Third Class Superhero Read Online Free PDF Page B

near the end of the summer, during a late session at work. David was pacing in front of the whiteboard with a Magic Marker in his hand. "Everyone is always watching David." The members of his working group nodded in sympathy. He was their boss. Also, he had large quads and round, hard anterior delts. People were somewhat afraid of him.

    "You know what?" he continued. "I'll be honest. I don't know what David's going to do." He stopped and leaned over the table for emphasis. Eric from marketing was nodding like an idiot. David lowered his voice now, to drive the point home. He said, "David doesn't rush things," and then paused for effect, drawing even more vigorous nodding. "That's just not
who David is.
"
    There was also the matter of his detachment from the goings-on of the world. This was both local and global. He hardly watched the news anymore. Names, places, statistics—they no longer held his interest. Likewise with water rights, tree frog biodiversity, the suffering of strangers. Things that used to matter to him: populist uprisings, malnutrition, the distribution of wealth. Nothing stirred him anymore.
    He had once cared.
    Cared deeply and, if not deeply, then, at the very least, cared mildly. Cared in an abstract, willing-to-sign-a-petition, NPR-listener sense of caring.
    Now the news just came and went, passed right through him. Now it all seemed so temporary, so specific, so far away.
    Just before Labor Day, David and Patricia were having their usual breakfast. They drank a pot of black coffee with heaps of sugar added. They each ate two slices of buttered toast and then split an orange while reading their respective sections of the newspaper. David always took the business page; Patricia browsed obituaries, then cooking. They read in silence.

    The phone rang. David did not look up from the stock quotes. Patricia answered.
    "It's for you," she said, handing it over.
    "Hello?" he said.
    "David Howe?" said the woman on the other end.
    And that was it.
    ***
    That wasn't when it happened, of course. But the day of the call was the day he remembered that, at some time in the recent past, something had happened. That, on some level, for some indefinite period of time, he had known, he had been aware, that this something had happened, although he was not sure what it was exactly.
    Two words.
That was all he had heard her say. After that, he had stopped listening. Two words: David Howe.
    She had obtained David's name from a database of qualified individuals. She wanted to talk to him about an exciting new opportunity, about upside potential and risk-adjusted returns. She was good at her job and David could not get in a word for ten minutes. Finally, he hung up on her in midsentence.

    He did not think about the call again until later that night, lying awake in the dark. Patricia was making small fluttering noises through her delicate nostrils. A bird outside their second-floor window was trying to mimic her nose calls. Between the chirping creature and his wife's snoring, he could not fall asleep.
    David Howe.
    That's all she had said. It was just his name. Two words. A question, nothing more.
    But now he could not stop thinking about it, could not stop thinking about that moment, after she'd said it, when he'd held the phone, hands trembling, breath shallow and acidic, his vision suddenly blurry. Something in her voice, in her tone, the way she had said his name, had reached deep down and plucked something inside. That morning in the kitchen he had had a feeling, but could not quite put his finger on it and so he let it go. But now, lying in the gray middle of the night, it had come back to him. Now he could not think about anything but the call; now it was coming to him; now he remembered what had turned his fingers cold and his ears hot.
    She was calling for David Howe, but she was not calling for
him.

    He remembered thinking,
She has the wrong number,
and wondering,
Why is this woman calling my house, calling my