Out of Mind Read Online Free PDF

to play here on Saturday. I don't need to say anything. I only listen and look at Karen, who changes into a girl whom the boy calls Susan and who is then suddenly, in a flash, briefly Karen again, the Karen of fifty years ago, who used to shrug her shoulders in just the same way, the left one slightly higher than the right.
    Geoffrey orders a Budweiser which he drinks straight from the bottle. He cracks a joke and as he puts the bottle back on the counter he briefly touches her cheek. She pushes his hand away laughingly, but not too decisively.
    Maybe I was too timid. Maybe that was why I lost her. What are you lying there looking at me for? I'm happy you're so beautiful. Let me feel it. And I had to act the lover while I was really still a little boy. With his first girl, every boy must conquer his mother, those big warm breasts between which you rubbed your face, those nipples you sucked at as a greedy baby, who knows, from some primeval memory.
    I look at the girl called Susan. How often have I thought of this: to meet Karen once more. For a moment they seemed to fit into each other, this barmaid at the tavern and she. I get up and leave. When she calls after me that I have forgotten my change I merely wave my left hand dismissively above my head, as though wishing, by that gesture, to banish the comparison for ever from my thoughts.
    I walk up the steeply climbing Hancock Street and Dale Avenue, past neatly cared-for houses with their wooden, empty conservatories and doorsteps swept clear of snow, until I reach Prospect Street. At the back of the Maplewood candy store two women in unbuttoned coats are eating cream cakes.
    Philip sits reading behind his overcrowded desk in the second-hand bookstore. He calls me by my surname. Hello, Mr Klein. Mister Kline, that's how they pronounce it here. I go up to him and he looks a bit surprised when he feels my firm handshake. I nod contentedly. Philip scratches his ginger chin-strap beard, apologizes that there is no hot coffee left, and then asks how I liked The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene.
    The question takes me aback. I am not attuned to it. It also seems as if I only half understand it. Like an incomplete sentence. You can guess at the rest, but there are more possibilities.
    'Haven't got round to it yet,' I say, and in order to please him I select another book by the same author from one of the shelves. Our Man in Havana.
    'I saw the movie once,' I explain, 'with Alec Guinness.' He nods but I can tell from his face that he doesn't know the movie. I pay. He accompanies me to the door and holds it open for me.
    'Next time I'll stay longer,' I say. 'I like the air here, that smell of old paper and dust and printer's ink.'
    I put the paperback in the inner pocket of my lined coat. Through small side-streets I zigzag slowly and carefully downward, in the direction of the bay and the harbour. I walk down Western Avenue. There are large houses here, villas with wood carvings not confined to the eaves but also enclosing the windows in fanciful chalice shapes. The sea is as calm and mouse-grey as the sky. The sou'wester of the fisherman's statue on its plinth is rimmed with snow and the spokes of the ship's wheel, which he grasps with both hands as he peers towards his shipwrecked mates at sea, also carry thin white edges of snow.
    A car stops at the kerbside right in front of me. Through the rear window I see Robert, nervously turning on his axis. Vera leans sideways and immediately starts talking to me in an agitated voice while she holds the door open for me.
    'I've been sick with worry, Robert came home on his own. I thought you'd had an accident. I've been driving all over until at last I saw you walking here. How could you forget the dog, Maarten? And then coming all this way. A little walk, you said.'
    'I went to the bookstore,' I say airily. 'Bought another book by Graham Greene. Our Man in Havana. The one they made that movie of, with Alec Guinness, you remember?'
    Her