The Unwelcome Guest Plus Nin and Nan Read Free Page B

t-shirts for sale inside the station. The shirts were a motley collection of sports teams, rock bands, and glib sayings. I went back into the coffee shop, commented sarcastically on the t-shirts, and picked up my cigarettes and book. The coffee shop guy tried to crack a joke about Schmidt, but it wasn’t funny. I left.
Outside I saw an old man had come to wait for the bus as well. Then I realized that in my offense I’d forgotten my book and cigarettes again. I went back to the coffee shop again and picked up the Schmidt book but couldn’t see the cigarettes. I’d assumed the coffee shop guy had taken them, but before I accused him, I checked my pockets and found I had them in my shirt breast pocket.
Outside again, the old man and I talked about weather and the disintegration of the moral fiber of our nation. The bus came. Once seated aboard, I fell asleep.
The old man shook me awake. He told me we’d come to the next-to-last stop and that he had to get off. He told me he lived in a building down an alley a few blocks away. I was unfamiliar with it, but he said the people who lived there always complained. The owner was a slumlord, he said. He left. The next stop was mine, so there I got off.
Now I remember what the police officer had told me: they suspected that the man behind the parade bombings was one Edwin L. Thoth. Small world.
I, years earlier, had written a small volume on Thoth. I had written it in a pre-bound blank book and had intended to photocopy it for someone. I tried to tear the pages out of the book, but accidentally tore an enormous chunk out of the center of that group of pages. The chunk fell, flaked apart, and flew away into the river, so much of the text of the piece disappeared. I was unable to reconstruct what the text had once been.
I remember the previous year’s downtown parade. Christmas shopping season afflicted the city. I was working part-time in the largest multi-story bookstore in the city. We were fending for and fending off dozens of customers simultaneously, all of whom were demanding and laborintensive. When my hour lunch break arrived, I went outside to meet a buddy, a co-worker whom I was going to have lunch with—or "drunch," as we called it. I couldn’t find him in the crowd outside, so I walked down to the south Loop bar by myself. Or I was going to. I was stopped by a parade a block away between me and my destination. I could see the enormous balloons and papier-mâché constructs going by—skyscrapers the size of skyscrapers and busses the size of office buildings were moving along the street. I realized I’d never get to the bar and back with time left over for sufficient drinking, so I instead went to one of the more expensive bars on State Street. Fortunately, happy hour had hit, and the drinks came with all-youcan-eat hot wings. I don’t remember ever going back to the store.
Maybe Edwin was there, selling balloons. He’d done that for a while, working for the over-inflated balloon lady. I have a photo of him somewhere, caught with dentures between flaps—he’d flap them around in his mouth— Snap! Dangle! Snap!—because he was too cheap to buy adhesive. He sold balloons until he slept with the balloon lady and her husband found out. You could say her husband popped that balloon. Her name was Armenia and her husband was a turkey. Neither of them gave Edwin a second thought. Until they disappeared underground. Literally. That was when I discovered that Edwin was a master of disguise and was also known by the name "Lubjec," which might be what the "L" stood for. "Lawrence" might have been a fabrication.
Cities
    At 3:10, I intended to leave for a trip to the city. A church there had a position for an organist, and, well, the bank I was in wasn’t making it. I’d had to play part-time at a mock-Christian bar, and I’d fake it so well some folks thought I could pass for the real thing. So they asked me to guest-play as one of three finalists for the job.
    I was