The Lottery and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

certain that the gentleman you were inquiring for came in this morning and purchased one dozen chrysanthemums. No delivery.”
    “You’re sure? ” she asked.
    “Positive,” the florist said emphatically. “That was absolutely the man.” He smiled brilliantly, and she smiled back and said, “Well, thank you very much.”
    He escorted her to the door. “Nice corsage?” he said, as they went through the shop. “Red roses? Gardenias?”
    “It was very kind of you to help me,” she said at the door.
    “Ladies always look their best in flowers,” he said, bending his head toward her. “Orchids, perhaps?”
    “No, thank you,” she said, and he said, “I hope you find your young man,” and gave it a nasty sound.
    Going on up the street she thought, Everyone thinks it’s so funny : and she pulled her coat tighter around her, so that only the ruffle around the bottom of the print dress was showing.
    There was a policeman on the corner, and she thought, Why don’t I go to the police—you go to the police for a missing person. And then thought, What a fool I’d look like. She had a quick picture of herself standing in a police station, saying, “Yes, we were going to be married today, but he didn’t come,” and the policemen, three or four of them standing around listening, looking at her, at the print dress, at her too-bright make-up, smiling at one another. She couldn’t tell them any more than that, could not say, “Yes, it looks silly, doesn’t it, me all dressed up and trying to find the young man who promised to marry me, but what about all of it you don’t know? I have more than this, more than you can see: talent, perhaps, and humor of a sort, and I’m a lady and I have pride and affection and delicacy and a certain clear view of life that might make a man satisfied and productive and happy; there’s more than you think when you look at me.”
    The police were obviously impossible, leaving out Jamie and what he might think when he heard she’d set the police after him. “No, no,” she said aloud, hurrying her steps, and someone passing stopped and looked after her.
    On the coming corner—she was three blocks from her own street—was a shoeshine stand, an old man sitting almost asleep in one of the chairs. She stopped in front of him and waited, and after a minute he opened his eyes and smiled at her.
    “Look,” she said, the words coming before she thought of them, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for a young man who came up this way about ten this morning, did you see him?” And she began her description, “Tall, blue suit, carrying a bunch of flowers?”
    The old man began to nod before she was finished. “I saw him,” he said. “Friend of yours?”
    “Yes,” she said, and smiled back involuntarily.
    The old man blinked his eyes and said, “I remember I thought, You’re going to see your girl, young fellow. They all go to see their girls,” he said, and shook his head tolerantly.
    “Which way did he go? Straight on up the avenue?”
    “That’s right,” the old man said. “Got a shine, had his flowers, all dressed up, in an awful hurry. You got a girl, I thought.”
    “Thank you,” she said, fumbling in her pocket for her loose change.
    “She sure must of been glad to see him, the way he looked,” the old man said.
    “Thank you,” she said again, and brought her hand empty from her pocket.
    For the first time she was really sure he would be waiting for her, and she hurried up the three blocks, the skirt of the print dress swinging under her coat, and turned into her own block. From the corner she could not see her own windows, could not see Jamie looking out, waiting for her, and going down the block she was almost running to get to him. Her key trembled in her fingers at the downstairs door, and as she glanced into the drugstore she thought of her panic, drinking coffee there this morning, and almost laughed. At her own door she could wait no longer, but