A Regular Guy by Mona Simpson

that he would find out about Owens’ mother, whatever it took.
    “I’ll do what I can,” he said, standing.
    “Um, you know, I’ll pay you for this myself,” Owens whispered, fingertips in jeans pockets, “Not through Genesis.”
    “Don’t worry,” Eliot mumbled, also embarrassed by the introduction of money to this rare intimate conversation.
    Owens immediately sat back down and busied himself with papers from his in box. He opened one stray envelope, typewritten with his name and address, and found only a worn five-dollar bill inside. He shook the envelope, with a bas-relief of his name on its interior, an actual hole made by the period of “Mr.” What’s this? he wondered, turning the empty envelope over and finding no return address. Then he thought he’d maybe lent it to somebody. This warmed him: the commonness of having a small loan repaid. He slid up to get his wallet from his back pocket, slipped the bill inside and patted it with satisfaction.
    The recent statement Eliot Hanson left, chronicling a bond transfer that resulted in a profit to Owens of over a million times this amount, elicited no such response.

Van Castle

    O wens began receiving envelopes with no return address and no letter inside: only five-dollar bills. Some seemed new, others came creased like very old, hardworking hands. One evening, he collected a pile and absentmindedly distributed them in the cubbyholes that served as mailboxes. But like something thrown away that keeps bobbing back, he found a new batch in his next morning’s mail. “What is this, some kind of joke?”
    By now he realized the error of his original explanation. The memory of that mistaken satisfaction had an unpleasant aftertaste.
    Then he buzzed his secretary, Kathleen, the answer to all questions, and she told him that Kaskie’s van had come in. “Do you want to pick it up yourself?”
    “Nah, I think it’d be nice if he went to get it,” Owens said. “Did we pay for that already? Better call Eliot.”
    For as long as Owens could remember, he’d seen Noah Kaskie around Alta, but it was years before he learned his name. There weren’t manywheelchairs when Owens was growing up, and this kid had long blond ringlets.
    And everyone in Alta passed the public garden, where a man worked every Saturday and Sunday; his son, with the wheelchair parked by the gate, crawled around on the ground, digging. People brought their seedlings, clippings, bare-root roses and fruit trees, or dropped coins into a tin can attached to the fence. Owens heard that the father experimented with hybrids in his garage and made new flowers. He was the first man in Santa Clara County to create a pink-fruited orange and a persimmon with no bite.
    Owens wished he knew them. He and his father often drove into Alta and walked past the garden Saturday mornings, but he stayed close to his father’s long legs. The kid crawling on the ground was an Alta kid. He yelled up easily at other people. Owens thought he’d heard that the kid was an artist, but a few years later the Alta Sentinel ran a picture of Noah in his wheelchair: “Winner of Elks Science Scholarship.” So the kid turned out to be a scientist; Owens thought that fit even better. By then, Owens had met an industrial organic chemist, who traveled the world with petri dishes in his back pocket to pick up stray samples of dirt to screen for microbes. A thin, frowning man, he paced his small living room every night and danced with his young daughters to requiems.
    The evening Owens finally met Noah Kaskie, they talked for an hour. Perhaps it was inevitable that they meet and when they did, it happened to be on a hilltop. Neither man appeared anywhere in Alta anonymously; each was always preceded by his reputation. Worth millions, that guy who started Genesis. The one in the wheelchair, he’s some kind of genius. Neither man’s name came up in conversation without a lowered voice, and to their faces, people strenuously avoided