The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster Read Free Book Online Page A

sure of any of it.
    “How much would you like?” she asked.
    “It doesn’t matter. I’ll leave that up to you.”
    “Five hundred?”
    “That would be more than enough.”
    “Good. I’ll go get my checkbook.” Virginia Stillman stood up and smiled at Quinn again. “I’ll get you a picture of Peter’s father, too. I think I know just where it is.”
    Quinn thanked her and said he would wait. He watched her leave the room and once again found himself imagining what she would look like without any clothes on. Was she somehow coming on to him, he wondered, or was it just his own mind trying to sabotage him again? He decided to postpone his meditations and take up the subject again later.
    Virginia Stillman walked back into the room and said, “Here’s the check. I hope I made it out correctly.”
    Yes, yes, thought Quinn as he examined the check, everything is tip-top. He was pleased with his own cleverness. The check, of course, was made out to Paul Auster, which meant that Quinn could not be held accountable for impersonating a private detective without a license. It reassured him to know that he had somehow put himself in the clear. The fact that he would never be able to cash the check did not trouble him. He understood, even then, that he was not doing any of this for money. He slipped the check into the inside breast pocket of his jacket.
    “I’m sorry there’s not a more recent photograph,” Virginia Stillman was saying. “This one dates from more than twenty years ago. But I’m afraid it’s the best I can do.”
    Quinn looked at the picture of Stillman’s face, hoping for a sudden epiphany, some sudden rush of subterranean knowledge that would help him to understand the man. But the picture told him nothing. It was no more than a picture of a man. He studied it for a moment longer and concluded that it could just as easily have been anyone.
    “I’ll look at it more carefully when I get home,” he said, putting it into the same pocket where the check had gone. “Taking the passage of time into account, I’m sure I’ll be able to recognize him at the station tomorrow.”
    “I hope so,” said Virginia Stillman. “It’s terribly important, and I’m counting on you.”
    “Don’t worry,” said Quinn. “I haven’t let anyone down yet.”
    She walked him to the door. For several seconds they stood there in silence, not knowing whether there was something to add or if the time had come to say good-bye. In that tiny interval, Virginia Stillman suddenly threw her arms around Quinn, sought out his lips with her own, and kissed him passionately, driving her tongue deep inside his mouth. Quinn was so taken off guard that he almost failed to enjoy it.
    When he was at last able to breathe again, Mrs. Stillman held him at arm’s length and said, “That was to prove that Peter wasn’t telling you the truth. It’s very important that you believe me.”
    “I believe you,” said Quinn. “And even if I didn’t believe you, it wouldn’t really matter.”
    “I just wanted you to know what I’m capable of.”
    “I think I have a good idea.”
    She took his right hand in her two hands and kissed it. “Thank you, Mr. Auster. I really do think you’re the answer.”
    He promised he would call her the next night, and then he found himself walking out the door, taking the elevator downstairs, and leaving the building. It was past midnight when he hit the street.

4

    Quinn had heard of cases like Peter Stillman before. Back in the days of his other life, not long after his own son was born, he had written a review of a book about the wild boy of Aveyron, and at the time he had done some research on the subject. As far as he could remember, the earliest account of such an experiment appeared in the writings of Herodotus: the Egyptian pharaoh Psamtik isolated two infants in the seventh century b.c. and commanded the servant in charge of them never to utter a word in their presence. According to