When Gideon was unable to locate anything missing, he sat down and wrote a list of all the possessions he could remember, down to an underwear count. Then he went through the room again, checking off each item on the list. In the end, he came down to only one thing that wasn’t in its place: a plastic bag containing his clean socks.
The idea was so ludicrous that Gideon wouldn’t accept it at first. He knew that his memory for everyday things was poor. Nora had often laughed with him about his being an absent-minded professor, though he always protested that his mind wasn’t absent but elsewhere, pondering weightier things. Once they had searched for fifteen minutes for a watch that was on his wrist, another time for a wallet that was already in his pocket. But the socks were not to be found, though he went so far as to go down to the car to search for them. When he came back up and stood looking stupidly at the alcove shelf for the fifth time, he suddenly remembered positively how he’d stood right there that morning and taken a green pair of socks from the bag, then changed his mind and taken a brown pair, and finally tossed the bag back on the shelf.
There wasn’t any doubt about it. Someone had waited until he went to class that evening, furtively let himself into his room, searched it—and made off with two pairs of blue socks and one of green. Plus the plastic Safeway produce bag that held them.
The man didn’t change his position. He remained slouched in the hard plastic chair, his hollow chest depressed and his long, skinny legs crossed at the knees and then entwined again at the ankles, the way women could sit—or men with long, skinny legs. His trousers, rucked up by the convolutions of his legs, revealed unattractive lengths of hairless white calf above beige anklets. His eyebrows were the only things that moved. They went up. His eyes remained on the sports page in front of him.
“They took
“I know,” Gideon said, “it’s ridiculous. I feel stupid saying it, but that
It was so absurd that he had almost decided not to bother NSD with it. At eight o’clock that morning, however, he had gone to the Education Office to call USOC—the time was the same in Sicily and Heidelberg—and leave a message about an incomplete roster. Then, feeling both exhilarated and silly, he had had a big breakfast of corned beef hash and eggs at the Officers’ Club.
By the time he had returned to the BOQ, there was an old, much-used transmittal envelope waiting for him at the desk. The last entry on it before “Oliver, BOQ” was “Mailroom.” He had taken it up to his room in some excitement and had been a little disappointed to find it wasn’t sealed, but was simply closed by means of a string wrapped around two dog-eared cardboard discs.
Inside had been a white sheet of letter paper with a navy letterhead, the kind one could buy in the PX for personal correspondence. Typed neatly in the center of the page had been “Laundromat, 9:30 A.M. Re rosters.”
He had arrived at exactly 9:30 with a small load of shirts and underwear for “cover,” put them into a washing machine, and sat down to wait, choosing a part of the laundromat that was uncrowded. A few minutes later, the gaunt man with the long-nosed, deeply lined cowboy’s face had come in, also with a little bundle of wash. When he had set the washing machine going, he sat down near Gideon, lit a cigarette, picked up an old copy of
“Roster trouble?”
He had not said any more until Gideon had come to the socks. Now he said slowly, “I don’t know whether you’re just stupid or you’re trying to be funny, but let me tell you something. You’re fooling around with the big leagues. Don’t play games with us.”
“Let me tell
“Voice down,” the man said. He casually turned a page.
Gideon whispered. “I don’t know what’s going on—”
“Don’t whisper. Just talk quietly.”
Gideon opened and then closed his mouth. He didn’t really have any reason to be annoyed with this man. “Look, I was asked to tell you people about anything unusual. Getting your socks stolen may be an everyday thing for you, but it’s pretty unusual for me. So I told you. Now, is that it?”
“Are you positive they didn’t take anything else? Did they maybe plant anything? A bug?”
“Why would they do that?” Actually, the thought had occurred to him earlier in the morning, and he had searched for one. Not knowing what one looked like made it difficult, but he had assumed it would be a button-sized gadget stuck on the bottom of a bureau drawer, or under a window sill, or behind a cabinet. He hadn’t found anything.
“You never know,” the man said. “Feel around for one under things when you go back.”
“I already did. Nothing.”
The man uncoiled his knotted legs, got his laundry—two white towels with gray stenciled letters on them—and came back to Gideon. “I like to air-dry these. Makes them smell nicer. I think your laundry’s done. Have a nice day.” He wished another nice day to a fat, sleepy woman near the door and walked out with a loose-legged gait that Gideon had once heard called a shit-kicker’s walk.
THE SEMINAR HAD GONE well. On Friday evening Mary Fabriano, one of the students, gave an end-of-class cocktail party at her apartment in Catania. Gideon was forced to accept, inasmuch as he was more or less the guest of honor. As it was, he had a good time. Mary, a young nurse with wildly provocative buttocks, went out of her way to make it clear that she found him attractive and that she was unengaged for the rest of the night. He flirted with her for a while, enjoying himself. As usual, however, when it came down to brass tacks he retreated, as he had been doing since Nora’s death.
He left the party at eleven o’clock, depressed and angry with himself and the world. He had wanted to go to
