Typical American Read Online Free PDF Page A

desk so that the sun kept his tea warm. He had thought he would miss the library, and was glad he still cooked with everyone else; at least he saw people in the evening. But to his surprise, he

    found that he liked working alone during the day, that in solitude he'd found a jet of concentration he'd never felt behind him before. His "Stress Analysis of Gears by Photoelastic Analysis" went better than he could have believed possible; and soon he found that despite the horror stories he'd heard about impossible research topics, and advisors who kept their students ten, twenty years, he actually looked forward to working on his doctorate. His doctorate! Just thinking about it made him feel like a man in possession of something. Every day he thought how lucky he was. Every day he thought how proud his family would have been to see him like this. What was the matter with his life all these years, that it had stood in anxious whitecaps? For once in his life, he thought, he was actually doing things the right way.
    With the March mud, though, came notes. Would Ralph come see Mr. Fitt — that was the first. Immediately, added the second. And the third, signed by Mr. Fitt personally, in a curdling black hand — would Ralph please come or face the consequences.
    Heavyhearted, Ralph pushed his desk back against the wall, shut the curtain, clipped together his equations and charts.
    "Fitt never liked you" observed Old Chao, huffing loudly, as he set down a box of books. He killed a roach and showed it to Ralph.
    And surely Ralph's new building was not like his old one. Now that he was moving he realized how fond he'd grown of the square brick apartment house, with its layers of windows and fire escapes, its hidden stack of predictable halls — how fond he'd grown of its schedules. The every so often it was mopped, the every so often sprayed. Order: not only were all its door numbers of the same font, a family, but the ones on the mailboxes were the door markers in miniature — kin. Even the tenants were a more or less matched set.
    His new building, on the other hand, had at one point been turned into offices, and was now still mostly offices on the first floor, but with rooms and storerooms on the second floor, and rooms and more offices on the third. Everyone seemed to be

    missing something. There was a family with no mother, a couple with no furniture, a man with no legs. The businesses seemed to have no business. What the various tenants did have, though, was visitors, lots of them, so that (as some of the doors were marked with numbers, some with letters, and some not at all) a day in residence was a succession of strange heads popping in, sometimes with bodies attached. At least until Ralph fixed his lock; and then it was the sound of his knob being tried, communication attempted. "Bruce? Bruce? You in there?" Bang, bang. Or, "Wouldja openitup, Jane, comeon, knockitoff."
    Ralph, though, was in no position to be picky. Mr. Fitt, apparently, had mobilized. Now Ralph was receiving letters from the Department of Immigration. "It has come to our attention ...." And what about that strange man hanging around his Chinese friends lately? "Tall man/ 1 said Old Chao, "with a dogr
    Ralph moved again, this time to a building with fleas. Then he moved once more, to a former hotel, after a tall man started walking a dog on his block; and yet again, after a dream about Mr. Fitt poisoning his water with lead. And now what about these phone calls? He had of course stopped using the phone, as his Chinese friends all knew; his landladies too he'd instructed never to admit they'd ever heard of him, much less that they knew where he lived, or how he could be reached. Yet someone had called twice, asking for him by name.
    "So I sez go blow." This was Mrs. Ritter, his current landlady. "I sez, I don't rent to no Chinks. So far's I'm concerned they bring bugs."
    Ralph moved. Ten days later, the calls started again.
    "Listen," said Mrs. Bellini. "I