Falling Man by Don DeLillo Read Free Book Online Page B

they were sharing. Or she knew but could not name the overlapping emotions. It was what there was between them, meaning every minute together and apart, what they’d known and felt and what would come next, in the minutes, days and years.
    Martin stood before the paintings.
    “I’m looking at these objects, kitchen objects but removed from the kitchen, free of the kitchen, the house, everything practical and functioning. And I must be back in another time zone. I must be even more disoriented than usual after a long flight,” he said, pausing. “Because I keep seeing the towers in this still life.”
    Lianne joined him at the wall. The painting in question showed seven or eight objects, the taller ones set against a brushy slate background. The other items were huddled boxes and biscuit tins, grouped before a darker background. The full array, in unfixed perspective and mostly muted colors, carried an odd spare power.
    They looked together.
    Two of the taller items were dark and somber, with smoky marks and smudges, and one of them was partly concealed by a long-necked bottle. The bottle was a bottle, white. The two dark objects, too obscure to name, were the things that Martin was referring to.
    “What do you see?” he said.
    She saw what he saw. She saw the towers.

5
     
    He entered the park at the Engineers’ Gate, where runners stretched and bent before going out on the track. The day was warm and still and he walked along the road that ran parallel to the bridle path. There was somewhere to go but he was in no hurry to get there. He watched an elderly woman on a bench who was thinking distantly of something, holding a pale green apple pressed to her cheek. The road was closed to traffic and he thought you come to the park to see people, the ones who are shadows in the street. There were runners up to the left, on the track around the reservoir, and others on the bridle path just above him and still more runners on the roadway, men with handweights, running, and women running behind baby strollers, pushing babies, and runners with dogs on leashes. You come to the park to see dogs, he thought.
    The road bent west and three girls wearing headsets went rollerblading past. The ordinariness, so normally unnoticeable, fell upon him oddly, with almost dreamlike effect. He was carrying the briefcase and wanted to turn back. He crossed up the slope and walked past the tennis courts. There were three horses hitched to the fence, police helmets clipped to their saddlebags. A woman ran past, talking to someone, miserably, on her cell phone, and he wanted to toss the briefcase in the reservoir and go back home.
    She lived in a building just off Amsterdam Avenue and he climbed the six flights to her apartment. She seemed tentative, letting him in, even, strangely, a little wary, and he started to explain, as he had on the telephone the day before, that he hadn’t meant to delay returning the briefcase. She was saying something about the credit cards in the wallet, that she hadn’t canceled them because, well, everything was gone, she thought everything was buried, it was lost and gone, and they stopped talking and then started again, simultaneously, until she made a small gesture of futility. He left the briefcase on a chair by the door and went over to the sofa, saying he could not stay very long.
    She was a light-skinned black woman, his age or close, and gentle-seeming, and on the heavy side.
    He said, “When I found your name in the briefcase, after I found your name and checked the phone directory and saw you were listed and I’m actually dialing the number, that’s when it occurred to me.”
    “I know what you’re going to say.”
    “I thought why am I doing this without checking further because is this person even alive?”
    There was a pause and he realized how softly she’d spoken inside his jumpy commentary.
    “I have some herbal tea,” she said. “Sparkling water if you like.”
    “Sparkling water.