The Intuitionist Read Online Free PDF Page A

Chancre’s Irish face when all the blood rushes into it, when the incumbent Guild Chair is set for one of his eruptions. She feels exposed, a voyeur in full moonlight on the clearest night of summer. Because they are talking about her, because she is implicated in all this—she knows this much, if not the specifics. The press conference bows around the entrance to Headquarters, and the garage ramp is mercifully unimpeded. The flashbulbs crackle and pop like dry brush beneath the feet of hunters.
    City buildings may be deficient in adequate staple supplies,comfortable chairs and quality toilet paper, but never in fluorescent lights. Lila Mae eases her sedan into the rank gloom of the garage and past the observation window of the mechanics’ office. The six-man crew in their dark green uniforms crane over their office’s old, reliable radio and Lila Mae prays she will make it safe past them, be spared the customary frowns and code-nods. Dicty college woman. This space in the garage is what the Department has allowed the colored men—it is underground, there are no windows permitting sky, and the sick light is all the more enervating for it—but the mechanics have done their best to make it their own. For example: A close inspection of Chancre’s campaign posters, which are taped to every other cement column despite regulations against campaign literature within a hundred yards of Headquarters, reveals myriad tiny insurrections, such as counterclockwise swirls in the middle of Chancre’s pupils, an allusion to his famous nocturnal dipsomania. You have to stand up real close to the posters to see the swirls, and even then they’re easy to miss: Lila Mae had to have Jimmy point them out to her. Horns, boiling cysts, the occasional cussword inked in across Chancre’s slat teeth—they add up after a while, somehow more personal and meaningful than the usual cartoons and pinups of office homesteading. No one notices them but they’re there, near-invisible, and count for something.
    Lila Mae closes the door and squeezes between the cars: it’s past seven and none of the night shift have left yet, which hasn’t happened in the three years she’s been with the Department. She doesn’t have a plan yet, figures she has at least until the press conference is over before she has to meet Chancre, and that much time to get her story straight. Unfortunately, Lila Mae realizes, she turned in her inspection report on the Briggs building yesterday afternoon, and even if she could think of a way to sneak into Processing, past Miss Bally and her girls, they would have already removed it. As evidence. How long before they pull in Internal Affairs, if they haven’t already? No one owes her any favors. Afterthree years she doesn’t owe any favors and no one owes her any back, which was how she liked it up ’til now. She is reconsidering her position. Maybe Chuck.
    “How’s she running today?” Jimmy asks. The young mechanic always says that when Lila Mae comes in from the field, figuring that his consistency and friendly shop talk will one day seem worth it, fondly recollected as a period of prehistoric innocence in their romance. He didn’t sneak up on her really—Lila Mae was just too preoccupied to notice his wiry body canter out of the office across the cement. She’s not too preoccupied, however, to notice that his daily query sounds uncertain today, the usual ambiguity over whether he is asking about Lila Mae or the Department sedan even more confused. He is smiling, however, and Lila Mae thinks maybe things aren’t that bad after all.
    Lila Mae asks, “What are all these cars still doing here?”
    “They’re all listening to Chancre and the Mayor talk about the building.” He’s not sure how much to say, or how to say it. He pulls his rag from the back pocket of his overalls and twists and bends it.
    It’s going to be like pulling teeth. After all this time, Lila Mae is not sure if Jimmy is just shy or dim-witted.