Kate Wilhelm by The Infinity Box

Author:The Infinity Box [Box, The Infinity]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-12-03T17:29:53+00:00

Friday, driving to Chicago I began to relax, and after three hours on the road I was whistling and could almost forget the mess, could almost convince myself that I’d been having delusions, which was easier to take than the truth.

I slept deeply Friday night, and Saturday I was busy, getting our exhibit set up and getting acquainted with others who were also showing tools and machinery. From four until the doors closed at eleven, the hall got fuller and fuller, the noise level became excruciating, the smoke-laden air unbreathable. Our cutting tool drew a good, interested response, and I was busy. And too tired for the late dinner I had agreed to with two other exhibitors. We settled for hamburgers and beer in the hotel dining room, and soon afterward I tumbled into bed and again slept like a child. The crowds were just as thick on Sunday, but by Monday the idle curiosity-seekers were back at their jobs, and the ones who came through were businesslike and fewer in number. I had hired a business student to spell me, and I left him in charge from four until seven, the slack hours, so I could have an early dinner and get some rest. But I found myself wandering the streets instead, and finally I stopped in front of a library.

Karl Rudeman, I thought. How did he die? And I went in and looked up the clippings about him, and read the last three with absorption. When I went to dinner afterward, I was still trying to puzzle it out. He had had dinner with his family: his wife, parents, daughter, and son-in-law. After dinner they had played bridge for an hour or two. Sometime after that, after everyone else had gone to bed, he had left the house to roam through the fields that stretched out for a quarter of a mile, down to the river. He had collapsed and died of a heart attack at the edge of a field. Christine, awakening later and finding him gone, had first searched the house, then, when she realized that Karl was in his pajamas and barefooted, she had awakened her stepson-in-law and started a search of the grounds. Karl wasn’t found until daylight, and then the tenant farmer had been the one to spot the figure in orange-and-black striped pajamas. There was no sign of violence, and it was assumed that he had been walking in his sleep when the fatal attack occurred.

Back to the exhibit, and the flow of evening viewers. Invitations, given and accepted, for drinks later, and a beaver flick. Lunch with a couple of other men the following day. A long talk with a manufacturer who was interested in procuring the order for the cutting tool, should there be enough interest to warrant it.

The obscene movie had been a mistake, I knew as soon as the girl jerked off her slip and opened her legs. Suddenly I was seeing her, open-legged on the edge of the bed before a mirror.

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