This Will Be Difficult to Explain and Other Stories Read Online Free Page A

the shade—covered head to toe so I wouldn’t burn, andwearing the Electric Man’s broad-brimmed hat. I still did that—still stretched out on the beach in the shade—even after I’d stopped going down to the water anymore because it was actually cold and green, or pretending to read French novels because none of the words ever seemed to hang together in a consecutive way.
    I would just stare around, my hand curled to my eye sometimes, like a telescope. A strange sort—most basic sort—of telescope, of course; it never made anything appear any closer, or farther away. I never tried to summon myself, as I had done as a child. Never tried to press myself—myself as I felt myself to be , most truly—through the small space that was left between my farthest-away finger and the curve of my thumb. I think I didn’t want to risk finding that, were I to try, I wouldn’t feel that tingling, rushing electric sensation that I had when I was a child.
    Someday, I thought, while I lay stretched out on an Auberge chair in the shady spot of the beach—before returning to refill the trays and pass out drinks and bills, and then drinks again, to the late-afternoon guests—I would try it again. I would try to feel myself alive again in the way that I had when I was very young. Perhaps the Electric Man had inspired me. To find that “blank space” of myself—or whatever it was he had said. There was no real reason , after all, I thought to myself, that I could not feel that way again—it was, in fact, quite possible, and someday, I thought, when I was feeling particularly well, I would try.
    THEN, AT THE VERY END of August, perhaps a week or two after I had last seen the Electric Man, Madame Rondelle, the owner of the Auberge, stopped me on the stair. “I had a note from Monsieur Wyatt,” she said. She always spoke to me in English, because she was no more French than me, though she spoke the language more perfectly. She was a Swede, but of course her English, as well as her French, was impeccable. I rarely saw her long enough to speak with her, though, and, in addition, she always made me nervous. She seemed so sure of herself all the time, and because I was never sure of anything, especially that summer, I always suspected that I was misunderstanding things—even in my own language. I had got that used to second-guessing.
    I didn’t even know who Monsieur Wyatt was, for example.
    â€œWho?” I asked.
    Madame Rondelle looked up at me, sharply. “The man with the hat,” she told me. “He knows you ,” she said. “He said to give you a kind hello.” She hesitated then, before stepping away—evidently wanting to say something more, but for some reason uncertain. “A very dear man,” she told me, as if that were an explanation of something. “I’m a friend of his sister. He’s been coming here for years.” Then she hesitated again. “A little strange,” she said, and her hand left the railing where she had placed it and fluttered up to her chest, as if it hoped to retain something there. “But a very dear dear man,” she insisted, as if that settled it. But still she did not immediately move to go, and in thespace of time in which we both lingered—she on the stair, about to decide whether to finally complete her ascent, and I at the bottom, equally unsure of whether I should relieve her of the conversation, make some excuse to go—I tried to think of some perfect thing to say to her of him. But I couldn’t think of anything. I didn’t want to tell her about the painting, that was certain. Someday she would find it, in going through the library, and throw it out; I didn’t think she should know anything of its history if that were to be the case.
    â€œWhat does he do now?” I asked, for want of anything else. “I mean,” I said, “how is it he has the