The Waiting Room Read Online Free Page B

hadn't heard me. "It was a boa constrictor. I was attached to it."
    She nodded. "Old age?"
    "I think so. It was hard to tell. He got . . . listless. He wouldn't eat. And he died."
    She said, "It could have been a virus. Boa constrictors in this climate are plagued by viruses. Did you get him to a vet?"
    I shrugged. I smiled. It was a nervous smile be cause, of all possible topics, my first conversation with this stunning, perceptive woman was about snake viruses. "He went too quickly," I said. I chuckled, embarrassed. "I sound like I'm talking about a favorite uncle.’He went too quickly.'" I chuckled again. I looked questioningly at her. "How do you know about boa constrictors?"
    She grinned. "I know about frogs, too, and toads, and salamanders. It's my job. I teach natural history." She paused. "And it's a . . . consuming interest, as well."
    "A naturalist in Manhattan, huh?" I said.
    She shrugged. It was a slow, graceful, enticing gesture. "Yes," she said. "No apologies."
    "None required," I said, which seemed to bring the conversation to an abrupt and uncomfortable halt. I stared straight ahead, through the Plexiglas partition, and grinned vapidly until the conversation resumed several minutes later.
    She asked, and I heard immediately that her air of quiet authority was gone, "Do you think we have to go through a tunnel?"
    I looked at her. "I think so," I said. "You're new to the city?"
    â€œYes," she answered. "Relatively so." She paused. "Shit!" she breathed.
    "You don't like tunnels?" I asked.
    She shook her head. Her straight, shoulder-length, dark blond hair moved freely; she brushed it back from her face. It came to me then how strong and sensual she looked, and what a contradiction that was to the conversation we were having, to the vulnerability she was showing me. "No," she whispered, gaze   straight ahead, "I don't like tunnels. I keep thinking they're going to ... cave in, especially with so much weight on them." She looked at me. She had very expressive dark blue eyes—expressive, at that moment, of gathering anguish—and every few seconds, as she talked, her mouth broke into a quick, nervous grin. She was sitting very straight in the seat, her hand clutching the armrest, and when she finished a sentence she turned her head away and appeared to focus on whatever was in front of the cab. "Haven't you ever thought that going through a tunnel, I mean"—she looked away—"that it was going to collapse?" She looked pleadingly at me. I wasn't sure if she wanted me to confirm her fear with a similar fear of my own, or if she wanted me to tell her she was being silly.
    I said, "No. Never."
    She turned away, grinned nervously, looked back, grinned again. She cocked her head a little, which made her look girlish. "Don't you think there's a bridge or something?"
    We headed down a ramp that led to the Queens Tunnel. "Too late," I said.
    "Shit!" she said. She sat doubly erect in the seat now as we entered the tunnel. Her hand gripping the armrest turned a bright red. Her other hand found mine and grabbed it as if in panic.
    I told her, "We'll be through the tunnel in a couple of minutes. And besides, it's been here for quite a few decades and it hasn't collapsed yet."
    Her eyes seemed to be glued on the road ahead, and on the white tunnel walls zipping past. "It's like someone else's dream," she said. "Like someone's idea of a nightmare—a tunnel that keeps getting narrower and narrower, smaller and smaller, until you have to get smaller and smaller, too. But you can't. How can you? So the walls themselves make you smaller, the walls squash you like you're a bug some kid's discovered under a rock." She looked pleadingly at me. I wanted very much to hold her, to reassure her. She said, "I'm sorry."
    " This tunnel ends," I told her.
    "Yes. I know it does."
    A couple of minutes later we came out in Queens and I saw that the clouds had parted and that the sky was a cool, pale blue. "See?" I