Read The Biology of Luck for Free Online

Unshaved legs are a no-go in yuppiedom.
    Starshine removes her bicycle lock from around her waist, loops the chain twice beneath the basket, and secures her Higgins to a lamppost, then saunters up Atlantic Avenue and through the heavy glass doors of the Unicorn. The twenty-four-hour breakfast nook is its own small universe of paper placemats, table jukeboxes, pseudo-nautical décor. Kodachrome desserts rotate in glass cases; lobsters struggle for elbowroom in the undersized tank. She waits for Colby in the lobby, as she always does, between the pay telephone and the cigarette machine. The stiff-backed Greek maître d’ examines her with suspicion. His eyes accuse her of shoplifting acclimatized air, of planning to dine and flee. Precisely ten minutes pass before Colby arrives with the paper cone in one hand and a long-stemmed red rose in the other. He offers her both. Starshine swallows her displeasure.
    â€œI couldn’t resist,” says Colby. “It was the last one in the bucket and it had your name written all over it. You’re not mad, are you?”
    â€œIt’s fine, just fine,” lies Starshine. “It must have been suffering there, all alone. Poor, poor flower. But this is the last time, Colby. Got it?”
    â€œI swear.”
    It won’t be the last time, of course, only a prelude to a momentary respite, but Starshine is powerless to resist a gift unless she determinesto spurn the giver. And she is not prepared to do that. Not yet. Early on, she made the mistake of telling Colby that she hated flowers, that as far as she was concerned a cactus was as romantic as a rose, but the poor lightweight took the warning too much to heart and now her apartment rivals the hot house at the botanical gardens. Colby Parker cannot be anything other than Colby Parker. He is indefatigable.
    The maître d’ leads them to a corner table. Starshine notices that they are the youngest couple in the room, if they are indeed a couple, that they are surrounded on all sides by clusters of gaggling women in their sixties and ancient, bow-tied men lapping oatmeal in solitude. The men all share the same hangdog look; the women exude hunger and desire. Maybe Colby has chosen the Unicorn for a reason, Starshine muses, maybe he is subliminally exposing her to wedlock’s cruel alternatives. But her lover is not that clever. Nor would the plan work. One look at the elderly couples eating in silence along the far wall, reflected and rereflected infinitely by the mirrors at either end of the row of booths, reminds Starshine of the Matrushka dolls which Eucalyptus collects in the knickknack cabinet beside her bed: Yes, marriage is like a series of opposing reflections, inverse images getting ever smaller like nesting dolls, each one of you trying to squeeze yourself smaller to fit inside the hopes of the other, until one of you cracks or stops existing. Starshine would prefer to die a spinster.
    â€œSo have you thought things over?” asks Colby.
    â€œNot
that
again.”
    â€œI’m not putting pressure on you. I’m only asking.”
    â€œCan we talk about something else?”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œLike anything. Like the poetry of Walt Whitman.”
    â€œWhat about the poetry of Walt Whitman?”
    â€œNothing in particular,” says Starshine. “Never mind.”
    Colby reaches into his breast pocket and produces two longs slips of heavy paper. “So I took the liberty of getting us plane tickets,” he says tentatively. “Tuscany in August. No pressure, just something to think about.”
    â€œI can’t go,” says Starshine. “It’s very sweet of you, but I just can’t. Maybe eventually. Maybe after the summer when things settle down.”
    These proposals are the most trying part of Colby’s game, Starshine finds, the surreal aspect of their regularly scheduled Wednesday breakfasts. He hopes to plan her into monogamy, clutter