Mermaids on the Golf Course Read Online Free PDF Page A

midnight oil in his own apartment down on 23rd Street, but still—Greg was junior to Roland and should have done the tough work first. Roland’s job was to do the finishing touches, to think of every legitimate loophole and tax break that the IRS permitted, and Roland knew them all by heart. “I’ll settle Greg’s hash tomorrow,” Roland swore softly, though he knew he wouldn’t. The matter wasn’t that serious. He was just goddamned tired, angry, bitter.
    “Guh —wurrr-rr- kah!”
    Had he heard it, or was he imagining? What time was it?
    Twenty past one! Roland got up, saw that the bedroom door was closed, then nervously opened the door a little. Jane was asleep on the sofa, he could just make out the paleness of the blue duvet and the darker spot which was Jane’s head, and she hadn’t wakened from Bertie’s cry. She was getting used to it, Roland thought. And why not, he supposed. Before “Goo -wurr- kah” it had been “Aaaaagh!” as in the horror films or the comic strips. And before that?
    Roland was back at his worktable. Before that? He was staring down at the next tax return after Overland (to whom he had written a note to be read to Overland by telephone tomorrow if a secretary could reach him), and actually pondering what Bertie had used to utter before “Aaaaagh!” Was he losing his mind? He squirmed in his chair, straightened up, then bent again over the nearly completed form, ballpoint pen poised as he moved down a list of items. It was not making any sense. He could read the words, the figures, but they had no meaning. Roland got up quickly.
    Take a short walk, he told himself. Maybe give it up for tonight, as Jane had suggested, try it early tomorrow morning, but now a walk, or he wouldn’t be able to sleep, he knew. He was wide awake and jumpy with nervous energy.
    As he tiptoed through the dark living room towards the door, he heard a low, sleepy wail from Bertie’s room. That was a mewing sort of cry that meant, usually, that Bertie needed his diaper changed. Roland couldn’t face it. The mewing would eventually awaken Jane, he knew, and she could handle it. She wasn’t going to a job tomorrow. Jane had given up her job with a U.N. research group when Bertie had been born, though she wouldn’t have given it up, Roland found himself thinking for the hundredth time, if Bertie hadn’t had Down’s syndrome. She would have gone back to her job, as she had intended to do. But Jane had made an immediate decision: Bertie, her little darling, was going to be her full-time job.
    It was a relief to get out into the cool air, the darkness. Roland lived on East 52nd Street, and he walked east. A pair of young lovers, arms around each other’s waist, strolled slowly towards him, the girl tipped her head back and gave a soft laugh. The boy bent quickly and kissed her lips. They might have been in another world, Roland thought. They were in another world, compared to his. At least these kids were happy and healthy. Well, so had he and Jane been—just like them, Roland realized, just about six years ago! Incredible, it seemed now! What had they done to deserve this? Their fate? What? Nothing that Roland could think of. He was not religiously inclined, and he believed as little in prayer, or an afterworld, as he did in luck. A man made his own destiny. Roland Markow was the grandson of poor immigrants. Even his parents had had no university education. Roland had worked his way through CUNY, living at home.
    Roland was walking downtown on First Avenue, walking quickly, hands in the pockets of his raincoat which he had grabbed out of the hall closet, though it wasn’t raining. There were few people on the sidewalk, though the avenue had a stream of taxis and private cars flowing uptown in its wide, one-way artery. Now, out of a corner coffee shop, six or eight adolescents, all looking fourteen or fifteen years old, spilled on to the sidewalk, laughing and chattering, and one boy jumped twice, as if