their own little way, made the Rat sad. After seeing her several times, the Rat had guessed her to be twenty-seven. And he was right on the nose.
Her breasts were small, her slender body free of excess flesh and beautifully tanned – though she’d deny having wanted to get a tan, really. High cheekbones and thin lips bespoke a good upbringing and an inner core of strength, yet behind all the shades of expression animating her face, what showed was an utterly defenseless naivete.
She’d graduated from the architecture department of an art school and was working in a planning office, that much she’d told him. Birthplace? Nowhere hereabouts. Came here after graduating. Once a week she’d swim at the pool, and on Sunday nights she took a train to her viola lessons.
Once a week, on Saturday nights, the two of them would get together. Then all day Sunday, the Rat would loll about while she played Mozart.
Chapter 7
Down with a cold for three days, a backlog of work awaited me on my return to the office. My mouth was all raspy and dry; I felt as if someone had gone over my whole body with sandpaper. Pamphlets and papers and booklets and magazines had piled up around my desk like anthills. My partner came in, mumbled some inquiry after my health, then went back to his own room. The office girl brought in a cup of hot coffee and two rolls as usual, set them on the desk, and vanished. I found I’d forgotten to buy cigarettes, so I bummed a pack of Seven Stars off my partner, pinched the filter off one and lit the other end. The sky was overcast just to the point where you couldn’t tell where the air ended and the clouds began. Everything smelled as though someone had been trying to burn damp leaves. Or else it only seemed that way because of my fever.
I took a deep breath, and broke up the anthill closest at hand. Every item was stamped RUSH across the top and marked underneath with a deadline in red felt-tip pen. Luckily, that was the only RUSH anthill. And even luckier, there was still a couple of days left to go on them. The rest had deadlines from one to two weeks later, no problem if I farmed out half of it for rough translation. So one by one I started in on the booklets and brochures, restacking them in the order I finished them. A process that left an anthill of far less stable configuration than before. It looked like a newspaper graph by sex and age of constituent support for the cabinet. And it wasn’t just the shape that was strange, I might add; its contents were as thrilling as a cross-section of random topics.
1. Charles Rankin, Scientific Puzzle Box: Animals.
From p. 68, “Why Cats Wash Their Faces” to p. 89, “How Bears Catch Fish.” Finish by Oct. 12.
1. American Nursing Association, ed., Talking with the Terminally Ill. All 16 pp. Finish by Oct. 19.
2. Frank de Seto, Jr., Tracing Authors’ Illnesses. Chapter 3, “Authors and Hay Fever.” All 23 pp. Finish by Oct. 23.
3. Rend Claire, Le Chapeau de Paille d’Italie, English trans. scenario.
All 39 pp. Finish by Oct. 26.
The real shame was that the clients’ names were never written anywhere. I could scarcely imagine who, for any reason, would want to get these things translated (and as RUSH jobs, no less). Perhaps some bear had stopped in its tracks before a stream in expectation of my translation. Or maybe a nurse was waiting wordlessly in her vigil over a terminally ill patient.
Photos of a cat washing its face with its paw lay before me on the desk as I drank my coffee and chewed one of the rolls to a pulp. It tasted like papier-mâché. My head had begun to clear a bit, but my extremities still tingled with fever. I took my camping knife out of the desk drawer, spent forever carefully sharpening six F pencils, then slowly got down to business.
I put on some old Stan Getz, and was at it until noon. The band was top notch – Stan Getz, Al Haig, Jimmy Rainey, Teddy Kotick, and Tiny Kahn. I whistled along with the tape through the
Her breasts were small, her slender body free of excess flesh and beautifully tanned – though she’d deny having wanted to get a tan, really. High cheekbones and thin lips bespoke a good upbringing and an inner core of strength, yet behind all the shades of expression animating her face, what showed was an utterly defenseless naivete.
She’d graduated from the architecture department of an art school and was working in a planning office, that much she’d told him. Birthplace? Nowhere hereabouts. Came here after graduating. Once a week she’d swim at the pool, and on Sunday nights she took a train to her viola lessons.
Once a week, on Saturday nights, the two of them would get together. Then all day Sunday, the Rat would loll about while she played Mozart.
Chapter 7
Down with a cold for three days, a backlog of work awaited me on my return to the office. My mouth was all raspy and dry; I felt as if someone had gone over my whole body with sandpaper. Pamphlets and papers and booklets and magazines had piled up around my desk like anthills. My partner came in, mumbled some inquiry after my health, then went back to his own room. The office girl brought in a cup of hot coffee and two rolls as usual, set them on the desk, and vanished. I found I’d forgotten to buy cigarettes, so I bummed a pack of Seven Stars off my partner, pinched the filter off one and lit the other end. The sky was overcast just to the point where you couldn’t tell where the air ended and the clouds began. Everything smelled as though someone had been trying to burn damp leaves. Or else it only seemed that way because of my fever.
I took a deep breath, and broke up the anthill closest at hand. Every item was stamped RUSH across the top and marked underneath with a deadline in red felt-tip pen. Luckily, that was the only RUSH anthill. And even luckier, there was still a couple of days left to go on them. The rest had deadlines from one to two weeks later, no problem if I farmed out half of it for rough translation. So one by one I started in on the booklets and brochures, restacking them in the order I finished them. A process that left an anthill of far less stable configuration than before. It looked like a newspaper graph by sex and age of constituent support for the cabinet. And it wasn’t just the shape that was strange, I might add; its contents were as thrilling as a cross-section of random topics.
1. Charles Rankin, Scientific Puzzle Box: Animals.
From p. 68, “Why Cats Wash Their Faces” to p. 89, “How Bears Catch Fish.” Finish by Oct. 12.
1. American Nursing Association, ed., Talking with the Terminally Ill. All 16 pp. Finish by Oct. 19.
2. Frank de Seto, Jr., Tracing Authors’ Illnesses. Chapter 3, “Authors and Hay Fever.” All 23 pp. Finish by Oct. 23.
3. Rend Claire, Le Chapeau de Paille d’Italie, English trans. scenario.
All 39 pp. Finish by Oct. 26.
The real shame was that the clients’ names were never written anywhere. I could scarcely imagine who, for any reason, would want to get these things translated (and as RUSH jobs, no less). Perhaps some bear had stopped in its tracks before a stream in expectation of my translation. Or maybe a nurse was waiting wordlessly in her vigil over a terminally ill patient.
Photos of a cat washing its face with its paw lay before me on the desk as I drank my coffee and chewed one of the rolls to a pulp. It tasted like papier-mâché. My head had begun to clear a bit, but my extremities still tingled with fever. I took my camping knife out of the desk drawer, spent forever carefully sharpening six F pencils, then slowly got down to business.
I put on some old Stan Getz, and was at it until noon. The band was top notch – Stan Getz, Al Haig, Jimmy Rainey, Teddy Kotick, and Tiny Kahn. I whistled along with the tape through the
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