Hannah's Dream Read Online Free Page A

returned relatively little in the way of taxes, prestige or tourism revenues. When it came time to allocate the city’s public works budget each year, installing handicapped-accessible curbs, repairing roads, upgrading the wastewater treatment plant and buying new play equipment for the parks all came before the massive investment that would be needed to properly renovate the old Biedelman home. It was enough that the city council allowed the place to run in the red year after year.
    In its halcyon days, Maxine Biedelman’s home had been as exquisite as it had been out of place. She’d kept an office on the second floor, overlooking the grounds. After her death, however, as the house continued to age and maintenance fellwoefully behind, the second floor had been closed off and the offices moved into what had once been a large library on the first floor, now divided into Harriet’s office and a half-dozen cubicles.
    This Monday morning, she yelled through her office doorway, “Has Geneva Wilson showed up yet?”
    Truman Levy, her director of operations, sat in a cubicle no more than ten feet from her office door. He glanced up from his paperwork. “It’s only five past eight,” he said.
    “Well, I’m here,” she said. “You’re here. Even Brenda’s here. Neva Wilson is late. Has she called in? Brenda, has she called in?” The receptionist maintained a stony silence. She and Harriet detested each other, and their latest battle was over Harriet’s insistence that Brenda wore too much makeup. People can see right through it, you know, Harriet had recently told her. You’re not fooling anyone .
    Truman stood and walked six steps to the reception desk. In a modulated voice and with exquisite politeness he asked Brenda if Neva Wilson had called in yet.
    “Nope,” Brenda said, smiling at him nicely.
    Truman took four steps to the doorway of Harriet’s office and said, “Apparently she hasn’t called in.”
    “I am not pleased,” Harriet intoned.
    “She’ll be here,” Truman said. “It’s her first day, and she doesn’t know the area yet. She might have gotten caught in traffic, or forgotten the way.”
    “I don’t care.”
     
    Truman withdrew to the relative asylum of his cubicle, where he chewed his first antacid of the day, reflecting gloomily that it was the earliest he’d taken one yet, beating by ten minutes his previous record. Ever since he’d gone to work for Harriet Saul he’d been buying Tums in bulk from Costco. There had been a time when he would have earnestly, even passionately, argued that appearances—especially appearances as unprepossessing as hers—shouldn’t matter. Several years ago Truman’s ex-wife Rhonda, a sculptor, had challenged that opinion. She’d said, Let me tell you something, Truman. You know the only people who really believe appearances shouldn’t matter? Ugly people.
    She’d been right, of course, about this and many other things. Last year, when she left him and their eleven-year-old son Winslow, she’d accused him of being the least memorable person she had ever known. And it’s not just me, she’d said. You’re the least memorable person anybody’s ever known. You know I’m right about this, Truman.
    It was true. People sitting directly across a dinner table from him for an entire meal consistently failed to recognize him the next time they met. This had happened not just once, but time after time. He seemed simply to disappear from people’s memories. Rhonda had taken to calling him Truman the Bland. You’re rice pudding, cream of wheat. I want jambalaya, paella. Is that too much to ask?
    Truman had thought that, as a matter of fact, it was too much to ask. He didn’t say so, of course. One didn’t, with Rhonda. She’d asked him once if he thought she was destined to accomplish great things, and he’d said probably not. He’d only meant that the statistical probabilities were against her, but she’d thrown an expensive dried flower