The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick: A Novel Read Free Page B

hadn’t even scraped his skin. Still, he imagined that some kind of lymph fluid was seeping out through all his pores. He was up and had wiped off everything in the room with a dish towel.
    He looked out the window: down below, somebody with an armful of coats on hangers was running across the grass toward a delivery truck.
    He took the elevator, left the house, and walked straight ahead for a while. Then he took the suburban bus to the streetcar terminal; from there he rode back downtown.
    When he got to the hotel, it turned out that his briefcase had already been brought downstairs for safekeeping, since it looked as if he wouldn’t be back. While he was paying his bill, the bellboy brought the briefcase from the checkroom. Bloch saw a faint ring on it and realized that a damp milk bottle must have been standing on it; he opened the case while the cashier was getting his change and noticed that the contents had been inspected: the toothbrush handle was sticking out of its leather case; the portable radio was lying on top. Bloch turned toward the bellboy, but he had disappeared into the checkroom. The space behind the desk was quite narrow, so Bloch was able to pull the cashier toward him with one hand and then, after a sharp breath, to fake a slap against his
face with the other. The cashier flinched, though Bloch had not even touched him. The bellboy in the checkroom kept quiet. Bloch had already left with his briefcase.
    He got to the company’s personnel office in time, just before lunch, and picked up his papers. Bloch was surprised that they weren’t already there ready for him and that some phone calls still had to be made. He asked to use the phone himself and called his ex-wife; when the boy answered the phone and immediately launched into his rote sentence about his mother not being home, Bloch hung up. The papers were ready by now; he put the income-tax form in his briefcase. Before he could ask the woman about his back pay, she was gone. Bloch counted out on the table the money for the phone call and left the building.
    The banks were also closed for the lunch break by now. Bloch waited around in a park until he could withdraw the money from his checking account—he’d never had a savings account. Since that wouldn’t take him very far, he decided to return the transistor radio, which was practically brand-new. He took the bus to his place in the Second District and also picked up a flash attachment and a razor. At the store they carefully explained that the goods couldn’t be returned, only exchanged. Bloch took the bus back to
his room and also stuffed into a suitcase two trophies —of course, they were only copies of cups his team had won, one in a tournament and the other in a championship game—and a gold-plated pendant in the shape of two soccer boots.
    When no one came to wait on him in the junk shop, he took out his things and simply put them on the counter. Then he felt that he’d put the things on the counter too confidently, as though he’d already sold them, and he grabbed them back off the counter and hid them in his bag; he would put them back on the counter only after he’d been asked to. On the back of a shelf he noticed a china music box with a dancer striking the familiar pose. As usual when he saw a music box, he felt that he’d seen it before. Without haggling, he simply accepted the first offer for his things.
    With the lightweight coat he had taken from his room across his arm, he had then gone to the South Station. On his way to the bus stop, he had run into the woman at whose newsstand he usually bought his papers. She was wearing a fur coat while walking her dog. Even though he usually said something to her, staring all the while at her grimy fingernails, when she handed him his paper and his change, here, away from her stand, she seemed not to know him; at least she didn’t look up and hadn’t answered his greeting.
    Since there were only a few trains to the border each