Read Hall of Small Mammals for Free Online

Alan Gass better-looking than me?”
    â€œSilly duck,” she says, a recurring joke about his outturned feet. She shuts the laptop and comes around the island. “Silly duck with big sexy glasses.” She plucks the glasses from his face. “Silly duck with snazzy shoes.” She taps his black shoes with her socked feet. “Silly duck with perfect duck lips.” She kisses him.
    He stands and wraps his arms around her waist. A former high school volleyball star, Claire is a few inches taller than Walker, and even more so right now with her blond hair up in ahigh, messy bun. He doesn’t mind her height, but whenever they ride an escalator together, he claims the higher step to see what it’s like.
    Admittedly, her dream is a strange one—so visceral, so coherent, so consistent—but he can see no reason why Alan Gass should come between them. After imagining a real affair, he feels somewhat relieved. It isn’t as though she is actually married and actually in love with an actual ophthalmologist. What counts is that the real Claire—the waking Claire, the part of her that matters—wants Walker and only Walker, and that is the case, is it not? She says that it is most definitely the case. She kisses him, tugs his hand to her cheek. She is relieved, she says, that he finally knows her secret, a secret she’s never told anyone, not even her parents. What a weight off her shoulders. Anything he wants to ask, he can ask. She will hide nothing from him.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    Over the next few weeks, new details emerge. Claire’s dreams began when she was in high school. Walker can’t help wondering about the subtle differences between himself and Alan. Alan grew up Baptist in a small town and doesn’t drink. Walker grew up Episcopalian and drinks a glass of wine every night. Alan regularly wears suits. Walker prefers tight dark jeans and designer T-shirts. Alan volunteers at a free medical clinic. Walker can’t remember the last time he volunteered for anything.
    But Walker tries not to dwell on Alan Gass.
    Walker is the artistic director at a theater downtown. He met Claire there when she volunteered to help at the box office one semester. He was in that particular production. It was a Germanplay about a ghost that wreaks havoc on a town by possessing prominent citizens and causing them to behave strangely. The town believes the ghost is that of a young woman who recently drowned herself because of a broken heart. The townspeople set out to find her body, thinking that will satisfy her, but it does not. The ghost responds by taking over the body of the town mayor and hurling the man off a tall building. To try and appease the ghost, the townspeople gang up on the man responsible for the woman’s broken heart. They tie weights around his ankles and drop him in the ocean. But that doesn’t solve the problem. This man also returns as a ghost looking for revenge. It was a gruesome play. Walker played the second ghost, the heartbreaker. Despite the white gunky makeup, Claire told him he was handsome.
    Alan Gass is a ghost, and Walker knows you cannot fight ghosts. They are insidious. You can’t punch a ghost or write it a drunken email. You can only pretend the ghost is not there, hope it loses interest, evaporates, moves on, does whatever it is that ghosts do when they disappear completely.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    They are sitting in the back row of a half-packed lecture hall on campus. Thanks to Claire’s advisor, their university is home to a conference dedicated entirely to the daisy. He is on the stage, pacing before a giant screen of exploding charts and graphics, a headset microphone curled around his ear, a scientific evangelist with brown curls and a bright, boyish face. Daisy Theory is under attack, he warns, from all sides.
    Planets, hearts, even the parts of our brains responsible