Free The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion Page B

“You’d have sex—”
    Rosie explained that she was making a joke. On such a serious matter! It was getting busy around the bar, and there were a lot of cough signals happening. An effective way to spread disease. Rosie wrote a telephone number on a piece of paper.
    “Call me.”

ten
    The next morning, I returned with some relief to the routine that had been so severely disrupted over the preceding two days. My Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday runs to the market are a feature of my schedule, combining exercise, meal-ingredients purchase, and an opportunity for reflection. I was in great need of the last of these.
    A woman had given me her phone number and told me to call her. More than the Jacket Incident, the Balcony Meal, and even the excitement of the potential Father Project, this had disrupted my world. I knew that it happened regularly: people in books, films, and TV shows do exactly what Rosie had done. But it had never happened to me. No woman had ever casually, unthinkingly, automatically, written down her phone number, given it to me, and said, “Call me.” I had temporarily been included in a culture that I considered closed to me. Although it was entirely logical thatRosie should provide me with a means of contacting her, I had an irrational feeling that, when I called, Rosie would realize that she had made some kind of error.
    I arrived at the market and commenced purchasing. Because each day’s ingredients are standard, I know which stalls to visit, and the vendors generally have my items prepackaged in advance. I need only pay. The vendors know me well and are consistently friendly.
    However, it is not possible to time-share major intellectual activity with the purchasing process, owing to the quantity of human and inanimate obstacles: vegetable pieces on the ground, old ladies with shopping carts, vendors still setting up stalls, Asian women comparing prices, goods being delivered, and tourists taking photos of each other in front of the produce. Fortunately I am usually the only jogger.
    On the way home, I resumed my analysis of the Rosie situation. I realized that my actions had been driven more by instinct than logic. There were plenty of people in need of help, many in more distress than Rosie, and numerous worthy scientific projects that would represent better use of my time than a quest to find one individual’s father. And of course, I should be giving priority to the Wife Project. Better to push Gene to select more suitable women from the list, or to relax some of the less important selection criteria, as I had already done with the no-drinking rule.
    The logical decision was to contact Rosie and explain that the Father Project was not a good idea. I phoned at 6:43 a.m. on returning from the run and left a message for her to call back. When I hung up, I was sweating despite the fact that the morning was still cool. I hoped I wasn’t developing a fever.
    Rosie called back while I was delivering a lecture. Normally, I turn my phone off at such times, but I was anxious to put thisproblem to bed. I was feeling stressed at the prospect of an interaction in which it was necessary for me to retract an offer. Speaking on the phone in front of a lecture theater full of students was awkward, especially as I was wearing a lapel microphone.
    They could hear my side of the conversation.
    “Hi, Rosie.”
    “Don, I just want to say thanks for doing this thing for me. I didn’t realize how much it had been eating me up. Do you know that little coffee shop across from the Commerce Building—Barista’s? How about two o’clock tomorrow?”
    Now that Rosie had accepted my offer of help, it would have been immoral, and technically a breach of contract, to withdraw it.
    “Barista’s, two p.m. tomorrow,” I confirmed, though I was temporarily unable to access the schedule in my brain because of overload.
    “You’re a star,” she said.
    Her tone indicated that this was the end of her contribution to the