Read Online Man With a Squirrel by Nicholas Kilmer - Free Book Online Page A

fragrant-feeling back, under the wilted shirt, “I am beset by a sense of duality, because our mutual body language belies the content of our conversation.”
    â€œWe’ll stop talking,” Molly suggested.
    *   *   *
    â€œTell you what,” Molly said, turning efficient after the expiration of the moral equivalent of twenty-three pages.
    â€œWhat,” Fred said drowsily.
    â€œI keep remembering you running out naked into the snow that night.”
    â€œWhat?” Fred asked, almost sitting up.
    â€œThe night you caught the man watching my house.”
    â€œI put my pants on,” Fred protested.
    â€œThat’s irrelevant,” Molly said. “What I remember is my man naked as Adam’s off-angel, with knobs on, standing in a scurry of snow in the middle of the dark street—the snow in the streetlight makes a halo of white feathers around you, Fred. That’s what I remember. As if it was yesterday.”
    Fred stared into the room’s muddle of darkened forms.
    â€œYou were on your way to meet the other witches,” Molly said. She went to sleep.

9
    Oona, in her front window, beckoned to Fred as she saw him passing, carrying a large container of espresso from Chico’s. Jesus, that’s fast, Fred thought, pushing the door open and listening to its bell ching. They came in again? It was not yet ten o’clock. Oona shouldn’t be open.
    â€œFred Taylor, I’m in love,” Oona said. She blushed. She was in black watered silk, which set off the blush. She clasped her rotund hands, beaming like a farm wife pleased by productivity on the part of her gang of chickens.
    â€œI’m glad for you,” Fred said. He dodged a collection of andirons, stepping aside to let Oona get to her street door and lock it.
    â€œNo, not like that,” Oona said. “My little thing rests on its laurels. But nevertheless, Fred Taylor, this confirmed widow is in love.”
    Oona had never entrusted anything remotely confidential to him. Fred took a sip of his coffee, black and bitter.
    â€œI have slivovitz to put in that, Fred Taylor,” Oona offered.
    â€œThanks, maybe not,” Fred said.
    â€œMr. Clayton Reed, the man you are working for,” Oona whispered, leading Fred toward the back room. “He came in yesterday pretending to be someone else, in order to trick from me my secret of the squirrel, and I am in love. I had not dreamed such a man could exist outside of fiction. He is—he is, I do not know which, the Wooden Prince or the Miraculous Mandarin?”
    Fred sat next to the desk while Oona installed herself behind it, where she could see to the street. The desk was covered with china salt-and-pepper shakers in the forms of birds and animals. “It’s a collection I bought,” Oona said. “Mostly American, mostly 1950s, but people like them.” She shrugged.
    â€œHow about Wooden Mandarin?” Fred suggested. “As a compromise. For Clayton Reed.”
    â€œYou are making fun,” Oona said. “It was love at first sight. Immediately I knew him, strutting like a stork who has just swallowed a fat frog filled with eggs and does not wish you to guess what pond he fished it in. And he was whistling an air from Szekelyfono, which not everyone can do, Fred Taylor—not on purpose, as he did it, in order to win my heart with a Magyar melody. I wept.” Bright tears even now stood in the corners of Oona’s eyes, and broadened their normal brilliance. “For Kecskemét is also my hometown.”
    Oona sighed and gazed past Fred toward distant Hungarian fields just the other side of Charles Street.
    â€œI must tell you I am partially bewildered,” Fred said.
    â€œNaturally,” Oona said magnanimously. She began marking prices on paper labels and sticking them onto salt-and-pepper shakers, which she coupled with rubber bands.
    â€œSeven-fifty?” Fred exclaimed,