Little Doors Read Free Page A

hot stinking machines for eight hours, making twenty-five cents over minimum wage — I hate it! I really hate it! Do you think that’s what I wanna do with the rest of my life?”
    Crawleigh had never given the matter any thought at all, so he was quite unprepared to answer. Trying to divert the argument back to safer ground, Crawleigh said, “Well, perhaps I have been neglecting to give you the proper, ah, stimulation. But you must realize, dear, that it is not easy for us to be together. You know how small this town is. Everyone knows everyone else. If we were to go places together, my wife would soon learn. And then where would we be?”
    “Why don’t you ditch that old cow?” Audrey demanded.
    Crawleigh smiled as the mental image of Connie as a cow in a dress was conjured up. “It’s not so easy as all that, Audrey. You’re an adult. Surely you know how such things work. We must give it time. Listen, I have an idea. The very next out-of-state conference I have to go to, you’ll come along.”
    For a moment Audrey seemed mollified. But then, without warning, she threw herself down on Crawleigh and began to weep. Crawleigh wrapped his arms around her shaking body. Her skin felt like a handful of rose petals.
    “Oh, I’m so ordinary,” Audrey wailed. “I’m so plain and ordinary that no one could love me.”
    Patting her, Crawleigh said, “That’s not true. You’re my princess. My princess.”
    Audrey seemed not to hear.
     
    * * *
     
    O, frabjous day, they’d found the book!
    Crawleigh stood in the English Department offices. He had just opened the little door on his mailbox and withdrawn a slip that reported on his request for the volume mentioned by Mitchell. After failing to locate it in any of the university’s collections, he had initiated the search of associated facilities. And wouldn’t you know it, his fabulous luck was holding. It was available right here in sleepy old College Town, at a private library Crawleigh had often passed but never visited. It would be delivered by a campus courier later that day.
    Crawleigh could barely contain his excitement when he returned to his office. Why, he even felt charitable toward Connie, who that morning had unexpectedly gone to the trouble of rousing herself from bed before eleven and sharing breakfast with him.
    To pass the time until the courier arrived, Crawleigh idly picked up one of his favorite novels not written by The Illustrious Pair. Look Homeward, Angel , set in the period Crawleigh worshipped, had always struck him as somehow akin to fantasy, concerned as it was with the mysteries of Time and Space.
    Crawleigh flipped open the book to the famous preface.
     
… a stone, a leaf, an unfound door … the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth … the lost lane-end into heaven …
     
    The words filled him as always with profound melancholy, and he became so lost in the book that hours passed. When a knock sounded at the office door, he emerged reluctantly from the text.
    The courier demanded a signature for his package, and Crawleigh complied. Taking the plainly wrapped parcel with trembling hands, Crawleigh shut the door on the messenger and the world.
    Peeling off the old-fashioned brown paper and twine, Crawleigh settled down to look at this obscure book, whose title had so profoundly affected him.
    The book was a hardcover, about ten by twelve inches, and fairly thin. Its cover was the kind simply not made any more: the burgundy cloth framed an inset colored plate. The plate depicted a curious scene.
    Stretching away to a horizon line was an arid, stony plain. Standing in the foreground of the picture was a door and its frame, unattached to any building. Its knob was gold, its hinges black, and it was open. Within this door was an identical one, but smaller. Within the second, a third, within the third, a fourth, within the fourth …
    Crawleigh couldn’t count the painted doors past twenty. There was a small pinprick of green