The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [21]
He went home to Westminster, Maryland, and spent six weeks with his mother. By the end of the second week he was starting to feel like Krebs in the Hemingway story. Hugh’s Armenian father had died of a pulmonary embolism about the time of the Italian campaign. His Scottish mother was keeping company with a widower who was thinking of retiring from his dry-cleaning business. The man came over every other night after dinner to drink the Armenian coffee Mrs. Markarian had learned to make. The two of them killed a pot of coffee and played backgammon. Sometimes they coaxed Hugh into playing, and then the three of them would pretend to be enjoying themselves.
Hugh’s two younger sisters had both married while he was overseas. Emily, the one he’d always liked best, had married a dentist and lived somewhere in southern California. Ruth, the older of the two, lived in Westminster. Her husband sold real estate and insurance and seemed incapable of believing that Hugh was equally uninterested in acquiring either. Ruth had always bored him and now he found her company unbearable. Her husband was worse. They felt obligated to invite Hugh once a week for dinner, and he felt obligated to accept. It was worse than the backgammon sessions.
He stuck it for six weeks and then went to New York. His old firm was perfectly happy to rehire him, which surprised him. He took an apartment on West Thirteenth Street and went to the office every morning and came home every night. It took him two weeks to confirm something he had suspected all along, that had no desire whatsoever to become a stockbroker. He had been perfectly happy before the war with the idea of spending his life selling stocks and bonds. Now every time he sat at the desk he thought of his horrible sister and her horrible husband and he couldn’t stand it.
He explained this to his boss, who had heard similar stories from other veterans. “You may change your mind later on,” the man said. “Take some time to find yourself. If it turns out that this is the right kind of life for you, come back and we’ll talk about it.”
He never went back. He moved furniture, cooked at a lunch counter, sold women’s shoes on Fourteenth Street. He would pick up a job and keep it until he couldn’t stand it, and then he would sit around his apartment drinking beer and reading library books until his cash ran out.
One night a girl was talking about a recent war novel. “You’ve just got to read it,” she said. “It’s unbelievable.”
“I was over there,” he said. “Why do I have to read about it?” He preferred Westerns, and was at the time gradually working his way through the complete works of Zane Grey.
“Listen,” she said, “just read it. That’s all. Just read it, it’s unbelievable.”
The next afternoon he went to the Eighth Street Book Shop and paid five dollars for the book. He’d asked for it at the library, but the waiting list ran clear onto the back of the card. He took the book home and read fifty pages and threw it against the wall. He went around the corner, drank three glasses of beer, returned to his apartment and picked the book up again. He sat down with it and read the remaining five hundred pages at one sitting. By the time he was done it was eleven in the morning but he didn’t even consider going to bed. He showered and changed his clothes and spent the next six hours walking aimlessly around the Village.
The girl worked as a secretary at an advertising agency. He was waiting on her doorstep when she got home from work. She didn’t recognize him at first. They’d just met at a party, and their only conversation had concerned the novel.
“You read it already? I’m flattered. Isn’t it something?”
“It