Read Online The Judas Glass by Michael Cadnum - Free Book Online

“I’m urging legislation, seat belts, and helmets for the office.”
    Dr. Opal smiled with just the slightest gleam of impatience. I unwrapped my finger. The cut bled. First scarlet pearls welled along the abrupt line of the narrow opening, like a paper cut, fine, clean. Then a trickle began to spend itself down my finger, coursing across my palm.
    Dr. Opal had once insisted that I call him Sam. It was what everyone else called him, he had said. But it wasn’t true. He was one of those doctors so beloved and so respected even old friends called him Doctor . Friends his own age might call him Dr. Sam . But in a civilization where everything was on a first-name basis, Dr. Opal stood apart.
    â€œThe only kiwi I have ever seen,” said Dr. Opal, “was in the London zoo, in the nocturnal section. Flying foxes, too. My mother used to say God had a sense of humor, look at all the funny creatures He made. She was right. The world is full of wonders. Tell me about this woman, Richard. This pianist who meant so much to you.”
    I couldn’t say a word. I shook my head.
    â€œYou must have loved her,” said Dr. Opal. “I certainly can’t imagine your father charging into a burning building.”
    I sat there, on one of those examination tables covered with white paper, and gave him a brief, agonized explanation, truthful, fragmented.
    He looked at me appraisingly. “You were in love,” he said at last.
    â€œYou sound surprised.”
    â€œNo, maybe just envious. I used to hope there was enough life in me to let me find a Rebecca or two before I go the way of the great auk.” As he spoke his hands were on me, steadying me so he could look into my eyes. “You loved her that much.”
    â€œIt frightened me, too. That much love for someone. Love in my view used to be like a low-grade fever, something you got over. Not—” I controlled myself with difficulty. “Not like this.”
    â€œUnbutton your shirt.” He put the cold mouth of the stethoscope to my chest. “Take a deep breath.”
    Dr. Opal struck me as someone who had made the right sort of bargain with life. His teeth were even, his stride buoyant. He could be peppery, but people liked him all the more for it.
    My father had dropped dead one Sunday at three o’clock in the afternoon at a tennis ranch near Phoenix. And he had always hated tennis, taking up the game to please his new girlfriend, a tanned, blue-eyed creature who wrote a sports column. I had often wondered how strong my own heart would prove as I got older.
    â€œI’m so sorry, Richard,” said Dr. Opal. He slipped the stethoscope from around his neck.
    â€œYou would have liked her.”
    â€œI like a lot of people.” He gave me a smile that made him look just a little less avuncular and more like what he was—a man whose wife had died seven years ago, and who never expected to remarry. He was not resigned so much as realistic. I thought then that I must seem strangely passionate to him, angular, with much to learn.
    He opened a glass jar of cotton swabs, long lengths of wood tipped with white turbans of cotton. “I thought when I reached my golden years I would understand people,” he said. “Do you know that feeling, that expectation that when you get old you’ll be wise?”
    â€œI keep hoping.”
    He replaced the metal lid without withdrawing a swab. “It’s happening. I think I’m beginning to get wise. I can feel it, falling over me like sunshine. Wisdom. Do you know what I’ve discovered about human beings, Richard?”
    I gave him a look: tell me.
    â€œThey expect too much from life. They expect too much from themselves.”
    â€œYou make wisdom sound depressing.”
    He laughed and gave a shrug. “Do you know why people don’t live to be five hundred years old? Because we’d go crazy. One stupid century after another—we