Odditorium: A Novel Read Online Free

had read. He coached her in the proper way to behave on the telephone and how to deflect hustlers who came to the office.
    “I promised I’d make you into something and I will,” he said.
    Dolly proved herself an obedient subject, soaking up information like a sponge, memorizing in less than four days the name and hierarchical rank of every talent booker and summer stock producer in town. She grew into the job with astonishing rapidity, slithered through the office in her corrective shoes, the image of placid efficiency from a vocational slide show. Most of all she wanted to become “indispensable,” and after a while, largely unbeknownst to Sparn, she did. Dolly cast herself in “Man’s Favorite Secretary” as the sympathetic, symbiotic underling who could anticipate the thoughts and wishes of her Boss. But only up to a point, as it turned out.
    On the very day when she had at last summoned the courage to invite him home for May wine and sauerbraten by candlelight, Sparn asked her to run down to the engraver’s to pick up his wedding invitations.
    That night Dolly destroyed much of the contents of her apartment, and did not return to work until the following week. She did not attend the ceremony uniting Sparn and the 16-year-old daughter of Falco Andretti, importer of olive oil and ricotta cheese. She did not attend the elaborate reception held at the Ansonia Hotel with a thousand dollars’ worth of white chrysanthemums and entertainment by Red Kingston and his Mellow Fellows. She did not join the bon voyage party catching kisses and paper serpentines launched by Sparn and his bride, bound for a Havana honeymoon, from the railing of the S.S. Paloma .
    Instead she raged and shivered and wept, living on doughnuts and coffee, sleeping on the linoleum floor of the office and often waking spattered with dried blood from having abused the flesh of her arms and legs during the night with a fountain pen, until that moment when her body became only a body, a pulpy, self-propelled machine, and she did not have to weep ever again.
    Now as she stood quietly by his desk awaiting instructions, Dolly did not see a bloated old man, but the handsome Johnny who had come to her dressing room: that smoothly cast face, those black grommet eyes, the swaggering energy she had imagined taking physical form as a crown of cartoon lightbulbs on his head. So much time. So much time that had not passed.
    “Think you can clear my calendar for this Friday? Time I sat in on a Cougarettes game.”
    “I don’t see any problem. I always hold the fort for you.”
    “You’re a gem, Dolly, a gem of the first water.”
    The Cougarettes were in command, leading 4-0 after five innings; several at the far end of the batting order went into the stands to hawk candy bars and the souvenir illustrated programs, fifty cents a copy. Flora was on the cover—a grainy action photo taken when she still bleached her hair and wore it in a ponytail. Flora was on page one—a still grainier picture of her shaking hands with Hector Rosario, a welterweight from Miami, and under it some biographical highlights: 70 no-hitters, 23 perfect games, 4500 strikeouts, a lifetime E.R.A. of 1.12. The finishing touch was her unique accomplishment of last season, setting a man down on one pitch, a figure-eight windmill change-up he’d wiffed at three times.
    Flora was also on deck. After replenishing her chaw (mentholated snuff inside a wad of bubble gum), she stepped to the plate and rocked a whistling liner into the gap in left center for an inside-the-park home run.
    “That’s a Hall-of-Famer, folks. You’re looking at a Hall-of-Famer right there.” Rhythmic clapping from Coach Vinnie Sparn at his position behind the chicken wire screen. “Five up, let’s get some more…. Come on, Wanda, little bingle in there.”
    Right next to Vinnie was a plastic trash barrel of iced beer, one dollar a can. Just another managerial task, keeping the crowd happy. He wore a sun helmet,