The Believers Read Online Free PDF Page B

on! I thought you were going to get some. I asked you yesterday." He smacked his hand against his newspaper. "Jesus!"
    Audrey came back out to the living room and gazed at him archly. "It's a tragedy, I know. How about a boiled egg?"
    "I want a bialy, goddammit."
    Audrey stood and waited.
    "All right, forget it," he said sulkily. "Gimme the egg."
    He went upstairs now to shower and get dressed. In the kitchen, Audrey poured herself coffee and put a pan of water on the stove. She was about to return to the living room to look at the New York Post editorial when she heard shouting from above. Putting down her cup, she went to the foot of the stairs. "Joel?" There was no reply. With a sigh, she trekked up to the top floor landing, where she found her husband raging over an empty can of black shoe polish.
    "Does no one but me ever replace anything in this house?" he demanded. "Would it be too much to ask that someone else bought fucking shoe polish around here?"
    "Lenny must have finished it," Audrey said calmly. "He used it the other night, when he went to that black tie thing with Tanya."
    The black tie detail was an unnecessary provocation, Joel thought. Audrey had an ignoble habit of dropping Lenny in it, so she might then rescue him.
    "Jesus!" he shouted, taking the bait anyway. "What are we running here, a hostel for the unemployed? Next time, tell him to get his own."
    "Those aren't the right shoes for that suit anyway," Audrey said, gesturing at the brogues that Joel had been intending to polish. "You wear the other ones with the blue suit."
    She turned away in silent triumph and went back downstairs.
    Shortly afterward, Joel followed her. With a dish towel tied around his neck to protect his shirt and tie, he ate the egg she had made for him and drank the coffee. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her. "I love you," he said.
    "Yeah, yeah." Audrey helped him on with his coat and walked him out to the front step. "Do good," she called, as he set off down the street.
    Without turning around, or breaking stride, Joel raised a hand in acknowledgment. "Buy some bialys," he called back.

    In the taxi over to Brooklyn, Joel's head pains grew worse. The metal object that was lodged in his skull had shifted to his frontal lobe now and seemed to be intent on boring its way out through his forehead. The cab driver was heavy on the brake, and the jerky motion of the car as it stopped and started its way through the heavy traffic on the bridge made him moan out loud. By the time he got out at Cadman Plaza, he was dangerously close to throwing up.
    Standing on the curb, waiting for his nausea to subside, he felt a hand on his arm. He looked up to see his paralegal, Kate, peering at him with concern.
    "Are you okay, Joel?"
    "Sure."
    "You look a little pale."
    "I have a headache, is all." Through the veil of his pain he registered a smattering of acne around Kate's mouth and a smear of red lipstick on her teeth.
    "You want me to get you an aspirin or something?" Kate asked.
    Joel shook his head. "I've taken about fifty Tylenol in the last twenty-four hours. They're making it worse, I think."
    "How about some water?" She brought out a plastic bottle from her bag.
    Joel smiled wanly as he took the bottle. Dear, homely, reliable Kate. How well she looked after him! He had been doubtful, when he first hired her, about taking on such an unattractive girl. He had worried that it would be dispiriting to have to confront her tree-trunk legs and her abominable complexion every morning. But Kate's devotedness and efficiency had more than made up for her aesthetic failings. And after so many years of complicated and time-consuming office imbroglios with female employees, there was, he had to admit, something rather soothing about not wanting to fuck his assistant.
    "Okay," he said, handing the bottle back. "I'm good."
    They went in through the glass doors of the Federal Courthouse and deposited their cell phones with a lady in a booth before