Marshlands by Matthew Olshan Read Free Book Online

“It’s him.”
    It was the famous photograph from his trial. He was sitting in the dock, looking small and haunted. The prosecutor was holding up the boy’s homemade blade, a miniature marsh dirk. The caption simply read, “Betrayed!”
    While she studied the picture, the dentist loomed over him, flexing his jaw. He wished the chair had arms or side rails, anything to cling to. Part of him expected the violence and even welcomed it, but he couldn’t manage even the one sit-up that would restore him to the level of the conversation. His stomach muscles were in revolt.
    She handed the book back to the dentist. “Yes, I see,” she said. Then, without another word, she helped him up from the dentist’s chair and led him out, slowing only to leave her card with the receptionist, along with instructions for mailing the bill.
    His knees went weak when the elevator doors closed behind him, but she didn’t offer a steadying hand. He wanted to tell her that the man in the picture was a different man, which was essentially true, but not factual.
    The elevator went up instead of down. She gave a self-mocking laugh. There couldn’t have been any more contempt in her voice. He wanted to beg her not to be scornful of her kinder impulses.
    The elevator traveled to the top of the building, then descended again, stopping at the dentist’s floor. When the doors opened, the dentist himself was standing there in a shearling coat and green fedora. He consulted his watch and stepped into the elevator, turning his back on them as soon as he crossed the grooved threshold.
    He announced that he wished to go to the lobby. He was apparently someone who disdained pressing his own elevator buttons. When they were under way, he spoke to her over his shoulder. “No more,” he said. “That’s the last one.”
    She held the door for him at the lobby. They stayed in the elevator until his sharp footsteps were gone.
    He was prepared to go his own way when they reached the sidewalk. The fresh air was bracing. Sounds from a distant street festival bounced gaily off the glass facades.
    â€œI should have told you,” he said.
    He tracked the motion of her pupils as they flitted across his face. “I know exactly who you are,” she said. “It’s a shame you don’t know me.”
    *   *   *
    They took a bus that crossed the river on a new suspension bridge with huge green towers. The bus was nearly empty, but she didn’t sit beside him; neither did he move to sit beside her.
    Eventually she reached up and tugged the signal wire. She called out a word of thanks to the driver, who lifted a weary hand in acknowledgment.
    She didn’t help him down to the sidewalk, not even when he stumbled. Her pace was quicker than before. She waited impatiently at intersections.
    She led him through an overgrown park to the gates of an armory made of huge granite blocks, along the lines of a fortress from an earlier century. They ducked under a rusting portcullis, then forced their way through a pair of swollen oak doors. There was a security desk, complete with lamp and logbook, but no guard.
    The long arched hallways were tiled to shoulder height. The sameness of the cracked white tiles disoriented him. There was a slight tilt to the floor that pushed him ever forward, as though the building were drinking him down. As they walked, the staccato clang of some pump or other grew louder, then softer.
    When they came to a locked metal door, she pulled out her overburdened key chain. The lock was sticky. He watched her work the key in and out, wondering how she could possibly be part of such a place.
    Beyond the locked door was a vast room, once a workshop of some kind, judging from the axles and flywheels overhead, equipment from a time when everything was driven by a single source of power, a waterwheel or a steam engine. The heavy machinery was long gone, the leather