Time Out of Mind Read Online Free PDF Page B

the answer. Jonathan Corbin's worst enemy is not Jonathan Corbin after all.
    It was during me underground crosstown ride to the Lex ington Avenue subway, where they transferred to the north bound IRT local, that Gwen Leamas began to notice a subtle change in Jonathan Corbin.
    The most welcome change was that he'd begun to relax. On that first short jog to the BMT station at Fifty-fifth Street, Jonathan had almost bolted. It was more than panic. She'd seen him look upward, not so much at the snow or sky but at the air space above Sixth Avenue, as if some great beast had begun materializing there. She could tell that by his eyes. They were focused, she felt, not on the buildings at the end of his line of sight but on some mid point where there was nothing at all. What is it? she'd shouted into his ear. What do you see? His answering look was almost one of accusation. Of betrayal. See? It's hap pening. Even with you here, it's happening. She dragged him forward.
    The sanctuary of the subway entrance, however, made all the difference. He'd seized the stairway handrail as if it was a lifeline, and his body sagged in relief as he staggered down below the street. There was a long backward glance at whatever floating thing had frightened him, but the fear was now replaced by ... she wasn't sure. Recognition, per haps. The beginnings of recognition. There would be time to ask him later.
    On the first of the two trains they took, she could almost feel Jonathan's pulse returning to its normal rate. The veins at his temples were quiet. His hands, although restless, were no longer knotted into fists. He'd stopped trying to scan every face in the car and now sat back reading, with an odd sort of thoroughness, the chain of advertisements that lined the inside crown. Gwen had a sense that the ads served as proof to Jonathan of where he was. About half the ads were in Spanish, reflecting the mix of riders. Gwen looked around. Half Spanish, most of the other half black, leaving only a minority of middle-class white types in their car. More than usual, actually. Today there were even a few affluent-looking WASPs who would normally have avoided subways but who must have despaired of finding rides on the surface.
    A single such woman appeared, working her way through the car. She chanced to stop near Corbin’s seat when she saw no use in searching further for one of her own. She was in her mid-thirties, Gwen Leamas guessed, and expensively dressed. Her long, hooded coat, trimmed in fur, had a Bergdorf Goodman look about it. At her throat she wore a choker whose centerpiece was a large amethyst in an antique setting. Her blandly attractive face was pinched into an expression of aggrieved martyrdom at her own discomfort and at being forced into close association with people who could not otherwise approach the world she lived in. She looked as though she was trying to breathe in as little of their exhaled air as possible and to touch her surroundings not at all. The train rocked sharply as it passed over a section of rutted ties, and the woman, whose name, Gwen decided, was Alicia Poindexter or some damned thing, reached reluctantly for the support of a metal post. She gripped it with only the fingertips of a gloved hand.
    Corbin, suddenly, was on his feet. He bowed in the woman's direction and indicated his seat with a courtly wave of his hand. Gwen knew that the woman had stopped near them, not in hopes of being offered a seat, but because of all those in the car she and Jonathan came closest to being acceptable company. The woman hesitated, staring appraisingly at Jonathan, but only for a moment. Another woman, darker and heavier, was pushing into position for a dash at the vacant seat in the event Bergdorf Goodman waited so much as another heartbeat. The woman in the long coat stepped forward, turned, and lowered herself daintily into the seat Corbin surrendered. She thanked him with an unsmiling flicker of eye contact and a tiny nod,