Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [95]
Then she heard footsteps behind her. They kept coming. She slowed, and the corners of her mouth started turning up without her say-so, but when she looked back it was no one she knew—a man on his way to someplace in a hurry. He kept his face buried in his collar. She let him pass her. Then she looked back again. But no matter how long she stood watching, the sidewalk was empty.
She took a right on Meller Street and walked with more purpose. She crossed another street and turned left. Now there was a stream of people bundled up, intent, rushing home to supper. It occurred to her that Cullen Hardware might be closed by now. She slowed, frowning. But no, its windows were still lit with that faded light that always seemed filmed by dust. She pushed through the door. Butkins was bent over a sheet of paper at the counter. “Has Morgan gone home?” she asked him.
Butkins straightened and passed a hand across his high forehead. “Oh. Mrs. Meredith,” he said. (He was so determinedly formal, though she’d known him for years.) “No, he’s up in his office.” he said.
She headed down an aisle of snow shovels and sidewalk salt, and climbed the steps at the rear. Every board whined beneath her feet. On the landing, Morgan’s office seemed unusually still—no sawing, hammering, drilling, no flurry of wood chips. Morgan was lying on the maroon plush sofa. He was hatless, for once, and wore a satin-lapeled smoking jacket that very nearly matched the sofa. His hair looked flat and thin. His face was a pale glimmer in the dusk. “Morgan? Are you sick?” Emily asked.
“I have a cold,” he said.
“Oh, just a cold,” she said, relieved. She took off her coat and laid it on the desk.
“Just a cold! How can you say that?” he asked her. His energy seemed to be returning. He sat up, indignant. “Do you have any idea how I feel? My head is like a beachball. This morning I had a temperature of ninety-nine point nine, and last night it was a hundred and one. I lay awake all night, and had fever dreams.”
“You can’t do both,” Emily said. “Lie awake, and dream as well.”
“Why not?” he asked her.
He always had to throw his whole self into things—even into illness. His office looked like a hospital room. A Merck Manual lay open on the filing cabinet, and his desk was a jumble of medicines and cloudy drinking glasses. On the floor beside the couch were a bottle of cough syrup, a sticky teaspoon, and a cardboard box spilling papers. She bent to pick up one of the papers. It was a photograph of the oldest, homeliest washing machine she’d ever laid eyes on, the kind with a wringer attached. Model 504A, she read, can easily be connected to any existing … She replaced the paper and sat down in the swivel chair at the desk. Morgan sneezed.
“Maybe you ought to be home in bed,” she told him.
“I can’t rest at home. It’s a madhouse there. Liz is still flat on her back trying to hang on to that baby. She gets the wicker breakfast tray; I end up with the tin meat platter. And people have already started arriving for Thanksgiving.”
Butkins called something. Morgan said, “Eh?”
“I’ll be going now, Mr. Gower.”
“He ought to know I can’t hear a thing with this cold,” Morgan told Emily.
“He says he’s going,” Emily said. “Do you want me to help lock up?”
“Oh, thank you. It’s true that I’m not myself.”
But he went on sitting there, blotting his nose with a handkerchief. Emily heard the front door shutting behind Butkins.
“When Butkins leaves the store,” Morgan said, “I sometimes wonder if he dematerializes. Ever thought of that?”
She smiled. He watched her soberly, not smiling himself. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
What? Nothing,” Emily said.
“The tip of your nose is white.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me,” he said. “I’ve known you nine years. When the tip of your nose is white, something’s wrong. It’s Leon, I suppose.