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      “Dancing.”

      “Yes, Professor King. Do you dance?” Limongello struck a playful pose of doing the marimba. “Rumba? Charleston? Cha-cha-cha?”

      “I can square dance,” Bone mumbled numbly.

      “Well, there you go,” Limongello said, his attempt to lift Bone’s mood as effective as a knock-knock joke at a funeral.

      “Anyway,” Bone said, “I don’t expect it will happen again.”

      “Maybe not,” said Limongello. “We’ll hope. But next time you get stuck at a door—if there is a next time—see if you can’t just do-si-do on through.”

      “Good Lord, what a quack!” Bone said in the musty dusk of the parking deck, shaking his head and fumbling his keys from his pocket. “Can you believe his prescription? Dance?”

      Mary stood and considered, elbow resting on the hatchback roof, a cube of daylight pouring between the concrete pylons illuminating half her face and the downy hairs of her forearm like fiber optics. It was one of those times she was so heart-stoppingly beautiful, it made something catch in Bone’s throat.

      “Well, I don’t know,” Mary said. “I think he made a lot of sense.”

      “Really? I think he was a whack job.” Overstating it, but Bone would have said anything to keep her standing the way she was.

      “Well, we can get a second opinion if you want.” An impatient look crossed Mary’s face. Bone beeped the unlock button, and she exited the cube of light into the passenger seat. Bone decided not to get a second opinion. After all, the condition was so bizarre, shouldn’t the diagnosis and treatment be equally bizarre?

      E, e

      From the flag-shaped Semitic he (e), “praise” or “jubilation.” (See hallelujah. Haleil, “praise,” and ya, “Yahweh.”) If the sequence of the Semitic alphabet reflects the progress of Bronze Age civilization, mankind domesticated animals (A), built shelter (B), obtained weapons (C), and then acquired a door for the shelter (D) before getting around to expressing gratitude to a higher power.

      English: From anglisc, after the Angles, the Germanic tribe who invaded Britain in the fifth century, from Angeln, a fishhook-shaped peninsula on the Baltic Sea.

      euphemism: From the Greek eu- “good,” a positive or socially acceptable synonym for a negative or socially unacceptable concept. No one, for example, asking directions to the restroom is looking for a place to rest, nor is the salient feature of a bathroom the bath. What a touching faith in language euphemism shows, as if reality is altered by calling it something soap-scented and white.

      excruciating: Extreme agony. From the Latin ex, “out of,” and crux, “cross.” Literally, the pain of crucifixion.

      The appointment with Dr. Limongello having hogged the morning and eaten up the bigger slice of afternoon, only a leftover scrap of time remained, so Bone went to work early. Miranda Richter, in the office next to his, looked up to say hello when he passed, then cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “Is something the matter?”

      Of course, something was the matter. Any number of things were very much the matter. And also of course, Bone lied. “No, I’m fine.”

      “You don’t sound like yourself.” Miranda’s girlish face frowned: Shirley Temple playing an oncologist. “Is it, Mary?” A half-beat pause in the banal question, an unexpected comma falling before the nominative “Mary,” a silence so brief only the sharpest sharpened razor could have sliced between, but packed with icy implication. Bone stopped short as if someone had jerked an unseen leash tied to his collar.

      “No, no.” Another lie. “What makes you ask?”

      “Oh, nothing. Just came into my head.” Her voice resumed its accustomed melody, steering clear of the precipice of consequential topics. “You want some Red Zinger?”

      Bone took an armchair catty-corner from her desk His perceptions came in disconnected blots—tea bag plopping in a white mug, steam gurgling from a teapot, Miranda passing a clean spoon—“Well, almost clean,” she amended, retrieving it and picking at a speck of annealed organic matter—a fat, tummy-shaped bowl of sugar packets shoved in his direction. “I ought to use honey or something, but I can’t help it. I just love the taste of sugar!” Giggling the way she did every time she confessed this weakness.

      “What made you ask if it was Mary?” Bone persisted.

      “Why?” Absorbed in examining her sugar-packet inventory. “Is anything wrong?”

      “No, nothing. I’m just curious why you mentioned her.”

      “Well, you know people. How people talk.” Miranda put the mug in his hand, taking the opportunity to search his eyes. Her long, graceful fingers briefly touched his.

      “What people?”

      “Oh, people here. You know.” She waved, indicating unseen tongues swarming overhead. “The truth is, I’ve been worried about you two since the start.” Her voice dropped, and her hand was on his again. “I don’t know if you ever knew this, but the rumor back when you got engaged was that Gordon was seeing Mary—” before Bone could interrupt to say he already knew this, Miranda finished with, “—up until the wedding.” Bone did not know that. “Oh, dear! Oh, my goodness!” With a fat wad of white paper napkins, Miranda daubed the scalding Red Zinger that had spilled onto his crotch, not absorbing it but dispersing it into a broader, fainter, and hopefully less noticeable stain. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It was years ago. I don’t even think it’s true.”

      “Seeing her,” Bone said—how could Bone ever speak the word “seeing” again without an inward shudder at its new and horrid connotation?—“up to the wedding. Who said?”

      Miranda stared, weighing whether to speak. It occurred to Bone, not for the first time, how attractive Miranda was, even with her chipped nails and ridiculous pageboy haircut that looked as if it had dropped on her head from the ceiling. Once, he’d nearly asked her out. But the chance had passed. “It was Dr. Gordon. We were planning your wedding shower, and he said his present was not seeing her on the big day so she wouldn’t be late for her own wedding.”

      Blood pounded in Bone’s ears. He sat still, concentrating on holding his teeth together so they wouldn’t chatter. Heavy silence hung in the air. It was Miranda who spoke. “I don’t think anyone took it seriously. He was just being an asshole, trying to be funny. That doesn’t mean I like Gordon.” Bone did not like him, either. “Watch out for Gordon,” Miranda said, raising her mug for a sip. “He was talking to Loundsberry in the copy room, and when I came in, they acted like I’d caught them at something. I don’t know what he’s planning, but I got the feeling it has to do with the English Department. The look he gave me. Gordon’s up to something, and if the excrement juxtaposes the oscillator, Loundsberry won’t stick up for us. Illegitimi non carborundum.” The last was a joke between them, an ersatz Latin aphorism, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

      “Yes,” Bone said, gulping the last of his tea and rising. “I have to get to class.”

      “Toodle-oo,” she said, her customary farewell. СКАЧАТЬ