Man in The Woods Read Online Free PDF Page A

parking’s already paid for. Kisses, hugs, unmentionable etceteras…
    Still naked, Paul idly plucks a corner of the table, where the glue holding the mahogany veneer to the particleboard tabletop has dried and become useless. Once the veneer has come loose, he cannot resist peeling it back even further, and before he entirely realizes what he is doing, he has removed several inches of veneer. “Uh-oh,” he says, and tries to smooth it down again, but it has risen into a dark, brittle curl, and after once more attempting to correct or at least conceal the damage, he dismisses it with a shrug, and orders breakfast from room service, which comes to thirty dollars, and when the man wheels the breakfast in on a linen-covered cart, Paul writes in a fifty percent tip, generosity coming easily with someone else’s money.
    He has two stops to make in the city and both are about money. The first stop is the more unpleasant of the two: he must see a client who has owed him eight thousand dollars for more than a year. The errand begins auspiciously. The drive from the hotel to 77th Street goes smoothly, with the traffic heavy but fluid. Adding further to the positive portents is finding a parking spot practically right in front of the building, a spot that, just as Paul drives up, is being vacated by another workman’s truck. Up on Fifth Avenue, most of the cars are sleek, black, and expensive, and the contractors and deliverymen in their utilitarian vehicles feel a kinship with one another. They are part of the city’s secret life, visible only to each other, the custodians of pipes and plumbing fixtures and floors and carpets, locks and doors, and plate glass, plaster, and paint. As Paul pulls into the space, he gives a friendly wave to the departing driver—a painter, judging by the spattered cap—who gives him a comradely thumbs-up.
    Once he is inside the lobby the signs and portents become less promising. The doorman on duty acts as if he were guarding the American embassy in some hostile nation, treating Paul as if he were tracking dog excrement across the colorful compass-point tile work of the lobby. When Paul is allowed to enter the elevator that will take him up to see Gerald Lundeen, the elevator operator, a small man with wisps of white hair, repeats several times: “So you’re going to see Lundeen,” as if there were something inherently dubious in the enterprise.
    Lundeen has been avoiding Paul for months and today he looks as if he has just pulled himself out of his sickbed. His pewter hair is unwashed and mussed, his glasses have thumbprints on the lenses, his long, bare feet seem not to be getting enough blood and are the color of talcum powder. He wears a paisley silk robe over what looks like nothing. His chest hair is moist with perspiration and two fingers on his left hand are splinted and taped together. He reminds Paul of his own father as he careened through his last months on earth, though Paul’s father’s life had followed a more ominous trajectory, from a secure position in a community college to a brief stint with a third-tier advertising agency to a job in a frame shop on lower Lexington Avenue, all with a great deal of rage and alcohol along the way, so that his death, though premature, was not entirely surprising.
    Whatever difficulties Lundeen may be experiencing, there is still enough money in his accounts to afford living in this nine-room apartment on Fifth Avenue. He has agreed to meet Paul to discuss their money matters dating back to a few months ago, when he told Paul that he had mailed him a check, which never arrived. Lundeen had seemed mystified at the time, and said he would make a stop payment, after which he would send Paul a replacement check. Paul waited several weeks and when he called Lundeen to ask again about the money, his calls went unanswered.
    Now, at last, Lundeen has agreed to meet. He offers Paul a seat in an original Queen Anne chair, upholstered in custard-yellow