Oracle Night by Paul Auster Page B

ain’t in no trouble, is he? she asks. No trouble, Nick answers. Not that I know of, anyway. And you ain’t no cop? the woman says. I’m here to get some advice, Nick tells her, and Ed is the only person who can give it to me. Another long pause follows, and finally the woman points to the staircase. Three-G, she says, the door on the left. Be sure and knock loud when you get there. Ed’s usually asleep this time of the day, and he don’t hear so good.
    The woman knows what she’s talking about, for once Nick climbs the darkened staircase and locates Ed Victory’s door at the end of the hall, he has to knock ten or twelve times before the ex-cabdriver asks him to come in. Massive and round, with his suspenders hanging off his shoulders and the top of his pants unbuttoned, Nick’s sole acquaintance in Kansas City is sitting on his bed and pointing a gun straight at his visitor’s heart. It’s the first time anyone has pointed a gun at Bowen, but before he can become sufficiently alarmed and back out of the room, Victory lowers the weapon and puts it on the bedside table.
    It’s you, he says. The New York lightning man.
    Expecting trouble? Nick asks, belatedly feeling the terror of a potential bullet in the chest, even though the danger has passed.
    These are troubled times, Ed says, and this is a troubled place. A man can never be too careful. Especially a sixty-seven-year-old man who’s none too swift afoot.
    No one can outrun a bullet, Nick replies.
    Ed grunts by way of response, then asks Bowen to take a seat, unexpectedly referring to a passage from Walden as he gestures toward the one chair in the room. Thoreau said he had three chairs in his house, Ed remarks. One for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society. I’ve only got the one for solitude. Throw in the bed, and maybe there’s two for friendship. But there’s no society in here. I had my fill of that piloting my hack.
    Bowen eases himself onto the straight-backed wooden chair and glances around the small, tidy room. It makes him think of a monk’s cell or a hermit’s refuge: a drab, spartan place with no more than the barest essentials for living. A single bed, a single chest of drawers, a hot plate, a bar-sized refrigerator, a desk, and a bookcase with several dozen books in it, among them eight or ten dictionaries and a well-worn set of Collier’s Encyclopedia in twenty volumes. The room represents a world of restraint, inwardness, and discipline, and as Bowen turns his attention back to Victory, who is calmly watching him from the bed, he takes in one final detail, which previously escaped his notice. There are no pictures hanging on the walls, no photographs or personal artifacts on display. The only adornment is a calendar tacked to the wall just above the bureau – from 1945, open to the month of April.
    I’m in a fix, Bowen says, and I thought you might be able to help me.
    It all depends, Ed replies, reaching for a pack of unfiltered Pall Malls on the bedside table. He lights a cigarette with a wooden match, takes a prolonged drag, and immediately begins to cough. Years of clogged phlegm clatters inside his shrunken bronchi, and for twenty seconds the room fills with convulsive bursts of sound. When the fit subsides, Ed grins at Bowen and says: Whenever people ask me why I smoke, I tell them it’s because I like to cough.
    I didn’t mean to bother you, Nick says. Maybe this isn’t a good time.
    I’m not bothered. A man gives me a twenty-dollar tip, and two days later he shows up and tells me he’s got a problem. It makes me kind of curious.
    I need work. Any kind of work. I’m a good auto mechanic, and it occurred to me you might have an in at the cab company you used to work for.
    A man from New York with a leather briefcase and a quality suit tells me he wants to be a mechanic. He overtips a cabbie and then claims to be broke. And now you’re going to tell me you don’t want to answer any questions. Am I right or