The Incident at Naha by M. J. Bosse

Author:M. J. Bosse
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2017-08-23T23:00:00+00:00

THE PEAR

Coming out of the subway, we were nearly blinded by the summer light. The black and Latin neighborhood we found ourselves in was noisy. I noticed Virgil smiling happily. He said you had to be raised in Harlem to appreciate the sheer motion of life. And I had some idea of what he meant as we walked along the bustling streets. From an open window drifted the heavy sounds of Jimi Hendrix and from another the joyous rhythms of Santana. Kids leaning against parked cars were lazily snapping their fingers to the music. Mothers sat like tree trunks with squirming babies on stoops. An ice cream vender had a swirl of bright dresses around him. Young guys were clustered at the corner, inspecting an old motorcycle that one of them was gunning furiously.

“Who are we seeing first?” I asked Virgil.

“A retired financier.”

I looked at Virgil.

“Yes, I agree,” he said, laughing. “A Wall Streeter is something of an anomaly in this neighborhood. But then, Professor Maynard called this man ‘an original.’”

Virgil stopped abruptly and gazed up at one of those old residential hotels that line upper Broadway. It had an ornate, gingerbread facade, and inside, the high-ceilinged lobby was huge, the air there cool but faintly stale as in a tomb. We went up in a huffing, puffing elevator to the tenth floor and rang the bell of a Jeremy Purdy.

After a long time, just as we were beginning to think no one was home, the door swung wide open and there stood a tall, fat white-haired man whose broad face had the dull, grainy texture of an unswept carpet—and I should know the look of an unswept carpet. His eyes were gray, sunk back in flesh, but had a merry, almost too merry, sparkle to them. Virgil introduced himself and me as friends of Professor Maynard, and so without hesitation, Mr. Purdy ushered us into a small vestibule.

“So young Maynard sent you,” Mr. Purdy said in a husky voice, peering down at us from six feet two or three. “He sends people to see my place, says it’s unusual, typifies my personality. He says most people don’t have places that reflect their personalities, and I agree. On that I’m firm. People lack individuality today. Young Maynard’s father was a fraternity brother of mine at college. Dead now. Come along.”

The vestibule had been absolutely bare, lit only by a thick-shaded wall light, but when Mr. Purdy opened the door into the next room, I stopped right in my tracks and just stared. What I faced was like a weird Christmas scene. I mean, lights were everywhere you looked in the windowless room. There were all sorts of chandeliers, whirligig lights, and lamps of all various shapes and sizes placed on dozens of empty TV consoles. Dozens of TV consoles is what I mean. Like, all gutted they stood row upon row in the vast room, so many of them that there was enough space for only one person at a time to pass down the aisles between them.

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