Helpless Read Online Free Page A

corner of the playground, he bought a Star and pretended to read as he searched the playground.
    She was over by the swings, playing a clapping game with another, bigger girl. Her T-shirt was pink today, the same pink as her lips. She had on the purple jeans again. White sneakers. “Okay, like this!” he heard her yell, and she demonstrated a series of quick, complicated claps. He watched until the bell rang, then he folded the paper under his arm and returned to the van, where he sat in a stupor of happiness.
    Back at the shop he tackled a job—replacing the voltage control on a finicky model of microwave—he’d been putting off for two days. His happiness inspired him. But a customer phoning to complain about his repair of her humidifier broke the spell, and he began to see himself for what he was: a man gearing up for suffering. His meaty hands, as he sorted through a box of sockets, seemed to belong to somebody who would never rise above the small gratifications of his craft.
    Around noon he made himself a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and ate them sitting on a kitchen chair out in the yard. His mind turned to Nancy’s plans to grow tomatoes along the fence if he ever invited her to move in. He has always pitied her for loving him, but now that he loved somebody just as hopelessly he found himself in awe of herfaculty for self-denial and acceptance. He decided to phone her, see how she was.
    He caught her just as she was leaving for work. She told him she was feeling guilty about Tasha, her dog. “This place boils with the air conditioning off,” she said, “but if I leave it running I’ll get evicted.”
    “Bring her here,” he said. It wasn’t an offer he’d ever thought to make before.
    She arrived almost weeping her thanks. She kissed his hands. He smelled marijuana smoke in her hair but decided to let that ride.
    At two thirty a woman came by with a Black & Decker lawn mower he could see right away needed an overhaul, likely a new flywheel. The woman hoped he’d be able to fix it before tomorrow afternoon. “I’ll do my best,” he said, but by closing the shop earlier he’d put himself behind schedule and the prospect of working long hours made him anxious. What if he felt an urge to drive to Rachel’s neighbourhood? Already the craving to see her again was leaking back. As soon as the woman left, he poured himself a rye and water, took it down to the basement, and drank in the company of his vacuums. That helped. Not enough.
    He went back up to the shop and stood looking at his computer. Thousands of little girls were in there, but how did you get to them? If you wanted to open a site you had to click on a word or image, which he had a terror of doing in case he found himself confronted by something violent or sick. Beyond that he was fairly certain that downloading made you vulnerable to surveillance.
    He told himself not to risk it. He finished off his drinkand considered Tasha, trembling in her basket. “What’s going on?” he asked with a stirring of sympathy. She cast her bug eyes from him to the door, and after a moment his real reason for taking her in was, it seemed, revealed. He glanced at his watch. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s find your leash.”
    He parked, as before, a couple of blocks from the school. This time, however, he thought to put on sunglasses and a baseball cap. He paced himself to arrive just as the bell rang, then he let Tasha slow down and sniff telephone poles until he spotted Rachel coming out the double doors.
    She lingered on the stairs. She was waiting for somebody—the tall Asian boy, it turned out. They took off toward Parliament. Feeling next to invisible in this neighbourhood of dog walkers, Ron followed close behind. Everything about her thrilled him: her thin brown arms, the insectlike hinge of her elbows, her prancing step, the shapely bulb of her head, her small square shoulders bearing the burden of her backpack, and even the backpack itself,