The Adjustment - By Scott Phillips Page 0,56

decadence. It struck me now that if Wichita really was that way I’d be happy as a clam there; as it was, the transition outside to the dull, flat plains of my own part of the state inspired something akin to dread in my soul.

I got off at Union Station and had a porter haul my bags to a taxi. The sun hadn’t gone down yet when the cab pulled up in front of my house, and I noted ruefully how badly the lawn needed mowing. I resolved to canvas the neighborhood for some enterprising little bastard who’d do it on the cheap and went around to the back and unlocked the door, and upon entering was confronted by a musty odor that suggested no one had been inside for a few days at least. I looked around for a note and found none, and I supposed that Sally had gone off to stay with my mother for a few days in my absence. I hadn’t bothered wiring her to let her know I was coming home, so I really had no beef about it. Still, it irritated me, coming home and having no dinner on the table.

I drove out to Stanley’s and ate a fried egg sandwich at the counter while listening to a snaggle-toothed lunatic next to me trying to explain his theory about the earth shrinking after the detonation of the A-bomb. In a decade the planet would be no bigger than the moon, in a century no bigger than a beach ball. Then he laughed and explained to me that it was no big deal, because the rest of the universe was contracting at exactly the same rate.

“So you see? None of it matters at all. It just seems like it.”

I nodded and finished my egg sandwich, swigged down my coffee, and went home.

THIRTEEN

UP GO THE LEGS, INTO THE AIR

I HAD A MESSAGE waiting for me when I got back to the plant. I was to call a Mr. Wageknecht about a German camera we’d been discussing. Mrs. Caspian gave me the message without meeting my eyes, as usual, and I took advantage of that to admire her ample form which, it seemed to me, was getting a bit more so.

“How are you these days, Mrs. Caspian? Is Mr. Caspian in town?”

Her face burned and she looked down at her typewriter, even though there was only one other person in the office, a skinny fellow with horn-rimmed glasses whose name I could never remember but who on hot days smelled like chicken soup.

“He’s not,” she said in a very small voice, appalled at my brazenness in speaking to her at the office. I felt like bending her over and taking her right there at the desk, right in front of no-name, but it could wait for that night. In that same small voice she continued, “I won’t be working here any more after the fall.”

“You won’t?”

For the first time ever in the office she looked me straight in the face, her cheeks flushed and her eyes glistening. “Our prayers have been answered, Mr. Ogden. Mr. Caspian and I are expecting a baby.”

“That’s terrific,” I said, though in fact I was disappointed to hear it, since it presumably meant that our liaisons would be coming to an end. “I’ve got to go take care of some business, maybe I’ll see you before the end of the day.”

I PHONED WAGEKNECHT from a phone booth at Central and Hillside. “I got all the pictures you want,” he said. “Once your man Huff gets a drink in him he gets pretty sloppy.”

“You know Red’s? Out on 54?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Be there tonight at eight. If the photos are what we want, you’ll have your money.”

I STOPPED BACK at the plant at four, mostly to see Millie Grau. Collins hadn’t returned yet but was expected back late in the afternoon. Millie looked radiant, more so than usual, and I complimented her on it. “A lot’s happened since you left. You were absolutely right about telling Donald about the baby. Oh, gosh, he was mad at me. He even called me a couple of names I wouldn’t have thought he knew. But he prayed on it, and you know what? He decided to forgive me.”

Forgive her? I had to work to keep my mouth shut right then. Some lousy sack of shit in a cassock has to talk to God to decide whether or not Millie Grau was worthy of him? Sight unseen,