Jack (Gilead #4)(35)

He had said, “It pays to be careful.” Then he said, “I’ve been reading some poetry lately.” This was actually true. He went to the library most days. There was usually no one in the poetry sec tion, so he could sit there till the place closed, trying to imagine what to do with himself now that all the world lay before him, so to speak. A kindly old librarian noticed him, always with a book open in front of him, of course. She brought him cookies on a napkin with a fraying embroidered flower on it and said, “You’ll be sure to wipe your fingers,” which he did, and he put the napkin on the front desk as he left. Then one time she set a copy of Paterson on the table in front of him, smiled to recommend it, and vanished, a little arthritically, into the stacks. He seemed to bring out the angelic in old ladies. And it was a very great book! It made it seem a profound thing to sit on a bench watching the river, the ships, the gulls, which was another way he had of killing time. He loved that book, and out of respect for that lady did not steal it, only put it behind shelved books where no one else would find it. He had said, “Have you read Paterson? W. C. Williams?” An actual question, since he wanted her to have read it. “No. I’ve heard of it. My tastes are pretty traditional.”

“You have to read it. You’ll see what I mean.” He had said, “When I’m down by the river—that bridge seems like some huge ancient thing that has just leapt out of the earth, all mass and clay and fossils, on its way somewhere—everything seems like a metaphor, you don’t need to know for what. After you read that book.”

She was laughing at him, her eyes shining. “I’ll get me a copy tomorrow, promise. And you have to read W. H. Auden.”

“He’s on my list!” It was a kind of pact! They laughed, and then they were quiet, and then he had said, “I should be going, now that the rain has eased up.” It hadn’t. “There’s never time enough, in my line of work. Thanks for the tea and the shelter, Miss—”

“Della Miles.”

She offered her hand and he took it.

“And I am John Ames Boughton,” a version of himself which only felt like a lie, called up by the tea and the china, and a certain exuberance at the fact that the afternoon had gone well enough. He had thought of forgetting the umbrella as a pretext for stopping by again, but she handed it to him. He would have to think of another ruse before he got rid of that suit.





* * *





He knew better. He would not be leaving books on her step with notes in them, brief but very clever, that would make her think of him for a minute or two every now and then. On one hand, if he did, it would give him a pleasant thing to be thinking about, working out the little messages in his mind, for weeks perhaps, and finding the right books to steal. On the other hand, people do that sort of thing when they imagine something might come of it. She couldn’t be seen walking down the street with him without damage to her reputation, a risk a teacher can’t take. The same would not be true for him, since he hardly had a reputation, properly so called. His old compulsion to do damage as chance offered had seen to that. If anything remained to him that might be called a good name, walking down a street with her would put an end to it. He felt the warm chill of impulse, actually frightened himself a little with the thought that he could do harm so easily, so innocently, really, except in the fact that he knew how grave and final the harm would be to her. A shudder of guilt passed through him, stirring other guilt, of course. There he was on a park bench in the morning sun, among the squawk and gabble and the church bells, to his inner eye naked as Adam to his own scrutiny. Stay away from her, fool. That’s simple enough.

So the next day he went to the store, or whatever it was, where he had bought the dark suit, a room with harsh window light and festoons of flypaper and tables heaped with discards, and traded it, with his hat and umbrella, for another hat and a double-breasted brown tweed suit with the impersonal smell of cigarette smoke already infused in it and a small stain on the left lapel. He changed in a back room and emerged more or less himself. It was a relief to put all his pretensions down on the counter. The trade was not to his advantage, except in the sense that he had hoped to find something cheap and a little raffish. Fair warning, he thought. And he was somehow relieved that he was no longer wearing a black suit with brown shoes. The man at the counter said, “I always have things that would fit you here. The widows bring them in.” Very funny.

He would not let his mood be dampened. He bought a newspaper and a pack of cigarettes at a dark little shop crowded with pipe racks and souvenir humidors and ashtrays and cans of tobacco and cigars that smelled something like tar and licorice. Somewhere in it all was a radio blaring a baseball game. The little man at the cash register watched him intently, as if theft were a card trick and he was going to catch him at it this time. The effect of the suit, he thought, since he was pretty sure he’d never been in that particular shop before. He startled the fellow with a dollar bill, slipped the change in his pocket, and went out to the street. The baseball game was close—it was the eighth inning—so he leaned against the wall in the sun to listen and folded the paper to the crossword puzzle. He pushed his hat back on his head, hung a smoke from his lip, and worked the puzzle, thinking that if anyone noticed him, he would seem to be playing the horses. Clothes do make the man.

He glanced up because he was thinking—six letters, the second one d—and there was Della. Flinch. That look in her eyes—surprise, realization, maybe rebuke. She was with another young woman. It seemed to him she paused for some part of a second, long enough that the other woman glanced at him, a little mystified at the almost nothing that had passed between them. And then they went on, arm in arm, heads together, laughing. Not at him or about him, dear Jesus.