The Affinities Read Online Free

messages?”
    I rarely had to check my phone for messages. I didn’t get a lot of calls or texts, outside of a few regulars. But I checked. Sure enough, two missed calls from a familiar number. Aaron had tried to get hold of me twice. Both attempts had been yesterday evening, when I had turned off my phone for my session at InterAlia.
    *   *   *
    I called Aaron and told him I’d heard the news from Jenny. I apologized for not getting back to him sooner.
    â€œWell, turns out it’s not such an emergency after all. She’s home now.”
    â€œCan I talk to her?”
    â€œShe’s sleeping, and she needs her rest, so better not.”
    It was easy to picture Aaron standing at the ancient landline phone in the living room back home. It was hot in Toronto and probably just as hot in Schuyler. The front windows would be open, curtains dappled with the shade of the willow tree in the yard. The inside of the house would be sultry and still, because my father didn’t believe in air-conditioning before the first of June.
    And Aaron himself: dressed the way he always dressed when he wasn’t doing business, black jeans, white shirt, no tie. Dabbing a bead of sweat from his forehead with the knuckle of his thumb.
    â€œHow are Dad and Mama Laura taking it?”
    Mama Laura was our stepmother.
    â€œAh, you know Dad. Taking charge. He was practically giving orders to the EMT guys. But worried, of course. Mama Laura’s been in the kitchen most of the day. Neighbors keep coming by with food, like somebody died. It’s nice, but we’re up to our asses in lasagna and baked chicken.”
    â€œWhat about Geddy?”
    Geddy, our twelve-year-old stepbrother, Mama Laura’s gift to the family. “He seems to be dealing with it,” Aaron said, “but Geddy’s a puzzle.”
    â€œTell Grammy Fisk I’ll be there by tomorrow morning.” I would have to rent a car. But the drive was only five hours, if the border crossing didn’t slow me down.
    â€œShe says not.”
    â€œWho says not?”
    â€œGrammy Fisk. She said to tell you not to come.”
    â€œThose were her words?”
    â€œHer words were something like, You tell Adam not to mess up his schoolwork by running down here after me. And she’s right. She’s hardy as a hen. Wait till end of term, would be my advice.”
    Maybe, but I would have to hear it directly from Grammy Fisk.
    â€œYou’ll be paying us a visit sometime in the next couple of months anyway, right?”
    â€œRight. Absolutely.”
    â€œAll right then. I’ll put Dad on. He can fill you in on what the doctors are saying.”
    *   *   *
    My father spent ten minutes repeating everything he’d learned about the nature and function of the gallbladder, the sum-up being that Grammy Fisk’s condition was non-trivial but far from life-threatening. By that time she was awake and able to pick up the bedroom extension. She thanked me for my concern but urged me to stay put. “I don’t want you ruining the education I paid for, just because I had a bad night. Come see me when I’m feeling better. I mean that, Adam.”
    I could hear the fatigue in her voice, but I could hear the determination, too.
    â€œI’ll see you in a few weeks, no matter what.”
    â€œAnd I look forward to it,” she said.
    *   *   *
    My third test session was the most uncomfortable. They strapped me under the dome of an MRI scanner for half an hour. Miriam said the scan would be combined with EEG data from my earlier sessions to help calibrate the results.
    The next evening it was back to the headband, this time listening to recorded voices speak a series of bland, cryptic English sentences. If it rains, you can use my umbrella. We saw you at the store yesterday.
    â€œIn the end,” Miriam said, “the point of all this is to locate you on the grid of