The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris Read Free Book Online

cried up.
    “What?”
    “I said I don’t think you should be sitting in our stairwell!”
    His voice echoed through the upper stairs. The man no longer responded. The clop of dress shoes filled the silence. In no time he descended past the twenties and the teens and entered the lobby.
    Once he ran with the goal to exhaust himself. Maybe there was no slowing down, but he could speed up. He could move his head, his limbs—hell, he could
dance
so long as he kept moving forward. Like a stutterer in song. He juked and huffed around casual city walkers until he was in New Jersey and his lungs hit a wall and he stopped. But his legs, he realized at once, had every intention of continuing, and continue they would until they were through. He couldn’t believe what he had inflicted on himself, his muscles quivering with fatigue, every step like lifting out of quicksand.
    He had Jane lock him inside the bedroom. The tidy circles he was forced to walk made him dizzy and half-mad.
    He had Horowitz pump him full of a powerful muscle relaxant. Which worked for the time he was out. But after the medication wore off he was out walking again, this time drowsy and nauseous, his longest and most miserable walk, and he swore never to do that again.
    They bolted an O-ring into a stud in the wall and tethered him with a chain and a belt made of leather. After a couple of days, that sort of containment was just too barbaric.
    When the illness returned a second time, he thought of the treadmill. He’d beat his body at its own game, outwit dumb matter with his mind. But every time chance permitted him to have his body on the treadmill during an episode, he found himself stepping right off the revolving belt, into freedom. His body wouldn’t be contained or corralled. It had, it seemed to him, a mind of its own.
    The lobby of his office building was set on a mezzanine. To access the street, one still had to ride down the escalator.
    Frank Novovian looked up from his post, his eyes burdened with ripe bags, his cold-clock gaze greeting the world without humor. Yet he was deferential to the right people. “Good morning, Mr. Farnsworth,” he said.
    “Frank, can I have a word?”
    “Of course.”
    Tim stepped onto the escalator. His feet continued to walk. He was forced to turn his head in order to further address the security guard. “Will you walk with me?”
    Frank got off his stool and caught up with Tim long after he had stepped off the escalator. He was halfway across the lower lobby by then. “What can I do for you, Mr. Farnsworth?”
    “There’s a man in our stairwell.”
    “What man?”
    “A homeless man.”
    “In our stairwell?”
    “Know what he’s doing there?”
    He entered the revolving doors. He gestured for Frank to follow as he fought the wind pushing against the glass.
    The uprush of city life, always unexpected. A far cry from his time behind the desk. Taxis heading past, cars, supply trucks, bundled men on bicycles delivering bagged lunches. Faces were as varied as the flags of the earth. A Hasidic Jew pushing a dolly in front of him weaved quickly between blustered walkers. The sidewalks were salt-stained; the cold swallowed him up. He walked into the wind, north, toward Central Park, a wind shaped materially by pole-whipped newspapers and fluttering scarf tails. The fabric of his suit snapped behind him angrily. His teeth were rattling. Poor Frank, forced out in nothing but his standard-issue security man’s blazer. Yet Frank followed him dutifully into the crystal heart of the season.
    Could he send Frank for the pack? Frank would have to reenter the building, wait for the elevator, walk the hallway, head back down again. By then he’d be searching for one man among eight million.
    “Frank,” he said, “R. H. Hobbs is expected later today.”
    “Do you remember the floor the man’s on, Mr. Farnsworth?”
    “Midthirties?”
    Frank unclipped the walkie-talkie from his belt. “Two minutes and he’ll no longer