Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by Lydia Millet (shoe dog free ebook .txt) 📕

Ann brushed by them, past a half-naked contortionist sitting on the carpet with his feet behind his ears, past a woman spinning in circles with her hands in a prayer position, into the narrow corridor that led to the bedrooms. They passed the open door to the master suite, where she saw people lying on Oppenheimer’s bed, making out and smoking, soccer playing on television. They passed hippies standing in the hall, drinking and nodding, one of them studiously tearing up a sheet of acid.

They came finally to Ann and Ben’s modest room adjoining the linen closet at the end of the hall: the servants’ quarters, it occurred to Ann for the first time, was where she and Ben had been housed. Inside the room it was dim and quiet. She closed the door behind them and, hearing a flick of laughter near the door, exhausted further by that and resentful of everything that intruded, locked it. They were left in the dark and she flicked on the bedside lamp.

Oppenheimer lay down on the double bed first and she lay down behind him, careful not to jog the mattress, remembering having been careful before not to move the bed. That was always with Ben, she thought, and the recognition alarmed her. Then came the reassurance: this was Oppenheimer. He was skeletal, a ghoul with nicotine-stained fingers. He was barely flesh.

Fully dressed they pulled the pillows out from under the coverlet, on top of which they lay, and each separately arranged the swells and valleys of the pillows to comfort their heads. When the pillows were arranged and both their right shoulders and hands were nestled at angles that satisfied them they closed their eyes to the wall they were facing.

None of the points of their bodies were touching but they lay beside each other curving like echoes and fell asleep.

Ben decided to dedicate the night to drinking and smoking pot. He had his fill of both and circled the rooms in the apartment listening to conversations, suspending judgment because for once he could. It was a relief. As he had become bitter lately he had also become more judgmental, had noticed himself in the transition, meaner than he had ever been before, sharp-toothed. He regretted this but there were bands of steel around him, squeezing.

He hadn’t smoked so much pot since high school. Multiple bong hits, several brownies eaten, a joint offered by the gathering’s lone black man, kind and gray-bearded, a jazz trombonist lately of New York but now making his home in Nagoya. Comfort eased him, the bands loosened, and he became predictably less anxious. Maybe this was the answer, he thought, maybe it’s as simple and clichéd as this. Just stay stoned.

Discussions of the Dead, the old and new Dead, the Dead without Jerry who were therefore not the Dead, and the death of Jerry took place alongside discussions of the reincarnation of Oppenheimer. This naturally led to discussions of the possible reincarnation of Jerry.

—The thing is, said a tall blond woman, —If Robert Oppenheimer can be reincarnated, and that guy Fermi and the fat one too, then why can’t Jerry?

—But like they were a negative force, know what I mean? And Jerry was a positive force, said a middle-aged man who spat when he talked. — It’s a whole different thing. Maybe they were brought back to atone for their sins or whatever. That’s what Leslie was saying. But what did Jerry ever do that was negative?

—That’s true, said the blonde. —He was totally positive, basically.

She turned to Ben.

—You’re the guy who’s friends with the scientists, right? What was your name again?

—Ben, good to meet you, he said.

—Hey! We rhyme! The name’s Ken, said the man who spat, holding out a hand for Ben to shake. —But my friends call me … Ken.

He paused.

—Get it? Remember Silver Streak? Richard Pryor?

—Yeah, said Ben, nodding. —Right.

—I was just saying to Ken how, if these guys who invented nuclear bombs can be reincarnated, then definitely Jerry can too, right? Am I right, Ben?

—But Jerry’s life was so full, said the blond woman.

—Exactly, said Ken. —He was totally self-expressed. What would Jerry want with this place?

Making the rounds Ben interrupted Szilard in an earnest conversation about Osama Bin Laden with a peacenik in the John Lennon mold, complete with round glasses, lank brown hair and a spurious English accent. The conversation was audited but not joined by a broad-faced, ruddy Australian rugby player named Frank and a jewelry maker from Santa Barbara hung liberally with her own wares. She liked to show them off and tell the history of each one.

Szilard, talking to the peacenik, tried to make a point about reactor byproducts and treaty verification protocols but was repeatedly frustrated by the peacenik’s single-minded obsession with a pyramid scheme to spread world peace, while beside him the jewelry maker showed Ben her pièce-de-resistance, a necklace-and-earring set made out of a goat femur.

What could it harm? he thought, as she told him the femur had healing properties. It was charged with positive ions, she said, which caused healing.

All of this, he thought, everything he had first ridiculed was benign.

Sunk deep into a leather sofa he also listened, swayed into empathy by the pot and a piece of chocolate cake, to a dialogue about crop circles and cattle mutilations between Clint, Larry, and a Belgian food activist whose claim to fame was that he had once helped burn down a McDonalds in France.

When he found Oppenheimer and Ann in his bed, chaste and fraternal as a priest and a nun, he left them alone and made his way to the master bedroom, where he unceremoniously rolled a passed-out drunk off the bed. There was no sound as he toppled onto the floor. His elbows on the mattress, Ben leaned over the edge to check the fallen man’s health: he had landed on a stray sofa cushion, and when asked if he was OK grunted in the affirmative.

Settling himself underneath the duvet