The Work Is Innocent by Rafael Yglesias Read Free Book Online Page A

would manage to arrange another meeting, whether he would go and come back from the movie in a cab or by subway—money! He’d forgotten that. Could he get enough from his parents? Maybe he should pay for the girls. Every moment would be a problem. Meeting them on the street—he should give them a kiss, his brother would—saying good-by…. Should he favor Joan with his attention or would it be smarter to play up to Ann? Maybe a little socialism was the answer, but was it possible? He laughed. He should call his brother and tell him he’d just refuted Marxism by proving there was no equality in sexual admiration.
    His mind was running at an astonishing pace. Thinking that, if he called his brother and said that, it wouldn’t be a chatty, funny talk. His brother would say, “Huh?” in a strained voice. Then, “That’s cute,” when Richard explained, and end with, “Listen I’m busy right now. We should get together soon.”
    What was it about Richard that his boyishness only made people more constrained? His mind was busy remembering anything that could humiliate him. Forget that, he said, nobody cares, it doesn’t matter. But when he began imagining the reviews his books would get—“It is an incredible achievement. America has a new genius and should take care of him”—he was reminded that as absurd as it might be to imagine he’d ever get such praise, for all the world’s giggling at youthful egotism, humanity respected fame and allowed anything for its realization. His self-consciousness would then be charming humility. How comfortable to be an eccentric author! Richard fixed his face as Rastignac would fix his—a knowing, sharp smile—and deep in this romance of ambition he hoped to forget his awkwardness.
    He walked up and down in his room and stopped finally in front of his windows to look at a New York suffocating in the grayish blue of a winter afternoon. No, this preening, these chants of fame and power were unhappy. The fantasies had reality now: the world would judge this novel, and since the opinions couldn’t be as good as he wished them to be, since now the growing was over, the dreams had begun to nag and not soothe.
    The light was dimming, his room aging, as in his imagination he was, and he wished that fucking wasn’t necessary. How sickening I am, he thought. It’s the weakness that’s loathsome. Other agonies are vigorous and significant. This is like being unable to walk.
    He got on the IRT and found a familiar world in chaos. The subway cars reeled with sprawling names and numbers. He sat down uneasily on JOE 125, spray-painted in garish red, and stared in wonder at the address book facing him. Who was doing this? And how? The train had stopped in the middle of a tunnel and, outside a window, in royal blue, THE KING 96 mocked him with the question. How did they reach that spot?
    He heard someone, in the silence of the stopped train, say with a tone of understanding, “I see your point, but I can’t agree. They’re disgusting, filthy people.”
    Richard looked in the direction of the voice and saw nothing but a silent, balding man in his sixties, dressed in a gray overcoat. The train lurched and started up, the many colored names painted on the tunnel walls pretending to be scenery. The old man shifted, a woman deep in the New York Times slid away from him as he moved closer. The old man had revealed SUPERDICK 107 done in baroque lettering. He looked expressively at one of the advertisements, saying, “Oh, of course you’re right. You’re absolutely right.” Richard realized he wasn’t talking to anyone, and he swung his head away from the old man. But there he caught sight of a redheaded young man dressed in a drab green jacket whose sleeves were too short and tight. He was wearing shiny black shoes and white socks. He smiled maliciously at his reflection in one of the subway’s windows and, posing carefully in front of it, he brought his right arm up and flexed his