Lucky Alan : And Other Stories (9780385539821) by Jonathan Lethem
Authors: Jonathan Lethem
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activities had drawn distracted, unsustained glances from a passing postal worker or nanny. Certainly nobody emerged into the chill morning from the café’s interior, where those not obliviously earbudded were likely hunkered in routine annoyance against the saw’s zip, much as they’d be for a passing siren or the clunk of a truck’s axle in apothole—nothing off the ordinary urban-decibel scale. The soap complainer had wandered away when Stevick wasn’t looking.
The jackhammers, though, drew complaint. Several exasperated café denizens packed their laptops and muttered in the loose direction of the truck and its jumpsuited operatives as they fled the scene, like birds flitting to another treetop, and no more courageous. One of the café’s counterpersons, a chubby guy in an apron, seeing business spooked, made a more forthright protest, even shaking his fist. But the small dimension of the task blunted his protest: By the time the jumpsuited pair had ignored the counterperson for a minute or two, minute smiles perhaps rippling their lips—or was this an effect of the device’s vibration?—they were shifting the jackhammer back into the truck in favor of shovels and picks, with which they deftly cleared the hole of shattered black chunks. Stevick nodded consolation to the counterperson, who had, after all, poured his soapy coffee forty-five minutes ago. What remained of it was cold.
*
The excavation was complete by the time Stevick wandered by half an hour later, having picked up his dry cleaning from the Korean and used his own bathroom before circling back to the café. Rain still threatened, hadn’t arrived. Stevick couldn’t say why he was enthralled by theactivities that had commenced with the truck’s arrival; some intimation, he supposed in retrospect, though it wasn’t uncommon for him to buzz the café two or three times in a procrastinating morning. The hole was steep and accurate, hewing to the spray-painted plan still visible in two corners where the lines of paint, meeting, had pooled and blurred: an inverted phone booth of emptied dirt and rubble. Three fat fitted planks lay stacked beside the hole, sized to make a rough cover, Stevick guessed. The hole’s former contents had been heaped precariously at the curb—the hydrant wasn’t likely to be back in commission too soon, at this rate. The orange cone remained, like an ill-fitted condom stuck on its head. The truck, however, was gone.
And then it was back, jerking to a halt at the curb before him, as if responsive to Stevick’s own presence, to his attentions; however absurd this notion might be, Stevick had conceived it. With an unhurried persistence, the jumpsuited men emerged again and opened the van’s rear, then stepped inside to wrangle out what at first might have seemed another object but then revealed itself to be a man, a human captive. The man was dressed in the same uniform, as though recently demoted from their company. But his skin, Stevick noted wearily, as if this fact beckoned to outrage he ought to feel rising within him but didn’t, was darker than theirs. His head shaved, where their hair was intact; his two- or three-day beard rough, where theirs were, in one case, trimmed intoa goatee and, in the other, shaved clean. So the jumpsuits, rather than suggesting equivalence between the three, framed difference. A cruddy cloth gagged the captive’s mouth; another bound his wrists in front of him. His eyes didn’t trouble to plead as his captors led him to the fresh hole and lowered him within, taking care not to scuff his elbows on the crumbled lip. They’d measured well: The captive nestled just underneath the three fat boards when these were fitted over his head. One of the jumpsuited operatives stood atop the boards, testing their firmness with apparent satisfaction, while the other quickly loaded the cones into the back of the truck. Now, at last, the rain began to fall.
“How—?” Stevick began, then
The jackhammers, though, drew complaint. Several exasperated café denizens packed their laptops and muttered in the loose direction of the truck and its jumpsuited operatives as they fled the scene, like birds flitting to another treetop, and no more courageous. One of the café’s counterpersons, a chubby guy in an apron, seeing business spooked, made a more forthright protest, even shaking his fist. But the small dimension of the task blunted his protest: By the time the jumpsuited pair had ignored the counterperson for a minute or two, minute smiles perhaps rippling their lips—or was this an effect of the device’s vibration?—they were shifting the jackhammer back into the truck in favor of shovels and picks, with which they deftly cleared the hole of shattered black chunks. Stevick nodded consolation to the counterperson, who had, after all, poured his soapy coffee forty-five minutes ago. What remained of it was cold.
*
The excavation was complete by the time Stevick wandered by half an hour later, having picked up his dry cleaning from the Korean and used his own bathroom before circling back to the café. Rain still threatened, hadn’t arrived. Stevick couldn’t say why he was enthralled by theactivities that had commenced with the truck’s arrival; some intimation, he supposed in retrospect, though it wasn’t uncommon for him to buzz the café two or three times in a procrastinating morning. The hole was steep and accurate, hewing to the spray-painted plan still visible in two corners where the lines of paint, meeting, had pooled and blurred: an inverted phone booth of emptied dirt and rubble. Three fat fitted planks lay stacked beside the hole, sized to make a rough cover, Stevick guessed. The hole’s former contents had been heaped precariously at the curb—the hydrant wasn’t likely to be back in commission too soon, at this rate. The orange cone remained, like an ill-fitted condom stuck on its head. The truck, however, was gone.
And then it was back, jerking to a halt at the curb before him, as if responsive to Stevick’s own presence, to his attentions; however absurd this notion might be, Stevick had conceived it. With an unhurried persistence, the jumpsuited men emerged again and opened the van’s rear, then stepped inside to wrangle out what at first might have seemed another object but then revealed itself to be a man, a human captive. The man was dressed in the same uniform, as though recently demoted from their company. But his skin, Stevick noted wearily, as if this fact beckoned to outrage he ought to feel rising within him but didn’t, was darker than theirs. His head shaved, where their hair was intact; his two- or three-day beard rough, where theirs were, in one case, trimmed intoa goatee and, in the other, shaved clean. So the jumpsuits, rather than suggesting equivalence between the three, framed difference. A cruddy cloth gagged the captive’s mouth; another bound his wrists in front of him. His eyes didn’t trouble to plead as his captors led him to the fresh hole and lowered him within, taking care not to scuff his elbows on the crumbled lip. They’d measured well: The captive nestled just underneath the three fat boards when these were fitted over his head. One of the jumpsuited operatives stood atop the boards, testing their firmness with apparent satisfaction, while the other quickly loaded the cones into the back of the truck. Now, at last, the rain began to fall.
“How—?” Stevick began, then
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