All the Time in the World by E. L. Doctorow Read Free Book Online

repertoire of this crew of artistes. Somehow they came up with shears and a straight razor and several of the staff gathered around to agree on a strategy. I didn’t want to see. I lay back in the chair and prepared to have my throat cut. I didn’t care. I was disappointed in myself and how easily I was acclimating to the old life. It was as if I had never left.
    Finally, I was sat up to see the result, and it was me, all right, looking pale and somewhat skinnier, the eyes perhaps too importunate, a new loose fold of flesh under the chin, Howard Wakefield redux, a man of the system.
    That was enough for one day.
    That night, in my unaccustomed togs, I slipped around to the house to see if anything special was going on. Another visitor, perhaps, a justice of the peace to accompany Dirk Morrison? But all was quiet. No strange cars in the driveway, and my wife at her dressing table, not quite naked in her negligible concession to winter. She had something on the stereo, her favorite composer, Schubert, whom she had touted to me when we were dating. It was one of the Impromptus, played by Dinu Lipatti, and it brought back the old days, before such music was no longer ours. I felt as if an artery had been opened, and ran back to my attic.
    The next morning, the garage doors opened beneath me and I watched as Diana, with the girls in tow, backed the SUV down the driveway. Of course. Christmas shopping. They would head for the mall. They would lunch there as well. I waited a few minutes, took out my car keys, went downstairs, and turned on the engine of my BMW. It started right up.
    I had heard about Dirk over the years that he had made himself a fortune. And why not, as he was a hedge-fund manager who was quoted on the business pages.
    Remarkable how I still knew how to drive, and how I remembered all the shortcuts to the highway to New York. An hour later, the city rose up before my eyes, and in a moment, it seemed, I was in it, in all the noisy raucous chaos of souls flowing through the city’s canyons, each of them with an imperial intention. They were underground, too, rumbling along in the subways. They were stacked above my head, too, forty, fifty stories of them. It was stunning. I was in shock and barely able to negotiate the entrance to a garage.
    Had I actually worked in this city most of my adult life? Would I have to again?
    My Madison Avenue haberdashery was still where it had always been and my man was there standing in the suit department as if he’d been waiting for me. I had had myself barbered and had clothed myself in a reasonably presentable outfit at the Goodwill before coming here, just so that I could get through the door. He looked at me and shook his head. He beckoned. Come with me, he said.
    And that is how that evening, after parking the BMW in front of the next house, and taking the trouble to reclaim my litigation bag from the attic, I stood at my front door in my black cashmere coat and pin-striped suit with a Turnbull & Asser spread-collar shirt and a sober Armani silk tie, American-flag suspenders, and Cole Haan black English calfskin shoes, and I turned the key in the lock.
    Every light in the house was on. I could hear them in the dining room; they were decorating the Christmas tree.
    Hello? I shouted. I’m home!



W HAT KIND OF CAR WAS IT?
    I don’t know. An old car. What difference does it make?
    A man sits in his car three days running in front of the house, you should be able to describe it.
    An American car.
    There you go.
    A squarish car with a long hood. Long and floaty-looking.
    A Ford?
    Maybe.
    Well, definitely not a Cadillac.
    No. It looked tinny. An old car. Faded red. There were big round rust spots on the fender and the door. And it was filled with his things. It looked like everything he owned was in there with him.
    Well, what do you want me to do? You want me to stay home from work?
    No. It’s nothing.
    If it’s nothing, why did you bring it up?
    I shouldn’t have.
    Did he