Agyar Read Online Free Page A

when you’re desperate, and not really in control of your actions.”
    “Can you be more specific?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “If you want help, you must tell Doctor Agyar—”
    “Cut it out.”
    I spread my hands, palms up, and waited. When she didn’t continue I said, “Do you think someone might have noticed?”
    “Yes,” she said in a neutral tone, so I couldn’t tell if she was worried, angry, or only vaguely interested.
    “Can you cut and run?”
    “I don’t want to.”
    “Why?”
    “I like it here.”
    I looked around elaborately. The streets were lined with trees, mostly oak and sycamore. The houses were working-class one-family dwellings, this one blue, that one yellow, that one green, with nothing to choose among them except lawn ornaments.
    “You don’t understand,” she said.
    “No.”
    “I go into coffee shops and talk with artists who are actually creating something. I go to plays, or movie theaters, and meet people with children who talk about how little Johnny speaks in full sentences and he’s only two years old. I—”
    “And you like it?”
    “Yes.”
    “And now and then you do a convenience store or a bank.”
    “When I’m desperate for cash; not often.”
    “And lately you’ve been committing indiscretions.”
    “That’s right. I think I have it under control now, though.”
    “That’s good. Then what do you want me for?”
    She looked me in the eyes for the first time. Hers were blue, large, and very, very cold. “As I said, the indiscretions have been noticed.”
    “So what do you want me for?”
    “Someone has to take the fall,” she said. “It’s going to be you.”
    The night whispered around us, alive but indifferent.

TWO

    or⋅gan⋅ic adj … . 2. Of, pertaining to, or derived from living organisms … 4. Having properties associated with living organisms … 6. a. Of or constituting an integral part of something; fundamental; constitutional; structural.
    AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY

    I keep discovering ways in which age affects me. For example, when I was younger and, as I said before, considering a career in journalism, I tried to keep a diary, because this had been recommended to me by a professor at University as a way of training myself, but I could never do it. Yet now I find that, as I go through my day, my thoughts keep coming back to this old typewriting machine and I eagerly await the chance to return to it. I don’t understand the reason for this change, and I haven’t the patience for soul-searching.
    I don’t think, though, that it is really the need to set down what happens, as much as it is the act of writing, or typing, itself. There is something soothing in hearing the type bars smack the paper with that hollow, crunching sound, and seeing the black marks appear. They are nice and black, because I found a new ribbon in one of the desk drawers that sits next to this hard wooden chair, and after considerable trouble I managed to get it
threaded the right way. Then I had to go wash the ink off my hands, because it seems wrong to soil the keys of this venerable machine.
    Yesterday I rushed home after meeting with Kellem and, before anything else, I set it all down as well as I could. The act of doing so was very soothing, more so, it turned out, than telling it all to Jim the ghost, which I did as soon as I was done typing. Yet there were things, important things, that I didn’t remember as I typed them. Some of these came back, however, as I told Jim about the conversation. Why is it that some memories cast themselves naturally into written words, while others must be spoken?
    As Jim and I conversed, he played with an old nickel, hole punched in the center, with a thin chain running through the hole. When I had finished, he put it around his neck, under his shirt, and looked at me. He said, “Did she give you any details about what she’d done that you’re supposed to suffer for?”
    “There have been some bodies,