A Trouble of Fools Read Online Free PDF Page A

open.
    There was nothing inside.
    I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the cool metal door of 7A. Maybe Margaret knew about the locker after all. Maybe she’d found the key, taken Eugene Paul et cetera’s extra shirt home to iron.
    There were a few crumpled scraps of paper in one corner of the locker. I smoothed them out. One was a bank wididrawal slip, the kind you get from those automated tellers, for fifty bucks. The other was a receipt from an all-night grocery for a dollar and change. Big whoop. Fifty wouldn’t get him far. I shoved them both in my shoulder bag, and ran my fingers around the dusty edges of the locker.
    “Ouch!” The damn thing stuck me, whatever it was. I sucked the tip of my finger and put in my other hand, gingerly now, to investigate. Some rare breed of biting cockroach, no doubt.
     
    I murmured a few other things. I probably wouldn’t need to teach the parakeet to swear after all. She could just pick it up around the house.
    A human voice, female, nasal. “And here is our Mr. Andrews at lovely Cedar Wash Condominiums.”
    I inhaled. Before I could speak the music started up again, then stopped, lush strings mercifully strangled.
    “To whom am I speaking?” demanded a gruff bass voice.
    He sounded like I’d kept him waiting.
    “Carlotta Carlyle,” I repeated for the umpteenth time.
    “Want me to spell it?”
    “Ah. Wife of Thomas C. Carlyle.”
    “Ah,” I echoed.
    “You’re calling about the contest,” he continued.
    Bingo.
    “Mrs. Carlyle,” he said excitedly, sounding like he was auditioning for TV game show host of the week, “could you read me the number on the top left-hand corner of your letter?”
    I
    am not Mrs. Carlyle. Carlyle is my maiden name, which I never abandoned. I am Ms. Carlyle, sometimes Miss Carlyle, although I don’t see what business my marital status should be to people who don’t even know me on a first-name basis. I wasn’t even Mrs. when I was married. But I don’t quibble with folks who want to give me money.
    The letter was tacked low on the refrigerator door, with one of those magnets that looks like a hamburger. A gift from Roz. All my plain silver disk magnets have disappeared. Roz again. She borrows various household objects with the intent of immortalizing them in acrylics. A vase here, a box of steel wool pads there. Her variations on the theme of dead Smurfs trapped in Windex bottles are impressive. Sometimes the magnet, the vase, the Windex will return as mysteriously as it flew. Sometimes substitution occurs.
    I tucked the phone between my left shoulder and ear, and stooped to get a better look.
    “How about A-198306?”
    “Congratulations.”
    “This is for real? Twenty thousand dollars?”
    “Or the trip to Italy. For the entire family. Up to eight individuals.
    Deluxe accommodations, first class all the way.”
    “My, my,” I said.
    “You’ll want to make an appointment,” he said firmly.
    “I will? Oh—yes, I will.”
    “Already more than half the two-bedroom units at exciting Cedar Wash are pre-sold, but if you place your order within the next thirty days, you and your husband can select a custom-colored hot-tub.”
    “About the twenty thousand—”
    “In order to win the grand prize, all you have to do is view the property. No obligation to buy. Would next Saturday be convenient?”
    “My husband is out of town. I’d be available.”
    “Both you and your husband must be present.”
    “Like I said, my husband is out of town.”
    “Well, as long as the two of you collect your prize within fourteen days, we can be quite flexible.”
    “Flexible” probably didn’t extend to cats.
    “Thomas is overseas,” I said gravely. “It might take me a while to contact him.”
    I pictured an imaginary Thomas C. Carlyle, traveling through remote and rugged mountains with a band of Afghan guerrillas, burnoose waving in the breeze. He looked like Robert Redford. Younger.
    T.C. rubbed against my leg. He didn’t