In a Mist Read Online Free Page B

will not allow it. From the direction of the control room drifts the sounds of the session.
    Oh , if you wouldn’t mind,

I’d find it divine,

if I could tickle your funny bone.

Some girls like to dance

to be gently romanced,

but I’d like to tickle your funny bone.

No need to be shy,

better to moan than to cry,

oh so sweetly I’d tickle your funny bone.

Twenty dollars no less,

just a drop, not a mess,

such a treat when I tickle your funny bone
    The voice that sings is not Alice’s and the song makes Roy want to leave. There is a piano break and the padded door opens to reveal a squat, rumpled man with horn-rimmed glasses and rolled-up sleeves. He raises his eyebrows and looks at Roy.
    â€œI’m looking for Alice Alderson,” says Roy.
    â€œAlderson . . . Called to get directions, said she’d be late, never showed.”
    * * *
    It is not until Roy returns to the empty apartment and checks the answering machine that he realizes her address book is no longer in his coat pocket.
    â€œListen,” says the voice on the machine, “meet me back at the storeroom on 138 th and I’ll tell you where to find her. Don’t tell no one where you’re going and don’t bring no one with you.”
    Roy barely makes it into the bathroom before he vomits.
    He lies on the rumpled sheets of Alice’s unmade bed. The apartment provides no comfort without her. It is ascold and indiff erent to Roy’s presence as the rest of the city. His head aches. He rolls over, opens the drawer of Alice’s bedside table, and scrounges for a bottle. His hand falls on a photograph, and when he examines it in the dim light he sees Alice standing in a park in the summer heat, her arm around another woman he does not recognize. He swallows two tablets from the bottle, drinks as much water as he can keep down, puts on his coat, and is back on the street in minutes, on his way to the train.
    The motion of the train makes his head spin and he is relieved to get off at 135 th , though he does not look forward to what must follow. At the storeroom again, this time he knocks on the door, and the newsman, still smoking, greets him. As though in a gesture of good faith, he returns Alice’s address book. He then hands him a small, limp package the size of a woman’s purse, wrapped in newsprint and bound with string. “You need to make a delivery,” the man says. “You deliver this for me.”
    Roy’s head throbs, and it is hard for him to stand, though he doesn’t dare to sit down. He wonders what might happen if he were to vomit on the magazines strewn about the floor.
    â€œAnd then you will tell me where Alice is?”
    The man smiles sadly, and nods, as if he would tell Roy then and there where Alice is, but he cannot because there is something Roy must do for him first.
    â€œYou deliver this to the river. Go down to the bridge and put this in the river, and I’ll tell you where she is.”
    Roy wants to know why the man doesn’t do it himself, how the man will know if Roy has done what has been asked of him, and the newsman says, “I’ll know,” without Roy having to ask.
    Outside, away from the lingering scent of cigar, Roy makes his way toward the bridge, which the newsman hastold him he will find at the end of 138 th . It should make for a short, brisk walk, but there is fear and substances in Roy’s blood that make the walk otherwise. To steel his resolve Roy imagines that he is of another era, a young hustler making a name for himself in the big city, all keyed up on dope with nothing to lose, running errands for some racket fronting as a late-night delicatessen. He walks past the Bridgeview, past the boarded-up facade on the corner, until in the distance he sees the darkness of the Harlem river.
    It is then Roy happens upon the Wolverine Lounge. There is a brightly lit marquee and he can hear the sounds of swing coming from inside.