Man in the Dark by Paul Auster Read Free Book Online

he gives me a ten percent cut on the first night. It’s strictly business, spaceman. If he has a room for you, you don’t owe me a thing.
    It turns out that he does. By the time Brick has swallowed the last of his food (with the aid of yet another gulp of the now-cold tea), Molly has come back from the kitchen to give him the good news. There are three rooms available, she says, two of them for three hundred a night and the third for two hundred. Not knowing how much he can afford, she’s taken it upon herself to book him the room for two hundred, a clear indication, Brick thankfully notes, that despite her tough talk about strictly business, Molly has reduced her finder’s fee by ten dollars as a favor to him. Not such a bad girl, he thinks, no matter how hard she works at hiding it. Brick is feeling so lonely, so discombobulated by the events of the past twenty hours, he wishes she would abandon her post behind the counter and accompany him to the hotel, but he knows she can’t, and he’s too timid to ask her to make an exception for him. Instead, Molly sketches a diagram on a paper napkin, indicating the route he should follow to reach the Exeter Hotel, which is only one block away. Then he settles the tab, insisting that she accept a ten-dollar tip, and shakes her hand good-bye.
    I hope I see you again, he says, suddenly and moronically on the verge of tears.
    I’m always around, she replies. From eight to six, Monday through Friday. If you ever want another lousy meal, you know where to come.
    The Exeter Hotel is a six-story limestone building in the middle of a block of discount shoe stores and dimly lit bars. It might have been an attractive place sixty or seventy years ago, but one look at the lobby, with its sagging, moth-eaten velvet chairs and dead potted palms, and Brick understands that two hundred dollars doesn’t buy you much in Wellington. He’s a bit stunned when the clerk behind the front desk insists that he pay for the night in advance, but since he’s unfamiliar with local customs, he doesn’t bother to protest. The clerk, who could pass for Serge Tobak’s twin brother, counts out the four fifty-dollar bills, sweeps them into a drawer below the cracked marble counter, and hands Brick the key to room 406. No signature or proof of identity required. When Brick asks where he can find the elevator, the clerk informs him that it’s broken.
    Somewhat winded after climbing the four flights of stairs, Brick unlocks the door and enters his room. He observes that the bed has been made, that the white walls look and smell as if they’ve been freshly painted, that everything is relatively clean, but once he begins to look around in earnest, he is gripped by a pulverizing sense of dread. The room is so bleak and unwelcoming, he imagines that dozens of desperate people have checked into this place over the years with no other purpose than to commit suicide. Where has this impression come from? Is it his own state of mind, he wonders, or can it be borne out by the facts? The sparseness of the furniture, for example: just one bed and one battered wardrobe stranded in an overly large space. No chair, no phone. The absence of any pictures on the walls. The blank, cheerless bathroom, with a single miniature bar of soap lying in its wrapper on the white sink, a single white hand towel hanging on the rack, the rusted enamel in the white tub. Pacing around in an ever-spiraling funk, Brick decides to turn on the old black-and-white television next to the window. Maybe that will calm him down, he thinks, or, if luck is with him, maybe a newscast will be on and he can learn something about the war. A hollow, echoing ping emerges from the box as he pushes the button. A promising sign, he says to himself, but then, after a long wait as the machine slowly warms up, no image appears on the screen. Nothing but snow, and the strident hiss of static. He changes the channel. More snow, more static. He goes around the dial,