Treadmill by Warren Adler Page A

the closet, pulled open every drawer in the apartment, and inspected the bathroom.
    With all possibilities checked, he sat for a long while wracking his memory. Then he looked toward his stacked books again. His eye rolled over the books whose author’s names ended in “T.” He saw Vanity Fair by William Thackeray, and under it, inexplicably, was The Magic Mountain .
    Had he had been so preoccupied with Parrish that even the simple act of putting a book away had been done incorrectly? Cooper couldn’t imagine himself doing that. Yet there it was.
    What next? he anxiously wondered.
    He pulled out The Magic Mountain and tried to read, but soon the words swam incoherently in front of him. He put the book away, got into his pyjamas, and slipped under his blankets. He wasn’t tired, but he couldn’t still the thoughts about his failing memory. Maybe it was the first signs of Alzheimer’s. It was possible , he mused. Sometimes people got it quite early.
    Cooper mentally went over those things that were awry, the stacked utensils, the sweats on the closet floor, the misfiled book. After awhile, he got up, put the light on, and contemplated the books. They were neatly stacked, but it occurred to him that they were too neatly stacked. He had taken great care in stacking them, mostly to prevent them from falling. But he hadn’t remembered lining them up so perfectly with the corner of each book fitting so exactly with the corner of those above and below.
    He reviewed his conversation with Beth Davis. Why is she so anxious to find out what had happened to Parrish, a man who had never even looked her way? He had to admit, it was intriguing, mystifying, and disturbing to a certain extent. As he ruminated over the situation, he became panicked by the idea that he might never get himself back to his routine unless he found Parrish.
    No. Found out about Parrish , he corrected himself.
    By morning, Cooper had convinced himself that only by figuring out what had happened to Parrish would stop what was happening to him. He laid out a plan. He would call all of the advertising agencies in town until someone for whom Parrish had worked with could come up with a phone number. Then he would call Parrish, just to hear his voice, and that, he hoped, would be the end of it. It seemed so logical, so simple an idea. Cooper wondered why he had not thought of it before.
    He looked up advertising agencies in the Yellow Pages and called them one by one.
    “Hi, this is Jack Cooper,” he told the secretary. “I’m looking for a Mike Parrish.”
    It proved to be more complicated than he had imagined. Many of the offices had not yet fully opened, and none had even heard of Parrish. People change fast at these agencies, Cooper knew, but he persisted anyway.
    At one agency, he got a bookkeeper who was willing to look at the agency’s records. He found that Parrish had done some work for them, and had been paid directly by check. Parrish had requested that he collect the check in person instead of by mail, so no record of either an address or a telephone number was on file.
    “How was the work ordered?” Cooper asked, knowing that someone had to discuss the work with Parrish before he began.
    “Beats me,” the bookkeeper said.
    Cooper asked to speak with the head of the agency, but he wasn’t in, and Cooper settled for one of the account executives.
    “I remember,” the man said. “It was for some auto dealer. That’s when we had auto accounts. Simpson was probably on that one.”
    “You’re the best,” Cooper said, noting that he was already reverting to the old ass-kissing lexicon of his old life. “How can I get a hold of Simpson?”
    “Gone,” the man said. “I think he retired somewhere to Florida.”
    It was like that with all the other agencies. Parrish was only vaguely known. There had been work assigned at a few places, but all that was left in the records was his name.
    Cooper kept looking at his watch. He was already going to