Read Online Taking It by Michael Cadnum - Free Book Online Page B

father’s collection of exotic art.
    The ceramic frog did not warm in my hand, the way so many things do, picking up body heat. It stayed cold.

16
    I sat in my room, a figurine safe in a big doll’s house.
    I arrayed my Tuscan tabac eye shadow and my Amalfi sunrise overblush and the long blue Princess Borghese eye accent pencil, and touched up my face, working carefully, thinking about Stu and the way he would feel me all over, inside and out, and it was like I was the clothes and he was the human, trying me on for size. I kept screwing up, one eye looking like Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra .
    I put my hand into my ballet slippers, and there it was, the blue frog with its fake eyes. In real life the hunters kill the frogs, dry the skins, and season their arrowheads with the frog powder.
    Right now Mother and Adler were probably in a rented car, air-conditioned, although they probably didn’t need it. They would be arriving late at the hotel, probably, their room waiting, with maybe an ice bucket of Mother’s favorite champagne, Mumm, the French kind, not the kind from Napa.
    It was night, and there were trees.
    Stu put his hand on my breast, and his touch was warm. I turned away, though. We were done, and I didn’t want him touching me anymore.
    It was like when we first used to come up here. We would look at the view, the glitter, the tiny movement of cars, from our private place behind the environmental control unit, all to ourselves.
    We were up behind the Lawrence Hall of Science in the dark, the concrete space-age buildings looking hopeful and out-of-date. The lights of Berkeley were a cluster of whites and yellows, and then there was the Bay, darkness.
    â€œYou act like my mom before the doctor took her off those pills,” said Stu.
    â€œWhat kind of pills,” I said, not even bothering to make my voice sound like I was asking a question, just hitting the ball back.
    â€œThey made her like a robot.”
    â€œThanks.”
    He zipped himself up, partway. It got stuck. “The thing I always liked about you—you weren’t ordinary.”
    He was trying to be nice, but he was using the past tense. “That’s a blazing compliment.” I sounded like someone who was bothered by nothing.
    â€œYou used to tell me about funny things you saw on the news,” he said.
    â€œIt takes someone like me to make plane crashes and massacres sound funny.” I couldn’t see him very well. He was up on one arm, looking down at me.
    The environmental control unit was a squat concrete abutment with metal slotted vents. Hot air flowed out of it with a quiet hum, a big fan circulating the air from the buildings in the distance. The fan was suddenly silent, and the quiet startled both of us for a moment.
    â€œYou used to laugh,” Stu said, but the feeling was gone from his voice. “You used to tell me what you saw in your dad’s trials, imitate witnesses.”
    It was an unspoken understanding between Stu and me that I was going to be a lawyer and he was going to design space labs. I started to cry, I couldn’t help it.
    â€œAre you all right, Anna?”
    I almost told him—really talked to him.
    â€œJust because I’m going away doesn’t mean we’ll be out of touch,” he said. “We’re still friends.” He said something about E-mail and how there weren’t any places anymore, how every place was one point on the plane. Distance didn’t matter.
    â€œWhat kind of person am I?” I asked.
    The question made him think. “A very interesting person,” he said, picking his words carefully.
    I wanted to ask him: Am I a thief?
    I wanted to ask him: Can you look into my eyes and see my mind dying?
    Instead he sounded shaken that I cared so much, not understanding me at all. He was talking about computer modems. He was saying he would write letters. He thought I was going to miss him. I felt sorry for him. I pinched