The Man in the Window by Jon Cohen & Nancy Pearl

Author:Jon Cohen & Nancy Pearl
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Contemporary Fiction, Humor, Romance, Literary, American, General Humor, Literary Fiction, United States, Humor & Satire, Literature & Fiction
ISBN: 1477848932
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2013-09-17T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

WAS IT like being born, looking up from your bassinet and seeing those curious and strangely disconcerted faces, or was it more like dying, lying in your open coffin, eyes wide, gazing upon those same disconcerted faces, disconcerted by the newness of you and the unexpectedness of your act, by the sudden alteration in the norm of the neighborhood, and in the rules that placed you, Louis, in your house, hidden, and your hiddenness contemplated from a known distance, an inviolable distance, you in there, us out here, so what in God’s name—Louis saw in every pair of eyes that now blinked from the middle of every pale face that stared down at him—do you think you’re doing sprawled here in this tulip bed out in the world of blue May skies and a beaming sun that’s shining on every good citizen of Waverly, a term that has not, for sixteen years and up to this precise moment, included you?

Louis couldn’t decide, being born or dying, but it was something like that. His eyes moved from Kitty to Francine to Bev and Bert, and then to Carl. Then he did something the newborn and the dead never do: He spoke. If a dead man were to speak, he might just say the word that passed in a whisper from behind Louis’s scarf.

“Boo,” Louis said.

Wasn’t that what they expected from the monster of Waverly? Certainly Francine Koessler expected it. No one else could understand him, but she’d been listening so hard her ears about popped off, so when Louis went “Boo,” she jumped back behind the others with a little scream. “Get back, everybody. He’s crazy dangerous!”

They’d been standing in a circle around Louis, but they drew back, because this was not a normal man in a normal kind of accident. But Louis didn’t do anything except lie there, so they looked at each other, and positioned themselves around him again.

“He’ll attack. I seen him do it,” said Francine behind them, clutching her Minky.

Carl Lerner went down on his knees beside Louis. Kitty hunkered above Carl, because if Carl was going to do anything with Louis’s hat or scarf, Kitty wanted to be the first to see.

“Hey buddy. Can you speak? Where you hurt?” asked Carl.

And then, in a simple, ordinary gesture of human concern, Carl did something that no one, beyond Atlas and Gracie, had done for sixteen years. Carl, who had no memories or imaginings. Carl, who saw him as the recluse, but not the monster, because who has it in him, thought Louis watching in wonder, to do to a monster the thing that Carl now did. Which was to reach out across sixteen years and touch him with a hand that was lighter and more lovely than the teenage kiss of Ariel Nesmith.

“Hey buddy. Where you hurt?” said Carl, touching Louis lightly on the shoulder.

Louis stared at Carl’s hand. For a moment, under Carl’s touch, Louis wasn’t sure that he was hurt, that his broken arm hadn’t suddenly healed.

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