The Twenty-Seventh City. Jonathan Franzen

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СКАЧАТЬ cleared his throat. “What kinds of things are you taking?”

      “Taking?” she said coolly. They were in downtown University City now, riding a wave of green lights.

      He cleared his throat more strenuously. “At school.”

      “Are the open windows bothering you?”

      “No.”

      “We can close them.”

      “No.”

      “I was kind of mad about the frost last week.” She just tossed this out. “It destroyed most of the bugs you can catch with a net. Basically I’m a net person. I mean, when I’m collecting. I had entomology last fall, and if you’re good with nets you can really prosper. But Mr. Benson started thinking I was his protégée or something. He came up to me in April and he asked me if I wanted to go collecting larval stages with him. Larvull stages. I’d hardly talked to him since first quarter. He thought it was some kind of treat. He was asking me to go collecting larval stages, because of my special interest in bugs.”

      Duane craned his neck.

      She guessed they were passing his street. “So we go out at about six in the morning to this pond near Fenton, and the first thing I think is oh god he’s going to molest me and dump me in the pond. He’s kind of creepy-looking to begin with. I could just see the headlines, you know, BUGGER BUGGERS BUGGER, DROWNS HER IN LAKE.”

      She’d thought this up in April. Duane laughed.

      “But instead he just gives me these special rubber boots that are about forty sizes too big for me, and then we start wading into this gloop with his special device for collecting larvae. He dips down in the water—I mean, it’s absolute gloop, I think no wonder it’s full of bugs. He dips down and the first thing he drags up is this disgusting little organism, I don’t know, some rare gadfly larva, which he shoves in my face and says, ‘Would you like to have it?’ Special treat, see. I’m about to woof it. I say, ‘That?’ I’ve probably mortally offended him, which is fine with me because it means he’ll never invite me again. With larvae and me, it’s no thank you. The first thing he’d said was, he’d said, ‘I think this will be very interesting for you. To pursue entomology properly you have to collect all the stages.’ I didn’t have the heart to tell him that’s exactly why I’ll never pursue entomology.”

      “What about caterpillars?”

      “They’re larval. They squish.”

      The frosty glow of a Hammaker Beer sign flashed by on the right, trailing a liquor store. Luisa pulled over and braked to a hard stop by a hydrant. “Buy some wine?” she said.

      Duane looked at her. “What color?”

      “Blanc, s’il vous plaît. Something with a screw cap.”

      She turned the car around and met him across the street. In a bag in the back seat there were big paper cups. She poured some of the Gallo into two of them and handed one to Duane. He asked where they were going.

      “You tell me,” she said. Traffic sounds filled the car, the continuous kiss of tires and asphalt.

      “My decision-making apparatus is paralyzed.”

      “You talk funny.”

      “I’m nervous.”

      She didn’t want to hear about it. “What happened, you run into another door?”

      “I’m not used to being out with people like you.”

      “What kind of people am I?”

      “Ones who go to dances.”

      She blinked, unsure whether this was meant as a compliment, and put the car in gear. They’d go hit the warehouse site.

      “What schools are you applying to?” Duane cleared his throat as though the question had left junk in it.

      “Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Amherst, and—what? Swarthmore. And Carlton. Carlton’s my safety.”

      “Do you know what you’ll study?”

      “Biology maybe. I guess I wouldn’t mind being a doctor.”

      “Both of my parents are doctors,” Duane said. “And my brother’s in med school.”

      “My father built the Arch.”

      Ulp.

      “I know,” Duane said.

      “Did people talk about it at Webster?”

      He turned to her and smiled blandly. “No.”

      “But you knew.”

      “I read the paper.”

      “Is that why you remembered me?”

      “You just never let up, do you?”

      For a second she didn’t breathe. She made a right turn onto Skinker Boulevard, feeling agreeably mortified, like when her mother criticized her.

      A cigarette lighter rasped.

      “You shouldn’t smoke,” she said.

      “Clearly.” Duane flicked sparks out the window. “I haven’t been smoking long. Like a month and a half. I came back from Germany and got grossed out by how conceited people are about their health. My family especially. I figure as soon as I’ve gotten Webster Groves out of my system I’ll kick the habit. In the meantime it’s kind of entertaining. These keep me company when I’m alone.”

      “Then what are you smoking one now for?”

      He threw it out the window. Luisa followed an Exxon truck onto Manchester Road. To the right, ambiguous amber signals glowed along railroad tracks on an elevated grade. Four blocks further east she swerved off the road. Gravel flew up and hit the chassis of the car. She drove back between a pair of metal sheds.

      “Where are we?” Duane asked.

      “Construction site.”

      “Hey.”

      She cut the lights. The chalky moonlit whiteness of the area leaped into prominence. On black trailers beyond the chain-link fence, tall red letters spelled out PROBST. Duane took a small camera pouch from his jacket pocket and got out of the car. Luisa followed with her paper cup of wine. “What’s the camera for?”

      “I’m sort of a photographer.”

      “Since when?”

      “Since, I don’t know. Since a few weeks ago. I’ve been trying to sell some things to the Post-Dispatch.”

      “Have you had any luck?”

      “No.”

      There СКАЧАТЬ