After Dachau by Daniel Quinn Read Free Book Online Page A

lives?”
    By this time , the hospital’s personnel no longer bothered to be amazed at the things Mallory didn’t know about herself. We asked for a map and driving instructions, and they provided them. When we got into the car I’d driven up from Manhattan, Mallory sank into the passenger seat, pulled her coat collar up around her face, and let me drive, looking neither right nor left as we traveled to a prim little gated community north of the city, where she owned a prim little condominium. Using the keys from her purse, I let us in and turned on the lights in the gathering twilight. Mallory followed me into the living room, glanced around, and shuddered like a prisoner being led into the cell where she’d be spending the rest of her life.
    It was in fact an appalling place, decorated in a style of meaningless perfection, as if everything had been orderedfrom a catalog of unobjectionable furnishings, neither too dowdy nor too elegant—a vase of a certain size here, a picture of a certain type there, all as indicated in the accompanying diagram.
    “I can’t stand it,” Mallory said.
    “You don’t have to. You can throw it all out and start over.”
    Predictably, she shook her head.
    “You should check your telephone messages,” I told her.
    “How do I do that?”
    I showed her, and we learned that Mallory Hastings had a wide circle of nice-sounding friends, who left nice messages wishing her a speedy recovery. We also learned she had an ex-boyfriend, Phil, who couldn’t understand why his calls were being ignored but who eventually got tired of asking. There seemed to be no point in worrying about any of them.
    “You should probably let your mother know that you’re home, however,” I said.
    “She’s
not
my mother.”
    So we hadn’t made any progress on that score.
    “I don’t want to stay here,” she said. She still hadn’t taken off her coat, hadn’t sat down.
    “Don’t be childish,” I told her, not meanly, just letting her know I didn’t plan to pamper her forever.
    She looked around once more and said, “Help me get rid of at least some of this crap.”
    We stripped the place of everything that would move, then went on a shopping spree to replace it.
    No question about it—Gloria’s tastes were not Mallory’s. She wanted nothing that was handsome, nothing that hinted of refinement. No one was to mistake her for a genteelyoung lady with conventional good taste. She bought quickly, almost randomly, explaining that she’d find things she liked better later, and when we got it home, she wouldn’t rest till it was all in place.
    The effect was different (and in its way no less appalling), but she declared she could live with it for the time being.
    It was nine o’clock, and I was hungry, as I supposed she was. I told her we could probably find a restaurant that was still serving, but she said she was tired, and that was that. As a concession, she offered me whatever I could find to eat in the fridge and the use of her sofa. I told her I was booked into a hotel downtown. It was far from grand, but, to be honest, I was looking forward to it. I needed a rest from the reincarnated Gloria MacArthur.

I WOKE the next morning with the sudden, clear presentiment that I was taking on far too much with this woman. Now that I had a foot in the door, I needed to get her reconnected with her family, otherwise I was in danger of ending up as a sort of unofficial guardian, or something worse (though I wasn’t sure what that might be).
    I had visions of my arriving at her condominium to find her gone, God knows where, and it would all be my fault. I’d be accused of murder, kidnapping, or running a white slavery ring. In fact, she wasn’t gone when I arrived, but the actuality wasn’t a whole lot better than the fantasy. Before she even had the door all the way open, she was screaming at me.
    “I can’t stand this, I’ve got to get out of here!”
    “Have you had anything to eat?”
    “I’m not