Read Online Alice Munro's Best by Alice Munro - Free Book Online Page B

wanted to blotch and punish it.
    There were usually a few graduate students working in the carrels, even on Saturday afternoons. More rarely, a professor. Every carrel she looked into was empty, until she came to one in the corner. She poked her head in freely, by this time not expecting anybody. Then she had to say she was sorry.
    There was a young man with a book on his lap, books on the floor, papers all around him. Rose asked him if he had seen anybody run past. He said no.
    She told him what had happened. She didn’t tell him because she was frightened or disgusted, as he seemed afterward to think, but just because she had to tell somebody; it was so odd. She was not prepared at all for his response. His long neck and face turned red, the flush entirely absorbing a birthmark down the side of his cheek. He was thin and fair. He stood up without any thought for the book in his lap or the papers in front of him. The book thumped on the floor. A great sheaf of papers, pushed across the desk, upset his ink bottle.
    â€œHow vile,” he said.
    â€œGrab the ink,” Rose said. He leaned to catch the bottle and knocked it onto the floor. Fortunately the top was on, and it did not break.
    â€œDid he hurt you?”
    â€œNo, not really.”
    â€œCome on upstairs. We’ll report it.”
    â€œOh, no.”
    â€œHe can’t get away with that. It shouldn’t be allowed.”
    â€œThere isn’t anybody to report to,” Rose said with relief. “The librarian goes off at noon on Saturdays.”
    â€œIt’s disgusting,” he said in a high-pitched, excitable voice. Rose was sorry now that she had told him anything, and said she had to get back to work.
    â€œAre you really all right?”
    â€œOh, yes.”
    â€œI’ll be right here. Just call me if he comes back.”
    That was Patrick. If she had been trying to make him fall in love with her, there was no better way she could have chosen. He had many chivalric notions, which he pretended to mock, by saying certain words and phrases as if in quotation marks. “The fair sex,” he would say, and “damsel in distress.” Coming to his carrel with that story, Rose had turned herself into a damsel in distress. The pretended irony would not fool anybody; it was clear that he did wish to operate in a world of knights and ladies; outrages; devotions.
    She continued to see him in the library, every Saturday, and often she met him walking across the campus or in the cafeteria. He made a point of greeting her with courtesy and concern, saying, “How are you?” in a waythat suggested she might have suffered a further attack, or might still be recovering from the first one. He always flushed deeply when he saw her, and she thought that this was because the memory of what she had told him so embarrassed him. Later she found out it was because he was in love.
    He discovered her name, and where she lived. He phoned her at Dr. Henshawe’s house and asked her to go to the movies. At first when he said, “This is Patrick Blatchford speaking,” Rose could not think who it was, but after a moment she recognized the high, rather aggrieved and tremulous voice. She said she would go. This was partly because Dr. Henshawe was always saying she was glad Rose did not waste her time running around with boys.
    Rather soon after she started to go out with him, she said to Patrick, “Wouldn’t it be funny if it was you who grabbed my leg that day in the library?”
    He did not think it would be funny. He was horrified that she would think such a thing.
    She said she was only joking. She said she meant that it would be a good twist in a story, maybe a Maugham story, or a Hitchcock movie. They had just been to see a Hitchcock movie.
    â€œYou know, if Hitchcock made a movie out of something like that, you could be a wild insatiable leg-grabber with one half of your personality, and the other half could be a