The Man Who Ate the 747 Read Free Page B

mess. A little pagoda of Empire Szechuan carryout containers stood in one corner. He squeezed past the stove and refrigerator jammed against the wall in the entryway. When he first moved from the Midwest, the real estate broker convinced him that many Manhattan homes had kitchen appliances in hallways, even living rooms.
    The walls of the apartment were tired Benjamin Moore white, ringed at imprecise intervals with photos in spare black frames of people so familiar that they were almost family. There was Henri Pellonpää in Finland, who killed the most mosquitoes in the five-minute world championships; Alan McKay of New Zealand, who made the world’s biggest soap bubble—105 feet—with a wand, dishwashing liquid, and water; and Joni Mabe of Georgia, who owned one of Elvis Presley’s warts, officially the world’s strangest body part keepsake.
    “Mrs. Bumble!” J.J. called out. “I’m home!”
    Down at the far end of the narrow living room, stooped beneath the dreary curtains, his elderly neighbor from upstairs watered sunflowers in a window box. She wore a frayed winter coat, a fedora, and headphones.
    “Mrs. Bumble?”
    The woman didn’t waver. She continued watering. He touched her shoulder gently, and as she turned around, he could hear the tinny sound of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.”
    “Hello, love,” she said, big red dots of rougecrinkling on her cheeks. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon. How was your trip?”
    “Can’t knock Paris. I brought you something.” He handed her a bottle of good duty-free Chardonnay.
    “Aww, thanks. I came down to get your mail and give my friends here a little drink.”
    Mrs. Bumble turned back to the sunflowers. They were made of plastic, coated with the black grit of the city. With a soft rag, she wiped the filth from each synthetic leaf, then sprinkled more water on them. “So? Did you meet any girls?”
    “It was a business trip,” J.J. said. “The records require all my concentration.” Actually, he had deflected an overture from a sunny flight attendant who told him that she’d be in town on a two-day layover.
    “Phooey,” said Mrs. Bumble.
    He knew she worried about him. He could never convince her that his brief, doomed encounters made him feel even more lonely. It had happened many times. He knew the brain chemistry of these ill-fated dates. A whiff of compatible pheromones, a neurochemical rush, giddiness, pleasure, then, as the dopamine wore off, the stark reality. She barked like a dog in her sleep or had a rap sheet as long as the Nile. Or, more often, he would disappoint her. The harder she fell for the man in the gold-crested jacket, the more disillusioned when he turned out to be just an ordinary guy named John Smith.
    “There’s more to love than meeting girls,” he said, trying to smile. “You’re looking at a man who inspires women to scale the heights of ambivalence.”
    “You take yourself too seriously. You sit there all day with your stopwatch and your measuring tape. You never have any fun. What about the pretty girl from Denmark with the Hula Hoop? I liked her.”
    “Not my type,” he said, plunking down on a furry couch. “She wore me out.”
    “Okay, what about that beautiful woman, the one with the world’s longest neck. Where was she from?”
    “Myanmar. Remember? She spoke no English?”
    “Details, details. Let’s see, there’s the girl in 6B. She works in advertising—”
    “We bored each other to stupefaction.”
    “You’re too picky,” Mrs. Bumble said.
    Her attention shifted. “You know, the catalog said these sunflowers were lifelike. But real sunflowers follow the sun across the sky.” She looked up at the light sneaking between the walk-ups across the alley.
    “We could get some real ones,” he said.
    “This place wasn’t meant for flowers.”
    Mrs. Bumble pulled a bottle of Schlitz Malt Liquor from her coat pocket and took a swig. “Mail is on your bed. And you’ve got two messages on the