idea what she might be thinking, what it was she wanted to know.
“Do it now.”
“Oh,” Brian said, and looked at the phone. “Right.”
Picking up the receiver, he noticed for the first time that some of the phone’s buttons were much dirtier than the others. His hands were always dirty when he was working here, so, of course, those buttons must be dirtier because the number he most often called was his own home, to speak to Edna.
Yes; he tapped out the sequence on the dirtier buttons, and on the second ring Edna answered: “Three seven five two.”
“Edna, it’s me. I gotta stay and work late tonight.”
“Wha’d, you find a tootsie?”
“Sure. We’re going to Miami Beach together.”
“Without your supper? That’ll be the day.”
“Well, that’s the thing. Dr. Hertzberg, you know, he’s gotta go to a wedding tomorrow down in Pennsylvania, he’s got some real coolant problems here in that clunker he drives, I promised I’d have it for him first thing in the morning.”
“I’m doing chicken curry.”
“It’ll reheat.”
“Men. How late are you gonna be?”
“Maybe nine, ten.”
“Why not just trade him a new car?”
“Listen, I’m not gonna argue with Dr. Hertzberg. He wants to go to that wedding.”
She sighed, long and sincere. “And the man’s a saint, I know, I know. I’m not gonna reheat it with you, I’m gonna eat it when it’s ready and tastes like something.”
He knew she wouldn’t, she’d wait for him, and he found himself hoping very hard she wasn’t going to have to wait forever. Just keep going along with the guy, just be grateful the guy was professional enough he didn’t start blasting away the first time he saw an amateur with a gun, and a little later on tonight that chicken curry, reheated or not reheated, would be the most tasty thing he ever ate in his entire life.
“Well,” he said, “I’ll get there just as soon as I can.”
“Say hello to the good doctor for me.”
“Oh, yeah, I will.”
It wasn’t till he hung up that his hands started to tremble, but then they did a real dance. He was inside this sudden airless bowl here, and he’d made contact with the normal world outside the bowl, and it had shaken him much more than he’d guessed.
The hardcase, standing over by the door, said, “That’s good, you did that fine.”
“Thanks.”
“Now I want the laces out of those boots.”
“Sure,” Brian said, knowing what that meant. It meant, unless something brand-new went wrong, he was going to live through this.
What he wore at the garage, because he was surrounded there by large, heavy, dirty things in motion, some of them also sharp, was steel-cap-reinforced boots, laced up past the ankle. He bent now to strip the laces out of the boots, and the hardcase said, “You got a Closed sign?”
“Over there, tucked in behind that file cabinet.”
He went on stripping out the laces, and then the hardcase said, “You use this sign?”
“Every night.”
“It says ‘Closed’ on one side, ‘Open’ on the other. How come you don’t use the Open side?”
“People know if I’m here.” The truth was, and Brian knew it, he didn’t use the Open side because he thought it sounded like an invitation for a whole lot of people to come in and chat and fill up his day; who needed it?
The hardcase said, “Where do you put it? Window or door?”
“It goes in the bottom right corner of the window. It slips in a space between the glass and the wood there. Here’s the laces.”
“Put them on the desk. Suzanne, get up. Slow! Come over here, pick up one of those laces. Brian, put your hands behind your back. Suzanne, tie his wrists together and then tie them to the metal crossbar on the chair. Go ahead.”
“I don’t know why you’re doing—”
“Now.”
Brian felt the rough movements of the shoelace wrapping around his crossed wrists as the hardcase said, “Not so tight the blood stops, but not loose. I’ll check it when you’re done.”
“I was a Girl Scout,” she said. “I know knots.”
It felt to him she was doing it pretty tight. Had he read in a book somewhere where people could defeat being tied up by tensing certain muscles here and there? Well, maybe somebody could.
