Weekend Read Online Free Page B

the main building, drawn to it like a magnet by its problems, challenges and demands.
    Melinda Kaplan was dragging her son up to the Catskills for the second time in three years, carting him along on a journey his father laughingly referred to as her “Sexual Transfusion.”
    “It’s Operation New Man,” he said, “and believe me, your mother plots it out like a military strategist. I feel sorry for the first soldier she captures. He doesn’t stand a chance. I should know.”
    He laughed again and went back to his drawing board. It was always like that when Grant made his weekly visits. His father would take off on some topic, his favorite being “your mother, Melinda,” then return his attention to the work at hand, causing Grant to feel more like a piece of the furniture.
    “You’re fifteen years old, son,” he had recently told him. “By now you must be learning enough about women to understand what hell I went through living with your mother.”
    Then, when he got home, Melinda would begin. “What wonderful things did he have to say about me this time? Were any of his sluts over there, because if they were… What did you talk about? Did he tell you what a horrible woman I am again because if he did …”
    Usually it got so bad he would run up to his room and turn on his Chubby Checker records so loud it hurt even his own ears.
    “Turn that damn shit down,” his mother would scream but he didn’t care. He’d do anything he could to torment her, the same way she and his father tormented him, always using him as the pawn.
    He started setting the fires with the same kind of apathy and nonchalance that characterized most of the other things he did. In fact, that was the biggest and most frequent criticism in all the letters and conferences relating to his school work.
    “Grant Kaplan is totally indifferent to his work, completely unconcerned about his productivity.”
    “Kaplan doesn’t appear interested in anything, including himself.”
    “Grant has little enthusiasm. He pretends to listen but doesn’t hear a thing. He just doesn’t seem to care.”
    “I’ll talk to him about it,” Melinda would always say.
    He remembered the first morning she had come to his high school. He was thoroughly embarrassed by the way she had sauntered into the building in her low-cut dress and flirted so outrageously in front of everybody with the young dean of students. Christ, did she have to be on the make everywhere, even in his school?
    “It’s been so hard for us these past three years,” she told the dean. “I get absolutely no help from his biological father.” She loved to refer to her “ex” now as “biological.” Grant understood the emotional implication, but it still made him feel like the result of some sort of laboratory experiment.
    And that’s exactly how he was beginning to feel. Even now, at this crucial meeting, he really didn’t have any feeling. If the dean was having a problem hiding his hard-on, that was his problem, not Grant’s. As usual, the discussion ended with both sides promising to try harder to motivate Grant, neither one knowing or caring that his mind was millions of miles away.
    The first fire was so small and insignificant, he actually left right after it was set. It was a shed behind Gerson’s Luncheonette, a few blocks from where he lived in Teaneck, New Jersey. He found the can of gas behind the ’58 Ford in the driveway. He was just wandering home from school, taking a longer route than usual, when he saw the can, the empty shed, and made the connection. For the first time in a long time, he had come up with an idea that interested him.
    He had been smoking since he was eleven, not bothering to sneak most of the time because his parents were too busy arguing to take notice, so he already had a spare pack of matches in his pocket.
    He lifted the can with the gas in it so casually that even if someone was watching, it would never occur to him that Grant was doing