The Animal Girl by John Fulton

Author:John Fulton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2007-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

5

At the end of the summer, the lab had a barbecue and softball game, to which everyone—Leah, the security guard, Diana, Jason Clark, and people from different departments whom Leah had never met—was invited. The diamond was in a park across from Max’s house, where people hung out in the backyard drinking beer and waiting for hot dogs, chicken breasts, and hamburgers to come off the grill. It was Leah’s last chance, before leaving the lab and returning to school, to impress Max, to show him who she was and what she was capable of, and to make a claim on him greater than that of a student and dullard adolescent. And so, naturally, she did nothing. She froze and felt painfully shy, holding an illegal beer, the taste of which she did not at all like, while jolly and collegial adults told jokes, conversed, drank a little too much and gossiped all around her. “What?” Jason Clark asked in mock surprise as he looked at the selection of grilled meats. “No lamb chops. Why on earth not?” Leah, Max, and Diana all laughed. Other researchers joked about the animals they worked with. Someone giggled at the gruesome thought of rabbit stew. “I sometimes dream about mice. I see nothing but mice,” a woman said and began to laugh uneasily.

Meanwhile, Leah wasn’t having a good time and wasn’t laughing.

Max tapped her shoulder at one point. “You seem quiet, kiddo. You all right?”

“Of course,” Leah said. “I’m fine.”

Always oblivious to fashion, Max wore shorts that were just a little too short and an old pair of leather cleats. He held a worn baseball glove in one hand and a bat in the other, and Leah saw in his soft burliness something she hadn’t anticipated: the eager physicality of an athlete. “Let’s go play,” he said. Then he began following the other research scientists and laboratory employees across the street to the baseball diamond when he surprised Leah again by turning around and saying, “By the way, you look great today. You really do.” It was the first time he’d noticed, and though his tone suggested nothing more than friendliness, and seemed to reflect more his good mood than anything he saw in her, Leah felt a distinct lifting of spirits. She’d taken pains that day to look her best; she wore eye makeup, lipstick, a jean skirt and white tank top, through which showed, very faintly, the red lace of her bra.

Because she had taken extra care in her appearance and felt that it could easily crumble, that she could lose all her elegance in one wild swing of a bat, she refrained from playing and stood behind the high chain-link backstop and watched. It was a mild day in late August with a light breeze, a seamless blue sky, and a full, if not quite hot, sun, a day in which the chill of autumn, still distant, could nonetheless be felt. The great maples that bordered the park lifted countless pale green leaves that shimmered in the light.

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