Embroidered Truths Read Online Free PDF Page B

after you, you’d be pretty sure what it might be.”
    “I can’t think, I just can’t think,” he said thickly, his face muffled in the arm of his shirt.
    “Sometimes,” said Betsy, looking at the strew of clothing around the big box, “a bit of physical exercise gets the blood flowing and ideas come to you.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means you can’t leave that mess in the middle of the shop.”
    He raised his head and looked around. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why didn’t you stop me sooner! Let’s get this cleared away!” He rose and hurried to begin stuffing clothes back into the box.
    Betsy came to stop him. “Wait a minute,” she said, and he obediently stopped, a fistful of socks in either hand. “How are we going to get this box upstairs?”
    “In stages, of course,” said Godwin. “First we get the stuff back in the box, then the box into the entrance hall. We’ll go through the front door, it’s shorter. I can carry arm-loads up the stairs, it’ll only take a few minutes.”
    It took more like half an hour, which was fine. Betsy hadn’t been kidding about the exercise and, besides, Godwin needed a few minutes to pull himself together. Meanwhile, Betsy continued opening up alone, knowing Godwin wanted time to himself to mourn the sad condition of his precious designer suits and silk shirts and hand-tooled Italian shoes.
    He came back into Crewel World even more depressed than she feared. “I was hoping he’d call, but instead he throws my clothes out after me,” he said.
    “But not into the street like that one time,” she reminded him.
    “Yes, but that time he yelled at me, called me names, called me on the phone to yell some more. This time, nothing, just silence.” He pulled his shoulders up and twisted his head from side to side. “My muscles are all clenched,” he reported. “It’s like my whole body knows this is different from the other times.”
    “Oh, Goddy,” she sighed sympathetically.
    “But at least he didn’t tear things or cut them to ribbons like some people do when they break up. Nothing’s damaged, an iron will put most of it right. But for the rest, where do you keep your washing machine?”
    “In the basement—they’re pay machines for my tenants but I use them, too. Do you have change?”
    “I dunno.” He began to search his jeans pockets. “Not much,” he reported after a minute, looking at a small collection of coins.
    “Here,” she said, and went for her purse. She had some change but had to break two dollars from the cash register to make sure he had enough.
    “Do you have to put your own money in?” he asked.
    “Of course. Work’s work, this is personal.”
    “Even though I’m an employee?”
    “I’m not doing this for an employee, I’m doing this for a friend.”
    “Oh, Betsy! ” He came at a trot to embrace her and they stood that way in a silent embrace—until they sniffed simultaneously, which made them laugh and break apart.
    “John also put my computer and my briefcase in the box, but not my good gold and diamond jewelry. Why would he be so mean?”
    “Perhaps he’s not being mean, he’s giving you an excuse to get in touch with him about them.”
    Godwin stared at her, then bloomed so gloriously at that possibility that she was forced to say, “Now, maybe not. Maybe he is being mean. You know him best, what do you think?”
    He faded while he thought a few moments, then shrugged. “I have no idea. Sometimes he is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. What’s an enigma?”
    “Something hard to understand.”
    “Yes, that’s John all right.”
    That afternoon, he spent the minutes between customers dashing down to the washer and dryer in the basement, and left work a few minutes early to take a suit and a jacket to the cleaners. But he insisted again on cooking supper, and this time poached two whitefish fillets which he covered with steamed crab and shrimp, and chopped asparagus in a white sauce.
    After supper he