Read Online In the Bag by Kate Klise - Free Book Online Page B

weirdness of parents. I’d return before your mom gets back—or my dad notices I’m gone. Brilliant or stupid? You tell me.
     
Fr: CocoChi@com
To: Webbn@com
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What a tangled Webb . . .
OMG. You’re brilliant! Do trains run between Paris and Madrid?
     
Fr: Webbn@com
To: CocoChi@com
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What a tangled Webb . . .
Looking at the online sked now. Leave here tmw morn at 8:45. Arrive in Paris at 10:41 pm. Depart Paris the next morn at 7:10. Arrive Madrid 7:42 pm.
     
Fr: CocoChi@com
To: Webbn@com
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What a tangled Webb . . .
OMGx2. Let’s do it!!!
     
Fr: Webbn@com
To: CocoChi@com
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What a tangled Webb . . .
Serious?
     
Fr: CocoChi@com
To: Webbn@com
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What a tangled Webb . . .
100%. Can you check your e-mail tomorrow morning before you leave? Just to make sure I can weasel out of going to Madrid? Not certain I can pull this off, but I’m going to TRY TRY TRY! The good thing is, I had a really high fever once when Mom/I were flying to L.A., and I passed out cold as soon as we landed at LAX. It ended up being nothing, but my mother toooottallly freaked. So this might just work!
     
Fr: Webbn@com
To: CocoChi@com
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What a tangled Webb . . .
Try, Blousey. That’s all I can ask. Mr. Hitchcock is rooting for us.
    By the time I got back to the apartment, I was a complete wreck. Luckily Mom was still on the phone. When she hung up, she stared at me: “Where’s dessert?”
    “Oh,” I said. “I forgot.”
    “Honey, what’s wrong with you? You’re white as a sheet.”
    I flopped facedown on the futon. “My stomach feels funny.”
    And I was only half lying.

CHAPTER 23
    Andrew
    I spent the rest of the day putting out fires at the exhibition space.
    Someone—a disgruntled laborer was my guess—had apparently flushed wet cement down the toilets in the women’s restroom. I had to find an industrial plumber to clear the lines. Meanwhile, an electrician was working on the shades, which were cooperating but only intermittently. It would all get resolved by the time the exhibition opened the following evening.
    My bigger concern was the show itself. Was art getting worse, or was I getting more jaded? Because this show, with all its monitors and high-tech digital effects, left me cold.
    If these artists were trying to convince me that the pursuit of love in the postdigital age was more exciting, more mysterious, more . . . well, everything love should be, they’d failed. None of the exhibits passed the Jimmy Webb test, which was the standard by which I judged all works of art.
    The test consisted of comparing the work in question with the song “Wichita Lineman,” where the tension between what you understood and what you didn’t was just the right mix to pull you in deeper. Art has to ask questions and make you care. Nothing I saw elicited even the slightest emotional response. But maybe that was the point. Maybe love was impossible in the postdigital age. Maybe passion was passé.
    Or maybe I was just too old to understand it—or worse yet, to experience it. When was the last time I’d been with a woman who moved me half as much as a Jimmy Webb song? Moira in grad school? Blythe during my internship in New York? Frances, later, in Vancouver? They all eventually tired of my inability to fully connect, and who could blame them? And then when Laura got pregnant with Webb, that changed everything.
    Never mind the past. I had to focus on the show.
    After I finally had the electronic shades working to my satisfaction, I returned to the hotel to put on a clean shirt for dinner. Webb was in the room, watching soccer on TV.
    “Hungry for paella?” I asked while buttoning my shirt.
    “Uh-huh,” he answered.
    “So how’d you spend your afternoon?” I asked, hoping to be