— I know, I’ve been keeping my eye on the time here, I thought I’d just walk over about now where I saw him playing with that little girl if it was him, if it really could have been him I saw… He’d put the bottle down on the desk and stooped behind it to pick up his jacket from the floor and shake it, and he dropped it over the back of the chair again.
— I thought you might want to ride back into Manhattan with me, the day’s practically over… and the briefcase came up for papers squared smartly on the desk, — I could wait for you if you…
— No you go ahead, he said without looking up from the pad on the desk before him as though reading something in the heavy shadings of pencil for the first time, tore off the page and crumpled it as he sat down again, — I wanted to try to get a word with Terry later anyhow, don’t want to bother her now but I thought I’d get her aside after we close up shop here, just something I want to clear up… he reached for the blunt pencil and sat back picking it clean with a thumbnail. — That’s her plant over there, she was helping out on the decorating, I thought she might have some ideas for bringing it back to life a little.
— Oh yes, well we’ve given up on them in our offices, all bamboo now, a Japanese miniature bamboo, of course the initial outlay for these plastic varieties runs somewhat high but eventually… the briefcase snapped closed and then paused in its swing toward the door. — I’m just leaving this to be typed out and, Mister Angel if you don’t mind my, if you just got your mind off all this for a little while and did something to, went somewhere and had a good time…
— That’s funny you’d say that right now Coen, you know when I was a boy we were brought up pretty strict, I had a kind of asthma problem that made it kind of rough sometimes. You see we grew apples up there and my brother and I had to work packing crates, and we’d get a chance to read the funnies down there in the papers we used packing apples because funny papers just weren’t allowed in our house. We weren’t real close at all but in a way you look back maybe we were, we used to hunt rabbit together with twenty-twos and I still have that old octagonal barrel Winchester in a closet somewhere. I remember it seemed strange to me then, before he got killed in the war what he always wanted to be was a geologist.
— I, I see yes, well I’ve left those papers there to be typed and as soon as you…
— I’ll get Myrna to knock them right out… he leaned forward, hand searching the button under the desk, and reached the unemptied paper cup. — Anyhow every year in the spring the circus would show up, but with the animals and all the hay they’d have around I never could go to it with that asthma I had, I couldn’t even go near the parade. So the night it would come to town, there was a hill right up outside the town you could look down from and my father would take me up there in the old open Reo we had, and we’d sit up there and watch the whole thing, just the two of us up there. You couldn’t see everything too clear because it wasn’t all that close and the evening was coming on, but you could see the wagons and horses and the elephants and hear the band playing, you’d get a sudden little breeze that was almost warm and bring the music right up with it, and the lights coming on all along the way, I don’t think we hardly talked at all, and you know? he said, chair tilting back and the jacket gone to the floor again. — Maybe those were the best times I ever had…
— Excuse me Mister Angel did, did you buzz? She paused there behind the figure backed to the door, briefcase shifting from hand to hand.
— I think he just wants you to type up that material there Myrna, and send me a copy?
— Sure okay Mister Coen… she came across for the papers neatly squared on the desk. — Is it okay if I type these out front Mister Angel? where we just got coffee…? pausing, for what might have been a permissive shrug under the clinging shirt, before she retreated to the door and down the cement block green where her discrete walk rose and fell to the eyes fixed discreetly upon it as far as a rail of golden oak, flattened there with no intent apparent but to let him pass, pursued with a wave and — Goodbye Mister Coen, come see us again now…
— I just broke a nail.
— I got this Nu-Nail back in my desk but I don’t want to go back in and get it, you know?
— I know, did he say anything?
— I don’t mean that, he just seems sort of far out, you know?
— I know see what I meant? like you have this feeling he’s looking up you only you look up and he’s looking off someplace like he’s not even there.
— I know, anyway I have to type this up before we go, wait for me?
— I want to go to this sale on sweaters maybe, okay? and the emery board took up briskly, — what, you meeting somebody? and the emery board stopped as she looked up with no answer. — I still didn’t get used to your hair black, she said pushing back red, — he still like it?
Paper rolled into the typewriter. — Are you kidding?
— He sounds like a real character… and typewriter and emery board paced time unbroken by looks to the clock where a good portion had fallen away when they stopped, paper pulled from the typewriter carried down the empty hall to the empty office, left on the empty desk.
— He’s not even in there Terry, did you see him go out?
— Maybe he went out by the shop, come on…
— Did you see my comb…? Drawers slammed, coathangers rattled on the rack, they came out arm in arm, down one curb and up another, rounding a corner in step past brick and fieldstone sham, down that curb and — Terry look!
— What’s the…
— Didn’t you see him? The Boss, didn’t you see him up there running? chasing somebody?
— Are you crazy? What would he…
— No I swear it, right around that corner up there… and they moved on again, past fence penning aprons of dead grass and on around that corner up there toward the elevated limb of subway, rummaging in purses as they reached its steps, looking behind them and both ways on the elevated platform waiting pressed against a telescoping loaf of bread surcharged Astoria Gents Suck until the train came. — Don’t look now, he just got in the next car…
— Did he see us?
The seats filled, so did the aisle, feet kicking aside torn newspaper, flattening candy wrappers and they sat closer, faces lowered from that hung over them agape through rimless glasses down into their tops, knees nuzzling theirs confining a briefcase of Gladstone bag design upright on the filthy floor. Lights dimmed, came up, and they roared underground.
— He’s up the other end now, right past that woman with the green, it’s like he’s following us you know?
— Why should he do that, wait, wait I’m getting off here with you and change for the express…
— Don’t look back, is he getting off too…?
Elbows found ribs, heels unprotected ankles, — ay coño… where strange hand cupped briefly strange skirt, — hold the door… and the lady in the green raincoat dug an elbow hard. — Sorry… he got by her to the platform, the flaunt of red hair gone that moment behind a post, newspapers streaming Mata a sus niños, shopping bags and wives’ umbrellas clutched like staves in a relay race with no course and no finish as the scream of steel wheels on steel rails left the teeming concrete shore opposite where suddenly he stared arrested, waved and shouted — Edward…? Bast! Edward…! off balance as the flaunt of red reappeared alone from behind stairs, sheltering to draw breath for the cry — Ed…! smashed on the roar of a train from the other direction leaving Bast halted there on the far platform hit before and behind like an invalid in a hotel fire, looking, one way, the other, finally dropping his shoulders and his eyes to dead rivulets leading toward stairs, up them catching breath at the top against uneaten frankfurters turning with venemous patience on a counter grill, more stairs and the street, where the sole of his shoe took up its flapping cadence windblown past ranked garbage cans capped at merry angles down the hill to a doorway lighted, like the rest, by a bulb so dim he cast no shadow as he entered, pursuing a broken refrain up the stairs and down linoleum worn through by fatigue, pausing to move mail with his foot before fitting the long iron key and lifting the door on the sound of running water.