Being Invisible Read Free Page A

mental impairment. Whichever, after the ritualistic reference to this functionary’s latest stunt (“Know what Glen did today? Threw a lot of old paint cans down the incinerator. Firemen put it out before the walls got too hot to touch, but the building’s been cited for the black smoke that covered the neighborhood. We’ll pay for that with the next hike in rents”), Todvik often added, “I certainly keep my daughter out of the basement.” Though in Wagner’s judgment Miss Todvik, who looking thirty-five was seventeen only if you had been so informed, was more than a match for Glen, physically or in force of character. She had the foulest mouth Wagner had ever encountered in a female; reeked, in the close quarters of an elevator, of hops and smoke; and once, perhaps drunk or worse, had intimated to him that she was available for sexual purposes though not for free.
    There were more attractive females in the building, and he knew some of them well enough to exchange bromides en route through hallways or lobby. Two were roommates and shared an apartment with still a third young lady whom Wagner had never actually seen owing to her demanding schedule of college plus job. The two he knew, Ellen Mackintosh and Debbie Fong, worked for the same bank. They were both genteel and well dressed. The latter was presumably Chinese but pretty obviously native-born, speaking Standard American. Though both women were attractive, Wagner had never desired either—or, more’s the pity, anyone else except Babe, whom, to his knowledge, they had never met, for their hours would have been different from hers: she worked in an art gallery that didn’t open till late morning, and never used the basement laundry room. Yet since his wife had left him, he found meeting Ellen and Debbie unbearable. Perhaps it would have been easier with either alone, but together they represented the kind of team to which he himself no longer belonged.
    The other woman with whom he was slightly acquainted was named Sandra Elg. She had red hair, ivory skin, a large bosom, and formerly a handsome, sinewy-necked husband who sold expensive imported cars and was thought to have been a racing driver in his prime, which obviously had been not long before. Wagner was no authority in this area, being licensed to drive only those cars with an automatic transmission. As it happened, Elg had died suddenly, out of town, only a few days earlier, as Mrs. Elg had informed him when, despite his efforts to slip down the hall to the incinerator at a time when he was unlikely to encounter any of the other tenants, namely, one o’clock in the morning, the elevator door opened just as he was passing it and she emerged, overdressed as always, with the usual décolletage and heavy scent. She was not in mourning attire but spoke in a melancholy tone when she told Wagner of her loss.
    Such is the ruthless nature of the human heart, the news made him feel better, though certainly he hoped that this truth remained well hidden behind his remarks of condolence. But he could not expect to run into only Mrs. Elg from now on, and anyway he doubted that her sense of bereavement would endure as long as his own, which was perhaps unfair of him, but he was simply unable to believe that a female of her endowments could have his depth of feeling. After Babe left, Wagner honestly never expected to attract another woman his life long. Perhaps that, more than any other reason, was why he decided to try to become invisible—though it would be a misrepresentation to say that one ever makes an altogether conscious resolve in such a matter.
    He had happened to be standing, naked, before the full-length mirror on the inside of the bedroom door, when it began. He had only just got out of bed on a Saturday morning, to face the rest of the day, indeed the weekend, alone. With no one to see him, he found he was unable to assume a good posture: he could throw his shoulders back but he could not keep them