Hearts in Atlantis(14)

'Sure.' Bobby thought about Sully and his new ambition to travel around with the circus, wearing a black suit and pulling rabbits out of his hat. 'It's what the magician does to fool you.'

'Doesn't sound very nice when you put it that way, does it?'

Bobby shook his head. No, take away the spangles and the spotlights and it didn't sound very nice at all.

Ted drank a little rootbeer and wiped foam from his upper lip. 'Your mother, Bobby. She doesn't quite dislike me, I don't think it would be fair to say that . . . but I think she almost dislikes me. Do you agree?'

'I guess. When I told her you might have a job for me, she got weird about it. Said I had to tell her about anything you wanted me to do before I could do it.'

Ted Brautigan nodded.

'I think it all comes back to you having some of your stuff in paper bags when you moved in. I know that sounds nuts, but it's all I can figure.'

He thought Ted might laugh, but he only nodded again. 'Perhaps that's all it is. In any case, Bobby, I wouldn't want you to go against your mother's wishes.'

That sounded good but Bobby Garfield didn't entirely believe it. If it was really true, there'd be no need for misdirection.

'Tell your mother that my eyes now grow tired quite easily. It's the truth.' As if to prove it, Ted raised his right hand to his eyes and massaged the corners with his thumb and forefinger. 'Tell her I'd like to hire you to read bits of the newspaper to me each day, and for this I will pay you a dollar a week - what your friend Sully calls a rock?'

Bobby nodded . . . but a buck a week for reading about how Kennedy was doing in the primaries and whether or not Floyd Patterson would win in June? With maybe Blondie and Dick Tracy thrown in for good measure? His mom or Mr Biderman down at Home Town Real Estate might believe that, but Bobby didn't.

Ted was still rubbing his eyes, his hand hovering over his narrow nose like a spider.

'What else?' Bobby asked. His voice came out sounding strangely flat, like his mom's voice when he'd promised to pick up his room and she came in at the end of the day to find the job still undone. 'What's the real job?'

'I want you to keep your eyes open, that's all,' Ted said.

'For what?'

'Low men in yellow coats.' Ted's fingers were still working the corners of his eyes. Bobby wished he'd stop; there was something creepy about it. Did he feel something behind them, was that why he kept rubbing and kneading that way? Something that broke his attention, interfered with his normally sane and well-ordered way of thinking?

'Lo mein?' It was what his mother ordered on the occasions when they went out to Sing Lu's on Barnum Avenue. Lo mein in yellow coats made no sense, but it was all he could think of.

Ted laughed, a sunny, genuine laugh that made Bobby aware of just how uneasy he'd been.

'Low men,' Ted said. 'I use "low" in the Dickensian sense, meaning fellows who look rather stupid . . . and rather dangerous as well. The sort of men who'd shoot craps in an alley, let's say, and pass around a bottle of liquor in a paper bag during the game. The sort who lean against telephone poles and whistle at women walking by on the other side of the street while they mop the backs of their necks with handkerchiefs that are never quite clean. Men who think hats with feathers in the brims are sophisticated. Men who look like they know all the right answers to all of life's stupid questions. I'm not being terribly clear, am I? Is any of this getting through to you, is any of it ringing a bell?'

Yeah, it was. In a way it was like hearing time described as the old bald cheater: a sense that the word or phrase was exactly right even though you couldn't say just why. It reminded him of how Mr Biderman always looked unshaven even when you could still smell sweet aftershave drying on his cheeks, the way you somehow knew Mr Biderman would pick his nose when he was alone in his car or check the coin return of any pay telephone he walked past without even thinking about it.

'I get you,' he said.

'Good. I'd never in a hundred lifetimes ask you to speak to such men, or even approach them. But I would ask you to keep an eye out, make a circuit of the block once a day - Broad Street, Commonwealth Street, Colony Street, Asher Avenue, then back here to 149 - and just see what you see.'

It was starting to fit together in Bobby's mind. On his birthday - which had also been Ted's first day at 149 - Ted had asked him if he knew everyone on the street, if he would recognize

(sojourners faces of those unknown)

strangers, if any strangers showed up. Not three weeks later Carol Gerber had made her comment about wondering sometimes if Ted was on the run from something.

'How many guys are there?' he asked.

'Three, five, perhaps more by now.' Ted shrugged. 'You'll know them by their long yellow coats and olive skin . . . although that darkish skin is just a disguise.'

'What . . . you mean like Man-Tan, or something?'

'I suppose, yes. If they're driving, you'll know them by their cars.'

'What makes? What models?' Bobby felt like Barren McGavin on Mike Hammer and warned himself not to get carried away. This wasn't TV. Still, it was exciting.

Ted was shaking his head. 'I have no idea. But you'll know just the same, because their cars will be like their yellow coats and sharp shoes and the greasy perfumed stuff they use to slick back their hair: loud and vulgar.'