Read Online Love Story by Erich Segal - Free Book Online Page B

a minute I’ll lose my nerve.
What’s the number?’
    I told her and was instantaneously
immersed in Percival’s appeal to the Supreme Court. I was not
listening to Jenny. That is, I tried not to. She was in the same
room, after all.
    ‘Oh - good evening, sir,’ I heard
her say. Did the Sonovabitch answer the phone? Wasn’t he in
Washington during the week? That’s what a recent profile in The New
York Times said. Goddamn journalism is going downhill nowadays.
    How long does it take to say no?
    Somehow Jennifer had already taken
more time than one would think necessary to pronounce this simple
syllable.
    ‘Ollie?’
    She had her hand over the mouthpiece.
    ‘Ollie, does it have to be
negative?’
    The nod of my head indicated that it
had to be, the wave of my hand indicated that she should hurry the
hell up.
    ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said
into the phone. ‘I mean, we’re terribly sorry, sir ….’
    We’re! Did she have to involve me
in this? And why can’t she get to the point and hang up?
    ‘Oliver!’
    She had her hand on the mouthpiece
again and was talking very loud.
    ‘He’s wounded, Oliver! Can you
just sit there and let your father bleed?’
    Had she not been in such an emotional
state, I could have explained once again that stones do not bleed,
that she should not project her Italian-Mediterranean misconceptions
about parents onto the craggy heights of Mount Rushmore. But she was
very upset. And it was upsetting me too.
    ‘Oliver,’ she pleaded, ‘could
you just say a word?’
    To him? She must be going out of her
mind!
    ‘I mean, like just maybe ‘hello’?’
    She was offering the phone to me. And
trying not to cry.
    ‘I will never talk to him. Ever,’
I said with perfect calm.
    And now she was crying. Nothing
audible, but tears pouring down her face. And then she - she begged.
    ‘For me, Oliver. I’ve never asked
you for anything.
    Please.’
    Three of us. Three of us just
standing (I somehow imagined my father being there as well) waiting
for something. What? For me?
    I couldn’t do it.
    Didn’t Jenny understand she was
asking the impossible?
    That I would have done absolutely
anything else? As I looked at the floor, shaking my head in adamant
refusal and extreme discomfort, Jenny addressed me with a kind of
whispered fury I had never heard from her: ‘You are a heartless
bastard,’ she said. And then she ended the telephone conversation
with my father, saying: ‘Mr. Barrett, Oliver does want you to know
that in his own special way …’
    She paused for breath. She had been
sobbing, so it wasn’t easy. I was much too astonished to do
anything but await the end of my alleged ‘message.’
    ‘Oliver loves you very much,’ she
said, and hung up very quickly.
    There is no rational explanation for
my actions in the next split second. I plead temporary insanity.
Correction: I plead nothing. I must never be forgiven for what I did.
    I ripped the phone from her hand,
then from the socket and hurled it across the room.
    ‘God damn you, Jenny! Why don’t
you get the hell out of my life!’
    I stood still, panting like the
animal I had suddenly become. Jesus Christ! What the hell had
happened to me? I turned to look at Jen.
    But she was gone.
    I mean absolutely gone, because I
didn’t even hear footsteps on the stairs. Christ, she must have
dashed out the instant I grabbed the phone. Even her coat and scarf
were still there. The pain of not knowing what to do was exceeded
only by that of knowing what I had done.
    I searched everywhere.
    In the Law School library, I prowled
the rows of grinding students, looking and looking. Up and back, at
least half a dozen times. Though I didn’t utter a sound, I knew my
glance was so intense, my face so fierce, I was disturbing the whole
fucking place. Who cares?
    But Jenny wasn’t there.
    Then all through Harkness Commons,
the lounge, the cafeteria. Then a wild sprint to look around Agassiz
Hall at Radcliffe. Not there, either. I was running