After Claude Read Online Free Page A

and loathing. It was too hot to contend with his temperament. I kicked off my sandals and proceeded to unbutton my sleazy cotton shirtwaist. I walked to the window and pressed Mr. Fedder’s magic button. Claude still didn’t move. I unhooked my clinging, shapeless bra and dropped it onto the floor.
    “Are you planning to stand there all night, Claude? Are you by any chance the new warden in this hole?”
    No answer. I headed for the bedroom, where, blinded by droplets of sweat dripping into my eyes, I managed to find my Japanese kimono mixed in with the sheets on the unmade bed. When I came back into the living room, Claude was still standing sentinel at the door.
    “Is anything bothering you?”
    He responded with an unintelligible mumble.
    “Please.” I folded my robe over my damp belly and tied the rope sash. “Speak up. I’m not Helen Keller. I can’t put my fingers on the radiator and hear what you’re saying.”
    In spite of the heat I felt the slight, familiar stirrings of appetite. I advanced to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. The cool air trapped inside felt good, but regardless of weather, opening refrigerator doors makes me happy. My Jewish abductors were insane on the issue of opening refrigerators. If you so much as tried to sneak a look at the pickings, one of them would come running in after you, yelling, “Close that door. All the food will rot.” As if you were unsealing King Tut’s tomb.
    I carried the plate of curly roast beef into the living room and put it on the round oak table where we did our eating.
    “Are you hungry?” The creep still didn’t answer. The fact is that Claude, not having been raised by kidnappers, was habituated to regular meals, not scavenging.
    “I’m not hungry.” It walked! It talked! It went to the kitchen and got itself a can of beer.
    “I can’t find the opener,” he complained, in that same hurt voice I’d been tolerating for two full weeks.
    “Why don’t you telephone Paul Newman? I read he always wears a can opener around his neck, like a cross. Maybe he’ll lend you his.”
    Claude broke his heart and tore off the aluminum ring on the beer can. He really didn’t approve of these modern conveniences. Better for me to do nothing but keep track of his household utensils.
    “That movie has certainly put you in a wonderful mood,” I told him, twisting my wet hair into a knot and pinning it to my skull. “Remind me not to attend any more public executions with you.”
    “That’s the last movie I’m taking you to.”
    “I want that in writing.”
    “You don’t enjoy anything but those stupid quiz shows you watch all day.”
    He came and sat in the captain’s chair opposite mine and rested his arm on the oak table. The apartment was furnished very Village Traditional. A bit of Americana, Japanese lampshades, Swedish rugs, Mexican candlesticks, Indian bedspreads, and for color, buckets of sickly avocado plants that Claude accused me of drowning.
    I made myself a roast-beef sandwich with one slice of rye bread and folded the tidbit into my mouth. Claude followed the action as if I were a boa constrictor swallowing a pig.
    “If looks could kill,” I told him in between chews, “you’d soon find but that yours couldn’t.”
    I adjusted my robe. “So tell me what was so inspiring about that movie? If it was about any other Jewish fag and his mother, would you be so impressed?”
    Claude sighed.
    “Stop sighing. What terrible thing am I doing to you? I figure we went to a movie, we got home alive, now let’s discuss it like two normal human beings.”
    “You don’t need me for that. Why don’t you do six normal people discussing it?”
    “Is that supposed to mean that you don’t feel you’re getting equal time in our exchange?; Because, if so, I feel obliged to tell you that it seems to me I spend close to one hundred percent of my time asking you what you think about things and getting grunts for answers. Legally, I should