Strong Motion. Jonathan Franzen

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      After his final exams he moved into a two-room apartment in a poor black neighborhood off Holman Street and started work at KILT-FM, doing the board during drive hours and otherwise punching keys. On the day after Commencement he returned to Dryden Street one final time, to collect his books. It was a trip he’d delayed in the hope of running into Lauren, and he was rewarded by the sight of a white VW Beetle in the driveway, with a U of Texas parking sticker on the windshield.

      He went into the silent, airconditioned, sun-filled house. The door to the laundry room was ajar, MaryAnn probably ironing underwear in there. Upstairs he almost passed Lauren’s bedroom by, it seemed so much the way he’d seen it last. But today there was an extra element, a woman in a white sundress sitting crosslegged on the bed and reading. She looked up from her book, squinting because the sun was in her eyes. He braced himself for a blast of mockery, but as soon as Lauren recognized him she dropped her head again, biting her lip and scowling at the book.

      “Yeah, surprise surprise,” he said.

      The book on her lap was a Bible. She hunched over it determinedly and pretended to read it, evidently hoping he would leave. He remained in the doorway.

      “I didn’t think you were still living here,” she murmured.

      “On my way out right now.”

      “Oh. Uh-huh. Lucky you.”

      Someone seemed to have pulled the plug on the electrified woman he’d met two months ago. Without makeup and without malice her face looked like an empty page. Her hair was pinned up with a barrette, in the style of a ten-year-old groomed for church. She said, “Is there something you want?”

      He stepped inside the room and shut the door. “Can I talk to you?”

      “You’re not mad at me?”

      “No.”

      Her head drooped several inches lower. “I thought you’d be mad at me. I guess you must be a nice person.” She extended her left arm, spreading her fingers as though admiring them. She’d tied a piece of thin white string around her wrist. “You see I gave Emmett his ring back. Emmett’s been thinking about you all the time. I think he wants to kill you.”

      Louis looked at her steadily.

      “Actually that’s a lie,” she conceded, her eyes still cast down. “But he didn’t seem to think too highly of you. He didn’t think too highly of me either. I thought the whole thing was pretty funny. You know what MaryAnn did? She told me she thought I needed counseling. I just told her she was jealous. She acted like she didn’t know what I meant.” Lauren’s lip curled evilly.

      “What are you doing this summer?” Louis said.

      “I don’t know yet. Staying at home. Trying to be nice.”

      “Can I see you?”

      She looked up at him with something like terror. “What do you want to see me for?”

      “Why does anybody want to see anybody?”

      “I can’t.”

      “Why not?”

      “‘Cause I told Emmett I wasn’t going to see anybody. He’s working for his dad in Beaumont.”

      “So you’re like engaged but not engaged. Fun arrangement.”

      She shook her head. “It’s just I already made him so sick. He’s really a nice person, you know, not as smart as you.”

      “Yeah, this is another thing. Where do you get the idea I’m so smart?”

      “Well I only spent a whole vacation here at Christmas. I only heard how smart you are a couple hundred times. And you see how well I turned the other cheek.” She paused, appearing to consider her own history. “You know what, though? This semester, I got at least a? in every class. And I went swimming every day and I studied on Saturday night. I was on academic probation my whole sophomore year. It was like I’d go into the classroom and lie for an hour. Lie, lie, lie.” She looked up at Louis again and saw his skepticism; her eyes fell. “So anyway. I’m trying to read the Bible.”

      “Congratulations?”

      “I’m still more at the point where I like how I feel sitting here reading than where I’m actually reading. I go through the laws till I get to the sex laws. The punishment’s always stoning the person until they’re dead. That’s what you get for sodomy. Sodomy’s nice! But it’s an abomination unto the Lord.”

      Louis sighed. “What’s with the new costume?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “The white dress. The, uh, Shirley Temple thing in your hair.”

      “What’s wrong with it?”

      “What’s wrong with it, nothing’s wrong with it. It’s just, like, no offense, but are you on some kind of medication?”

      She shook her head and smiled lamely. “No.”

      “Lithium? Valium?”

      His words sank in. Her eyes grew dark and she straightened her back. “What kind of question is that?” “You’re just very different,” he said.

      “I’m the way I want to be. So you can leave me alone, all right? Get out of my room!”

      Louis, gratified by her response, was about to apologize when he was struck in the ear by the spine of a flying Bible. He leaned his head on the door and held his hurt ear. Lauren hopped off the bed and picked up the floppy Bible by one corner, as if it were a pelt, and sat down with it again. “Are you OK?”

      “Yeah.”

      “I haven’t been very nice to you, have I? I guess I must have a problem with you. I must not like you or something.”

      He laughed sadly.

      “It’s not personal. You’re obviously a nice person. But it’s better if you just keep away from me, don’t you think? So goodbye, OK?”

      Louis felt exactly like a casual lover being discarded.

      Later, though, after he’d driven home with his books and drunk a beer, he decided that the only explanation for how she’d acted was that she recognized his existence and had strong feelings about him. His logic was confirmed empirically the following week, when she called him on the telephone. Again there was a curious lack of connection between present and immediate past. She just started telling him what she was doing, which was mainly that she’d enrolled in a couple of summer-session courses at U of Houston. She wanted to graduate after one more semester in Austin and so she was taking a course about the Incas and the Mayas and also Introductory Chemistry, the latter because she’d gotten an F in high-school chemistry and she wanted to try to do something really hard now, as penance. She didn’t ask Louis about his own СКАЧАТЬ