Cardinal Numbers: Stories by Hob Broun Read Free Book Online Page A

the lack of a routine to meet the situation. He tries crossword puzzles, a hot bath. The muscle strips along his spine are cramping and he cannot distract himself. “Scared” is the wrong word, but he wishes the phone would ring.
    HE signs in, and the guard, without shifting his eyes from Muhammad Speaks, runs him up in the cage. There are brass fixtures in the Starrett Building someone still takes time to polish. Riley believes in the marble, that it isn’t something else finished to look like marble. He goes up two flights, down the long shadow of a hall, turning, as if on a dance floor, to face each frosted pane, bowing. Mail Exchange. School of Fashion. Loan Broker. Patent Attorney. To punch out the glass to see what’s inside. So Riley feels his curiosity engaged and does not like it.
    He keys both locks of the Gravity office, waters the plant, feeds Mrs. Vega’s angelfish, makes soup from a packet. It is still dark outside, untinged. He goes to the farthest room back, sits under bright lights, against bundles of Air Disaster!, a “Collector’s Item” on coated paper, and blows ripples in the soup.
    Breathless and overgroomed, Moretti arrives at eight-thirty, takes a few minutes to be surprised.
    “You’re not supposed to be in. And where’s that bike?”
    His face is at once pallid and aggressive; he might be wearing Kabuki makeup. “You’re the cog, Riley, so we keep turning. Stand still in this business, you know …”
    Moretti has been in sportswear, outdoor advertising, an adult motel. Now finally, with the magazines, he is making a go. Perhaps this does not agree with him.
    Lina is so tiny she has to buy schoolgirl sizes, like this sappy pleated skirt. But she is so grave in it. Lina sits on the edge of her desk, where Riley has been typing since dawn.
    “Early,” she says.
    Riley looks down. Her feet barely reach the handle of the middle drawer. She is wearing Mary Janes.
    “I needed some extra time for thinking.”
    Lina smiles, touches his first page of copy, “Nebraska’s Pantyhose Strangler,” smiles, nods.
    A LITTLE after ten, Riley collapses onto the sofa Wendell brought up from the street and crammed into his office. Hopeful Wendell. He is on the phone trying to land a major for OTL. They are coming out with a line of feminine towelettes. And neuroelectric fatigue twitches for Riley, fragments of “Gay Bikers’ Homicide Cookout” that he hasn’t written yet, and stickpin revival (Wendell’s bulging Park Row vests) without the scars from molten lead for type, and seeing Angelina, old and dried under her full name, blinking through Catanzaro street dust, sucking Fanta orange from a cup. This is Riley’s quality of mind when working, elaborative; and true, he controls in part, moving here to there like a photo stylist. But distance is lost, his removes collapsed and overrun. Awful, this layered weight on him, like something made up and come round, revenge of his written victims giving back what he’d stuck them with. He turns away from clatter, Wendell’s tricked face, into the cushions. “Scared” is now the word, even as he falls asleep.
    Riley arrives at his decision prismatically, that is to say by a kind of bending. Bicycling to Connecticut to see her is not a sound idea. But once he has formed it, he must complete it, in order to avoid in the future looking back on the torpor and cowardice of a failure to carry through. Regret—no, thank you. Regret is why people read what he writes.
    Things to take: map, tools, food and drink, fresh shirt. But Riley just carries his bike downstairs and begins. Excellent. This is the spontaneous thing to do. Pedaling steadily through the night, he should arrive Saturday morning, not so early and not so late. Perfect.
    She will have to let him stay, out of respect for the gesture. He will be cool and mysterious, only hint at his pain. Perhaps she will have a few admissions to make. There will be daffodils. Kneeling to cut some, she will turn