore a thin sweater inside the hospital, but peeled it off, conscious of her freckly arms, wondering if the invitation to the café meant he liked her. She was still afraid to assume such things.
    “What do you do here?” he asked.
    “Administrative-type stuff,” said Veblen. “I move around. I was in Neonatology for a year and a half, Otolaryngology almost three years, and this is my third week in Neurology.”
    “Are you—going into hospital administration?”
    “No, this is just for now. I do other stuff, like I’m pretty much fluent in Norwegian so I do translations for this thing called the Norwegian Diaspora Project in Oslo.”
    “Wow, that’s interesting. Are you Norwegian?”
    She was Norwegian on her father’s side, and further, she’d been named after Thorstein Bunde Veblen, the Norwegian American economist who espoused antimaterialistic beliefs and led an uncommon and misunderstood life. (A noble nonconformist. A valiant foe of institutions and their ossified habits of mind.) The Diaspora