The Night of the Comet by George Bishop

Author:George Bishop
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780345538796
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-07-29T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“AND that’s how it happened,” he told me, ending his story. “As fast as that. Ka-boom! Here we are. Mr. and Mrs. Alan Broussard. For better or worse, till death do us part.”

My father gave a quick, stiff smile across the table. He picked up his turkey sandwich and resumed eating. The lettuce crunched between his teeth; a dribble of tomato and mayonnaise fell to the plate. I picked up my own sandwich and took a few bites.

I liked my father’s version of the story well enough, but hearing it now left me oddly unsatisfied. It sounded almost too neat, too easy to be true. And what was that note of regret I thought I detected at the end? I got the feeling he wasn’t telling me everything.

Besides, his story didn’t really answer my questions about Gabriella. What about that mysterious attraction that drew people together in the first place? How did that work? And how did he know that he loved her? And that she loved him? How could you ever be sure?

When I asked him this, he stopped chewing. We had never talked seriously about these things before, and he seemed to recognize the urgency in my voice.

“What is love, basically? Is that what you’re asking?”

“Right.”

He set down his sandwich. “Hm. That’s a good one, all right. Well, okay, let’s see.”

He began by saying how, in biology, there was actually a whole science of attraction. Those who studied this could explain it better than he could, but basically, it involved hormones, pheromones, estrogen levels, things like that. Looking at it in terms of evolution, he said, it was well known that females of a species were attracted to partners whose physical features and behaviors indicated that they would be good providers and protectors, whereas the male preferred females who looked like they would produce healthy offspring. When one met a potential mate, he or she communicated his or her interest through certain signals, certain sounds and gestures. He talked about courtship rituals among animals, such as the bird-of-paradise in New Guinea, which spread its feathers and danced and hung upside down from a tree in order to lure females.…

He must’ve seen he was losing me, because he stopped talking.

“That doesn’t help, does it?” he said.

“Not really.”

He sighed. He took off his glasses and began cleaning them with his handkerchief. Without them on, he looked naked and vulnerable. Gray purses of flesh hung below his eyes, and his nose appeared thinner, bonier. A paler, older version of my father had taken his place across the table—a man almost a stranger to me. He grimaced slightly, as though he were experiencing again the indigestion he’d felt all those years ago in the drugstore. When he spoke again, it was with effort.

“Look, I’ll be honest with you, Junior. It’s difficult, this business of love. When you’re young, your head’s filled with all these romantic notions that you get from songs and stories and movies, telling you how great and magical and mysterious love is.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.