Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

wearily at the wallpaper rolls, their patterns hidden inside their white wrappers—patterns he’d brooded on, considering and reconsidering, though now he couldn’t remember which ones he’d chosen—and he was filled with such weariness and misery he could hardly understand why he’d left the apartment.

He went to the refrigerator for more ice, then to the cabinet under the stereo, and made a second large martini, then wandered back to the study to look over his writing. All the interior of the house was gray, like the gloomy, fading afternoon, but his study, where the bills were, seemed the grayest room of all. Outside his window the birdbath was coming apart in flakes, like the treasures of Venice, and the large, orangish roses had been shaken and shattered. Rain was still falling, a lead-gray, luminous mist.

At last it came to him that, though his eyes had been going over and over the typewritten sentences he’d been working on, his mind remained stubbornly fixed elsewhere. His hand went to the telephone receiver: he would call Information and get Donnie Matthews’ number. But then he changed his mind and drew his hand back. He leaned his elbows on the desk in front of the typewriter, rested his chin on his interlaced fingers, and closed his eyes, shutting out the stack of bills, trying to think. The instant his eyes closed he realized he was slightly drunk. No wonder, of course. He hadn’t eaten all day. He would go down to the restaurant in town and get supper. He switched off his worklight, pushed back his chair, and got up. He carried his drink with him to the hall, where he meant to get his raincoat, then changed his mind and went into the bathroom to wash and shave, then to the bedroom for a clean shirt—surprisingly frayed at the cuffs, but the best he had—a relatively unwrinkled ascot tie, and his dark blue sportcoat. (Two buttons were missing, but no one would notice if he remembered not to button it, which he would, since the coat had grown too small.) When he was dressed and had looked himself over in the mirror, he went downstairs again, finished the drink, put on his hat and raincoat and took the cane from the umbrella stand. He had no umbrella, but no matter. The rain, as if to please him, had stopped.

He locked his doors carefully—thinking of his visitors—then walked carefully, stepping between puddles (he had no rubbers), to the Jeep. It was now nearly dark. The house, when he switched the Jeep lights on, was all rough elbows, frowning eyes.

After he’d parked the Jeep on Main Street, in front of the bank, directly across from those who watched the intersection from their old wooden bench (he did not feel inclined to salute them, this time), Mickelsson, succumbing to a sudden impulse, turned west toward Reddon’s instead of east toward the restaurant, hesitated for a moment in the doorway, then, swinging his cane, moved quickly past the battered mailboxes and up the stairs. “I’ll just ask her if she’s had supper yet,” he said to himself, “or if perhaps she’d like coffee.” He began, whispering, to rehearse what he would say. “Evening, Miss Matthews. Remember me?” The stairway was full of cooking smells and the tinny noise of television sets. At one of the landings a woman’s voice cried out, startling him out of his daydream, “How many times I got to tell you, Robert?” Mickelsson slowed his step, at first out of alarm, then from interest in learning what it was that Robert kept forgetting; but the whining voice that answered was far away, another room perhaps, and the woman, when she spoke again, had moved farther from the door. He continued up the stairs. Halfway up to the next landing he stopped, with his hand on the railing, to catch his breath. He could see her white plastic rose.

He had knocked several times before he was willing to believe she wasn’t in. Even now it would not be accurate to say he believed it. He had thought, not quite consciously, that all reality had been magically on his side: the fact that he hadn’t eaten, so that it was necessary (more or less) that he come into town; the fact that the rain had opportunely stopped. … He put his mouth close to the door and called, “Donnie?” With his ear against the wood he knocked again. He stepped back quickly and glanced past his shoulder as the door to the apartment behind him opened. One eye and half of a dark, splotched face looked out. He nodded and touched the brim of his hat. For three or four seconds the eye went on staring. Then the door creaked shut.

At the restaurant, just after he’d given his order to the waitress, a voice at his shoulder said, “Professor Mickelsson! How’s everything going up there?”

When he turned, raising his head, he saw and, after an instant, recognized Tim’s boss, Charley Snyder. The man was spiffied up, downright distinguished-looking, suit and tie under the raincoat, big white grin on the darkly tanned face. For some reason it hadn’t until now dawned on Mickelsson that the man was more than commonly well-off, though of course he’d seen those Snyder Realty signs everywhere and had once heard Snyder joked about: someone, one morning at the Acme Market, had been telling some out-of-towner how Marie Antoinette, hoping to escape to America, had bought up thousands of acres of northern Pennsylvania. The woman at the cash-register had winked at Mickelsson and said, “Just like Charley Snyder.” He had laughed, of course, but he understood now, seeing Snyder dressed to the nines, that the joke was more true than not. The man had a large onyx ring on one finger. His raincoat and the suit underneath looked like something in an ad from The New Yorker.

“Hello, Charley,” Mickelsson said, and reached up his hand to shake Snyder’s. “Care to join me?” He