Redhead by the Side of the Road - Anne Tyler Page 0,48

one but you to enjoy it. You’re all, all alone and it’s not so great after all.”

“Well, I’d hardly say I’m alone,” Rosalie told him. “There are at least a dozen old ladies around here bringing me baked goods.”

Micah was shifting his belongings to the floor. He sat down in the chair and opened one of the desk drawers. Belatedly, he thought to ask, “Okay if I take a look?”

“Be my guest,” she said, waving a hand.

In the drawer were postage stamps, a stapler, and a cellophane packet of rubber bands. He closed that drawer and opened another.

“I was thinking you could maybe just check the computer’s innards or something,” Rosalie said. “Press some secret button or turn some secret gear wheel.”

“I did warn you,” Micah reminded her. He was flipping through an appointment book—the kind that came from an art museum, with a painting on each left-hand page and a month’s worth of squares on the right. All of the squares were empty.

“I just find it hard to believe that computer companies could have such faith in the average layman,” Rosalie said. “Don’t they know that people forget things? Lose things? Fail to write things down? How can they say, ‘Okay, folks, here’s a thousand-dollar computer that’ll be completely and totally worthless if you happen to mislay your password’?”

“Five-thousand-dollar computer is more like it,” Micah said absently. He was sorting through a half-empty box of Christmas cards, the Currier & Ives type. He lifted out several cards and then a miniature spiral notebook with a snowman in a stovepipe hat and “Christmas Cards Sent & Received” in lacy gold script on the cover. Tiny alphabet tabs ran down the right-hand side. He opened to a random tab. “?‘George and Laura Internet,’?” he read aloud. “?‘Mildred63.’?”

“Oh! Oh!” Rosalie said.

He turned to the C tab. “?‘Judy Computer, 1963mch.’?”

“You’re a genius!”

He handed her the notebook. “Just a little something they taught us in tech-guy school,” he said.

“Really?”

“I’m kidding.” He bent to open his carry-all and take out his invoice pad.

Rosalie was flipping through pages. “?‘Dan and Jean Wall Safe,’?” she read out. “?‘Left 3 times to 44, right 2 times to…’ I didn’t even know she had a wall safe! I wonder where it is.”

“You’ll be finding stuff for months, I bet,” Micah said as he wrote out her bill. “Christmas every day.”

“Oh, Micah, I am so, so grateful to you. I can’t believe you did it!”

He tore off her copy of the bill and handed it to her. Then he zipped his carryall and stood up. “Well,” he said, “enjoy Judy Computer.”

“Oh, I plan to!” Rosalie said. She followed him out of the sunporch and through the bedroom. It was clearly not a young person’s bedroom. The bed itself was a four-poster, covered with an off-white spread made of lace or crochet work or something, and the dim oil painting above it showed a child kneeling in prayer.

“So, theoretically,” Micah said, pausing to glance around, “you’ll never need to buy another thing except for groceries. You’ve even got a whole new set of clothes. If you’re feeling cold, you just hunt through the bureau and find yourself a sweater.”

“Well, theoretically, yes,” Rosalie said, and then she laughed and turned to open one of the bureau’s drawers. She pulled out a gigantic bra—a grayish-pink contraption with mammoth circle-stitched cups, more like a piece of armor than an article of clothing. She held it up in front of her by its two straps. Even in her bulky turtleneck, she seemed absurdly small by comparison. “Ta-da!” she said, and she performed an elflike little dance across the carpet. Micah had to smile.

Downstairs in the front hall, she ducked into the coat closet and emerged with a purse. “How about the purse?” he asked when he’d tucked away the bills she handed him.

“How about it?”

“Is it yours, or is it your grandma’s?”

“Oh,” she said, “it’s mine.”

Which he’d already guessed, of course. It was small and