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

time, and the—” I paused, “the resources, I mean, to stay?” Then I realized I’d been rude. But I wanted to know. I didn’t imagine that a former member of the Bulgarian Circus would have a very large pension. I presumed, in that moment, because I had never thought of it before, that he must have been from one of those large and wealthy New England families who could afford to finance, and be responsible for, the whims—however fleeting—of their members. It was because that suddenly seemed clear to me that I thought with some shame that it would have been better for me not to have mentioned the money at all. Money was embarrassing when there was either too much or too little of it, and the means to the Electric Man’s situation—which was evidently comfortable—would have been better left unspoken.
    But Madame did not seem perturbed by the question. If anything she adopted a more conciliatory tone. “Fromwhat I gather,” she said—she began her ascent once more as she spoke, but slowly—“he gets a fairly sizeable cheque from Veterans of Foreign Wars.” It would have been difficult to say whether she had whispered or shouted the words. There seemed, anyway, to be equal attention paid to both emphasizing and concealing the information that the sentence contained. Then she shrugged. “That’s what gets forwarded here,” she said.
    I must have looked surprised, or like I was about to say something, and I don’t think that she wanted to be detained much longer. “He got wounded badly in one of the wars,” she explained—as if she wished now that she hadn’t brought it up at all. “I’m not sure which one, he was in so many. Sam—that’s his sister, my friend—she believes”—she had almost reached the top of the stair; pretty soon she would disappear—“they pay him to keep quiet about certain things, you know, that are too—” she paused again, just slightly, just before she was lost to the upstairs of the Auberge and said, “too awful to talk about.” She had another tone in her voice now, a very sad faraway note had crept in, and her hand had remained at her throat as she mounted the stair. “He used to bathe down at the shore when he first came with Sam,” she said. “But for some reason, he’s stopped bathing now.” She looked down to where I stood—it seemed a great distance. “It used to give me quite a fright to see him,” she continued. Then she made a face, and tossed her hand that had been held at her throat in the air as if whatever she’d wished to hold as she’dascended was useless to her now. “Just—awful,” she said, “his whole body all scarred over the way it was. Whatever it was that happened to him, I don’t know. But I should hope ,” she said, “that he’s getting, for it, a pretty compensation.” With a slight nod then, which served to mark her final departure, she turned, and continued up the stairs.

T HE L IMIT

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    â€œDO YOU WANT TO DRIVE?” Daniel asks Anna. All of a sudden—he doesn’t know why. As soon as he says it he wants to take it back. He wants to laugh like it was a bit of a joke that he had with himself, but then he can’t because he hates the kind of man who would laugh like that, even if he is that kind of man.
    Anna is thirteen, and lives in Milwaukee with her mother. Daniel hasn’t seen her in eight months, and still he’d had to wrangle with Diane for weeks just to get her out here for four days . Now he wonders if he should have gone to all the trouble.
    â€œWhat!” Anna says. “Now?” Now Daniel is happy that he said it. It’s been over twenty minutes since he picked her up at the station but this is the first time that she seems to actually be there . The first time that she seems to be actually talking to