headin’ out till the fireworks are over.”
“Driving,” said David.
It began by itself. No, he thought;
“—tising business,” Coulter finished.
“What?” he asked.
“Said I trust things are goin’ well in the advertising business.”
David cleared his throat.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Fine.” He always forgot about the lie he’d told Coulter.
When the train arrived he sat in the No Smoking car, knowing that Coulter always smoked a cigar en route. He didn’t want to sit with Coulter. Not now.
All the way to the city he sat looking out the window. Mostly he watched road and highway traffic; but, once, while the train rattled over a bridge, he stared down at the mirror like surface of a lake. Once he put his head back and looked up at the sun.
He was actually to the elevator when he stopped.
“Up?” said the man in the maroon uniform. He looked at David steadily. “Up?” he said. Then he closed the rolling doors.
David stood motionless. People began to cluster around him. In a moment, he turned and shouldered by them, pushing through the revolving door. As he came out, the oven heat of July surrounded him. He moved along the sidewalk like a man asleep. On the next block he entered a bar.
Inside, it was cold and dim. There were no customers. Not even the bartender was visible. David sank down in the shadow of a booth and took his hat off. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
He couldn’t do it. He simply could not go up to his office. No matter what Jean said, no matter what anyone said. He clasped his hands on the table edge and squeezed them until the ringers were pressed dry of blood. He just
“Help you?” asked a voice.
David opened his eyes. The bartender was standing by the booth, looking down at him.
“Yes, uh… beer,” he said. He hated beer but he knew he had to buy something for the privilege of sitting in the chilly silence undisturbed. He wouldn’t drink it.
The bartender brought the beer and David paid for it. Then, when the bartender had gone, he began to turn the glass slowly on the table top. While he was doing this it began again. With a gasp, he pushed it away. No!, he told it, savagely.
In a while he got up and left the bar. It was past ten. That didn’t matter of course. They knew he was always late. They knew he always tried to break away from it and never could.
His office was at the back of the suite, a small cubicle furnished only with a rug, sofa, and a small desk on which lay pencils and white paper. It was all he needed. Once, he’d had a secretary but he hadn’t liked the idea of her sitting outside the door and listening to him scream.
No one saw him enter. He let himself in from the hall through a private door. Inside, he relocked the door, then took off his suit coat and laid it across the desk. It was stuffy in the office so he walked across the floor and pulled up the window.
Far below, the city moved. He stood watching it. How many of them? he thought.
Sighing heavily, he turned. Well, he was here. There was no point in hesitating any longer. He was committed now. The best thing was to get it over and clear out.
He drew the blinds, walked over to the couch and lay down. He fussed a little with the pillow, then stretched once and was still. Almost immediately, he felt his limbs going numb.
It began.
He did not stop it now. It trickled on his brain like melted ice. It rushed like winter wind. It spun like blizzard vapor. It leaped and ran and billowed and exploded and his mind was filled with it. He grew rigid and began to gasp, his chest twitching with breath, the beating of his heart a violent stagger. His hands drew in like white talons, clutching and scratching at the couch. He shivered and groaned and writhed. Finally he screamed. He screamed for a very long while.
When it was done, he lay limp and motionless on the couch, his eyes like balls of frozen glass. When he could, he raised his arm and looked at his wristwatch. It was almost two.
He struggled to his feet. His bones felt sheathed with lead but he managed to stumble to his desk and sit before it.
There he wrote on a sheet of paper and, when he was finished, slumped across the desk and fell into exhausted sleep.
Later, he woke up and took the sheet of paper to his superior, who, looking it over, nodded.
“Four hundred eighty-six, huh?” the superior said. “You’re sure of that?”
“I’m sure,” said David, quietly. “I watched every one.” He didn’t mention that Coulter and his family were among them.
“All right,” said his superior. “Let’s see now. Four hundred fifty-two from traffic accidents, eighteen from drowning, seven from sun-stroke, three from fireworks, six from miscellaneous causes.”
Such as a little girl being burned to death, David thought. Such as a baby boy eating ant poison. Such as a woman being electrocuted; a man dying of snake bite.
“Well,” his superior said, “let’s make it-oh, four hundred and fifty. It’s always impressive when more people die than we predict.”
“Of course,” David said.
The item was on the front page of all the newspapers that afternoon. While David was riding home the man in front of him turned to his neighbour and said, “What I’d like to know is
David got up and went back on the platform on the end of the car. Until he got off, he stood there listening to the train wheels and thinking about Labor Day.
15 – OLD HAUNTS
Originally he’d intended to spend the one night in town at the Hotel Tiger. But it had occurred to him that maybe his old room was available. It was summer session now and there might not be a student living there. It was certainly worth a try. He could think of nothing more pleasant than sleeping in his old room, in his old bed.
The house was the same. He moved up the cement steps, smiling at their still crumbled edges. Same old steps, he thought, still on the bum. As was the sagging screen door to the porch and the doorbell that had to be pushed in at an angle before connection was made. He shook his head, smiling, and wondered if Miss Smith were still alive.
It wasn’t Miss Smith who answered the bell. His heart sank as, instead of her tottering old form, a husky middle-aged woman came bustling to the door.
“Yes?” she said, her voice a harsh, inhospitable sound.
“Is Miss Smith still here?” he asked, hoping, in spite of everything, that she was.
“No, Miss Ada’s been dead for years.”
It was like a slap on his face. He felt momentarily stunned as he nodded at the woman.
“I see,” he said then. “I see. I used to room here while I was in college, you see, and I thought…”
Miss Smith dead.
“You going to school?” the woman asked.
He didn’t know whether to take it as insult or praise.
“No, no,” he said, “I’m just passing through on my way to Chicago. I graduated many years ago. I wondered if… anyone was living in the old room.”
