Mortals Read Free Page B

it.
    Yesterday she had gotten sunburned. He could hear that she was intermittently picking up a sponge or cloth from a bowl of ice, wringing it out, and touching it to her face.
    Storage dominated the small room. Metal filing cabinets came to chest height along three walls and were topped with a double tier of uniform cardboard cartons, each carton marked with a code number. The one break in the tiers of boxes was utilized to house a portable phonograph and behind it a tight rank of longplaying record albums. A postal scale stood on top of the block of albums. There was no decoration on the exposed white upper walls or anywhere in the room, and no rug or mat on the maroon linoleum tiles of the floor. A copy of the
International Herald Tribune
folded twice would be aligned with the upper right-hand corner of the table. Through the transom came a remnant scent of cleanser.
    Her room was hot and dim. There was no table lamp. If Iris foundsomething she wanted to read closely in a letter, she would slant the sheet to catch the dying light from outside. There was one double window, and the short side of her worktable was pushed to the wall directly underneath it. The wings of the window were normally cranked out to their maximum extension. She would be sitting with her left side to the screened and barred view of the servants’ quarters fifty feet away. An arbor supporting a system of dead vines framed her view. On the tabletop, in addition to the newspaper, was a dust-hooded bulky typewriter set to one side and a tray of office necessities, like ballpoint pens, Wite-Out, type cleaner, and postage.
    As he’d hoped she would, she began to read aloud.
    “We are house-sitting in Sausalito for a public relations couple (People of the Fib) vacationing in Lappland. I should say ‘estate-sitting.’ It’s going to be a long three weeks. The man I’m with, Joel, I chose for this because he was verbal looking. He really isn’t verbal. People around here are being extremely social toward us. This is an area with many children deformed by utter wealth. In the next house we heard a child screaming because a swimming pool, which they have, isn’t enough. He wants them to get a water bloom (fountainlike thing). He is on strike and won’t go into the water. We heard his mother try to explain that water blooms are just trick things to make people satisfied when all they can have is (lowclass) aboveground pools, whereas they have this splendid in-ground pool. But he won’t go in the water. Sausalito would be a good place for you to adjust to the fact, when you come back (and you are going to come back), that you now rather often see vanity in the faces of young children. I mean of the permanent, adult sort, not the fleeting kind any child gets when he or she figures out that he or she got the best Xmas present in his or her circle of friends that year. You see it more and more, and in children of both sexes. I feel I must prepare you. And it’s not only in Marin County. By the way, isn’t my handwriting more appropriate now? You complained that I was writing too bigly for airletters and sort of cheating you of information. But that is my natural handwriting and look how small I’m making it for you herewith.
    “There are many hazards in this place of wealth. This morning Joel came out of the bathroom scowling and saying ‘Ow, I just burned my ass on the towel warmer.’ Joel is normally very silent, exceptwhen he hurts himself. I think I deserve someone more verbal than he.
    “I myself live a very moral life, of my own sort. I try to live as though there’s never anything good on television. That’s why I get so much more done in my waking hours, which is a necessity because I’m self-employed. I am thinking of starting a new religion for the self-employed. It would be based on the never-anything-good-on-TV premise and would have as its main sin not returning telephone calls. I’m out of a job, incidentally, in a de facto way. I