Read Online Savage Love by Douglas Glover - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Douglas Glover
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person, I thought. In our case, it turned a warm, friendly, sexy girl into a calculating machine.
The cellphone started to ring, a homely sound amid the carnage. Sophieâs eyes went up.
âDonât answer it,â I said.
I snatched the phone from its holster and smashed the touch screen against the steering wheel eight- or twenty-odd times. Then I threw it out the window. The dog was sitting next to the driverâs door peering up at me, wagging her tail. Maybe it was the dogâs ghost, I thought. Behind us lay the flattened body of the Rexforthsâ County Waste can.
The engine raced out of gear, ticking furiously, like hammers. Wisps of smoke or steam curled from beneath the hood. All around, the ruins of civilization, the end of the world as we know it.
âWait here,â I said, pushing through the door.
The Sun Lord and the Royal Child
I went to see my friend Nedlinger after his wife killed herself in that awful and unseemly way, making a public spectacle of herself and their life together, which, no doubt, Nedlinger hated because of his compulsive need for privacy, a need that only grew more compelling as his fame spread, as success followed success, as the money poured in, so that in later years, when he could no longer control his public image, when it seemed, yes, as if his celebrity would eclipse his private life entirely, he turned reclusive and misanthropic, sought to erase himself and return to the simple life of a nonentity.
You will recall that Nedlinger began his career as a so-called forensic archaeologist specializing in the analysis of prehistoric Iroquoian ossuaries in southwestern Ontario, and it was then, just after finishing his doctorate, that he met Melusina, a mousy undergraduate studying library science, given to tucking her unruly hair behind her ears and wearing hip-length cardigan sweaters with pockets into which she stuffed used and unused tissues, notecards, pens, odd gloves, sticks of lip balm, hand lotion and her own veiny fists, her chin depressed over her tiny, androgynous breasts. In those days she wore thick, flesh-coloured stockings and orthopaedic shoes to correct a birth defect, syndactyly, I believe it is called. Only Nedlinger, with his forensic mind, could pierce the unpromising surface, the advertising as it were, to uncover the intelligent, passionate, sensual, fully alive being hidden in the shadows.
A paradox: as Nedlingerâs notoriety waxed, Melusina all but disappeared, growing ever more waifish and anorexic, tottering about pathetically on those high heels he made her wear, along with the short skirts and neon spandex tank tops; but as Nedlingerâs fame touched the stratosphere (the money rolling in) and Nedlinger himself, unable to abide mass acclaim, turned increasingly cloistered and eremitic, Melusina began to seek the public eye, launching herself into a series of escapades in order to attract attention, courting rock stars, media types and wealthy party people, exactly the sort Nedlinger had spent his life avoiding. So that when she died, it might be said that Melusinaâs public persona had nearly eclipsed Nedlingerâs or that Nedlinger was almost as well known for being Melusina âs husband as he was for his own renowned work as a so-called forensic archaeologist.
As far as I know, Melusina was unfaithful to Nedlinger with only one other man, despite all the innuendo and gossip. When she died (the word die , in this context, is nothing but a euphemism for that horrid, public act of self-cancelling), they had no children, due, I believe, to a tragic injury Nedlinger suffered in a tractor accident as a boy on the family dairy farm near Burford, Ontario; the place is now preserved as a not-for-profit organic vegetable operation in his honour even though Nedlinger himself remembered it only as a typical Ontario family farm, a locus of sorrow, frustration, inhibition, philistinism, narrow-minded judgment, stupidity,
The cellphone started to ring, a homely sound amid the carnage. Sophieâs eyes went up.
âDonât answer it,â I said.
I snatched the phone from its holster and smashed the touch screen against the steering wheel eight- or twenty-odd times. Then I threw it out the window. The dog was sitting next to the driverâs door peering up at me, wagging her tail. Maybe it was the dogâs ghost, I thought. Behind us lay the flattened body of the Rexforthsâ County Waste can.
The engine raced out of gear, ticking furiously, like hammers. Wisps of smoke or steam curled from beneath the hood. All around, the ruins of civilization, the end of the world as we know it.
âWait here,â I said, pushing through the door.
The Sun Lord and the Royal Child
I went to see my friend Nedlinger after his wife killed herself in that awful and unseemly way, making a public spectacle of herself and their life together, which, no doubt, Nedlinger hated because of his compulsive need for privacy, a need that only grew more compelling as his fame spread, as success followed success, as the money poured in, so that in later years, when he could no longer control his public image, when it seemed, yes, as if his celebrity would eclipse his private life entirely, he turned reclusive and misanthropic, sought to erase himself and return to the simple life of a nonentity.
You will recall that Nedlinger began his career as a so-called forensic archaeologist specializing in the analysis of prehistoric Iroquoian ossuaries in southwestern Ontario, and it was then, just after finishing his doctorate, that he met Melusina, a mousy undergraduate studying library science, given to tucking her unruly hair behind her ears and wearing hip-length cardigan sweaters with pockets into which she stuffed used and unused tissues, notecards, pens, odd gloves, sticks of lip balm, hand lotion and her own veiny fists, her chin depressed over her tiny, androgynous breasts. In those days she wore thick, flesh-coloured stockings and orthopaedic shoes to correct a birth defect, syndactyly, I believe it is called. Only Nedlinger, with his forensic mind, could pierce the unpromising surface, the advertising as it were, to uncover the intelligent, passionate, sensual, fully alive being hidden in the shadows.
A paradox: as Nedlingerâs notoriety waxed, Melusina all but disappeared, growing ever more waifish and anorexic, tottering about pathetically on those high heels he made her wear, along with the short skirts and neon spandex tank tops; but as Nedlingerâs fame touched the stratosphere (the money rolling in) and Nedlinger himself, unable to abide mass acclaim, turned increasingly cloistered and eremitic, Melusina began to seek the public eye, launching herself into a series of escapades in order to attract attention, courting rock stars, media types and wealthy party people, exactly the sort Nedlinger had spent his life avoiding. So that when she died, it might be said that Melusinaâs public persona had nearly eclipsed Nedlingerâs or that Nedlinger was almost as well known for being Melusina âs husband as he was for his own renowned work as a so-called forensic archaeologist.
As far as I know, Melusina was unfaithful to Nedlinger with only one other man, despite all the innuendo and gossip. When she died (the word die , in this context, is nothing but a euphemism for that horrid, public act of self-cancelling), they had no children, due, I believe, to a tragic injury Nedlinger suffered in a tractor accident as a boy on the family dairy farm near Burford, Ontario; the place is now preserved as a not-for-profit organic vegetable operation in his honour even though Nedlinger himself remembered it only as a typical Ontario family farm, a locus of sorrow, frustration, inhibition, philistinism, narrow-minded judgment, stupidity,
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