Nothing That Meets the Eye by Patricia Highsmith Read Free Book Online

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    â€œHuy!” shouted the cripple, very close. “Huy!” He made a pass at the yellow coat with his gangling hand.
    The shorter man bounded. “You want it? Take it!” he screamed.
    â€œHuy! . . . I jus’ . . . I jus’ . . .”
    But the man in the polo coat was far away, and the thock-thocks were running now, turning off, running eastward.
    The big bony hands came down, groping over the sidewalk. They found the bag, lifted it, nestled it in the lumpy arms of the coat. Archie continued up the street, holding the bag so tightly against him that the affection sprang in him, making him warm and happy. The man in the polo coat faded from his mind. He smelt the damp khaki, redolent of clothiness. The fluted mouth spread serenely.
    He kept going for four or five blocks, up to Twentieth Street, where he went east. He did not feel to see what might be in the bag. His face had returned to its usual expression of bland contemplation. He looked straight ahead of him, not noticing his shadow that the lamplights along the curb passed one to the other, the shadow whose head twisted now and again in bizarre design on the sidewalk.
    At a certain brownstone he pulled himself up by a broad balustrade, produced a key and let himself in. The foyer was lighted by a small naked bulb at the ceiling. He climbed the stair, tugging at the shaky banister, turning at each landing with a dogged pump of his head. At the fourth floor he stopped at a low squarish door, so kicked and fingerprinted that the brown paint was almost all off. He opened the padlock with another key.
    Inside, he went familiarly and turned on the gooseneck lamp that sat on the oilcloth-covered table beside the gas burner. The yellowish light revealed a cube of a room, furnished with a bed that sagged like a hammock, a spool-legged table, a straight chair, a bedtable made of an upended crate, and a battered chest of drawers. All around the walls were tiny notations, so closely and equidistantly written as to make almost a pattern: the names and addresses and telephone numbers of all the people with whom he had anything to do. There were the employees of the newspaper plant down to the scrubwomen, the names and particulars of the grocery men at the corner, of the cigar store and the drugstore, and many addresses of miscellaneous direct mail advertisers who had in past months sent him letters.
    He hung his overcoat behind a cloth that made a closet of one corner. His head was quite long and flat on top, seen from the side, like the model profile beside a Mercator projection. The hair was blond and very fine, falling in big haphazard locks around his head. He moved gracefully in his room, as though he were completely at ease and knew the position of every article.
    He carried the bag to his bed and sat himself gently on the bumpy quilt. The gold-colored zipper sent a chill of pleasure through his fingers. Its purr was a song of richness, of mechanical beauty. His fluted mouth spread wider, his blond eyebrows arched expectantly. He parted the sides of the bag and in the dim interior saw many columns of glossy blue and gold paper, and red and yellow and green and gray and mauve and white papers, each a block itself, but making one great block together. The regular and immaculate wrappings of hundreds of penny chocolates and chewing gums.
    His eagerness subsided to a troubled, uncertain disappointment. The arched eyebrows dropped a little and the mouth hung loose. Then, caught by the spectroscopic colors, he lifted ten or fifteen chocolate pieces from their box, pressed one against the other between his thumb and forefinger, and laughed aloud until the column broke, tumbling over his legs onto the bed and the floor. He put his hand in again, this time drawing forth many green boxes of chewing gum, which he let cascade off his palm onto his pressed-together thighs. He took more chocolates and sifted them through his fingers like coins, dropping them onto the