Found in the Street by Patricia Highsmith Page A

Thomas Mann’s Last Essays, because he liked to read something like that slowly. He read everything, or nearly everything slowly, letting it sink in, though some books that he borrowed he found had been a mistake, they bored him or they were worthless. Ralph liked to read fiction as much as non-fiction. He had wanted to read 1984 again, but the waiting list had been so long, he bought the paperback. He adored Robert Louis Stevenson, for pleasure. He took out a book on semeiology, because it looked interesting. And a novel by Iris Murdoch, whom he enjoyed because the English world she described, though contemporary and evidently realistic, was fantastic to Ralph, making him think of the plots of Richard Wagner’s operas, somebody in love with someone impossible to attain, someone else hating someone for the slightest of reasons which became magnified. Ralph had never been to England, and he wondered if a fair number of English people kept falling in love like that, seldom if ever showing it under their calm exteriors?
    He hadn’t taken God to the library, of course, so Ralph was able to walk home briskly. Good exercise. The coffee shop where Elsie worked was south of Leroy Street, but Ralph had no desire to drop in now. Maybe Elsie was not even on duty today.
    Later that afternoon, Ralph cleaned out the two shelves under his sink, got rid of old rags, useless paper bags, discovered some steel wool and a spare bottle of window-cleaning fluid that he’d been unaware of, wiped the shelving paper, and put most of the items back. Then he wrote a letter to his mother. She was nearly eighty and living in a small apartment in a town in New Hampshire. Ralph sent his mother money once a month, and wrote her maybe every three weeks. He was the only child.
    Sept. 15, 19—
    Dear Mother,
    Things are about as usual, weather pretty pleasant and the worst heat seems over. Am still working at the parking garage way west on 48th St. $6.50 per hour is good pay, as $7 is about tops. Remember when I was making the $5.50 minimum not so long ago? I don’t take such wages any more, as I don’t have to. My work record is sterling by the way.
    How is your arthritis? Don’t forget to get your woolies handy with the fall coming soon. Not more than four aspirins a day, I hope.
    God is fine and sends love to Tissy Cat.
    Ralph paused for thought, and recalled black-and-white Tissy Cat, who had long hair like a Persian but was quite ordinary, a boring animal who looked at people from her pillow as if she detested them.
    Bless you and keep you. From your loving son
    Ralph
    His mother was a devout church-goer, protestant. That was why Ralph had written “Bless you” to please her. Who and what was to bless her? Fate? Luck?

6
    By half past 8 the apartment had begun to fill up, and it looked like a party. People talked more loudly in order to be heard, and Sylvia Kinnock’s laughter, a single shriek now and then, sounded muffled. Louis Wannfeld was here, and Isabel Katz, the old friend of Natalia’s who ran the Katz Gallery. It was Natalia’s twenty-eighth birthday, though she and Jack had not announced that fact when they extended the invitations, they had simply asked people to come for drinks after 7, and said maybe there’d be something to eat too. Only Natalia’s closest friends might connect the date with her birthday. Natalia liked to do something on her birthday, but hated the idea of people feeling that they had to bring a present.
    Joel MacPherson had come, and Jack had showed him four more roughs for the Dreams book, plus two finished with the pale pink, blue and green he would use on all of them. Joel was extremely pleased.
    â€œLet’s put ’em up—put ’em up all around the table like this.” He demonstrated by leaning one against the wall at the back of Jack’s worktable, daintily, as if it were precious, then his hands spread as he whispered, “We’ll ask