Читать книгу Eligible - Curtis Sittenfeld - Страница 22

Liz was still at her desk, though actually doing work—she was reading a commencement speech delivered by Kathy de Bourgh, a famous feminist whom she hoped to interview for her pay-raise article—when Lydia entered the room and said, “Have you seen my phone?”

Liz shook her head.

“Fuck,” Lydia said. “I need to text Ham to see what time we’re meeting, but my phone is the only place I have his number.”

“Who’s Ham?”

“Ham Ryan.”

“Am I supposed to know who that is?” Liz asked.

“He owns the box we go to.”

Box, to Liz’s annoyance, was the preferred CrossFit term for its gyms. She said, “Is he your boyfriend?”

Lydia’s expression was disdainful. Sarcastically, she said, “Are we going steady? Do you think he’ll give me his varsity jacket?”

“Excuse me for daring to make conversation with you after you came into my room.”

“There’s a spider on your wall.”

At first, Liz wondered if this was some coded insult used by millennials, but when she turned, she saw a real spider, brown and quarter-sized. She stood to grab a sandal, and when she whacked the shoe against the wall, a chip of paint flaked off.

“Gross,” Lydia said. “Tell me if you find my phone.” She hadn’t yet left the room when Liz opened a new window on her Web browser and typed in Ham Ryan CrossFit Cincinnati.

He was handsome, of course: short light brown hair coaxed by product into a sort of glistening spikiness, as well as blue eyes and a tidy goatee. His real name was Hamilton, apparently, and he was from Seattle.

Liz cared little about either CrossFit or Lydia’s paramours (their turnover was too frequent to justify investing much attention) while finding Kathy de Bourgh’s commencement address genuinely interesting; yet somehow, she spent the next forty minutes exploring the nooks and crannies of the website for Ham Ryan’s “box,” and even came away half-tempted to try a recipe for Paleo crab cakes, if only doing so wouldn’t please her sisters.