The Man Who Lost the Sea Read Online Free

two years and nine months worth of Saturday movies. After that he’d have to get a wallet, and then more money—to give to the actress. He wandered how much money you had to give actresses. Oh well. He could certainly manage to find out in the next three years, or four—or however long it took him.
    Bulletin. Five-state alarm for two men who had only an hour before held up a suite of offices on High Street. The robbers had made off with four thousand in cash and negotiable bonds and twelve thousand in securities.
    All that money would be enough, thought Lulu. Good heavens! Imagine it—wanting money real bad, and going out and getting it,
just like that
. Imagine having a story like that to tell about yourself (whether you kept it to yourself or not.)
So I took out the gun and said all right, let’s have them there securities
. He didn’t quite know what securities were, but they sounded like fine things to have twelve thousand dollars invested in. Anyone with enough spunk to do a thing like that could make up for a good many years of sinlessness.
    He wouldn’t have to wait around for years counting every penny until he had enough money set aside to pick up an actress. (Much of Lulu’s radio listening was in mid-afternoon, and the disruptive elements in the lives of decent people in the serials was very frequently an actress.) Matter of fact, if you could steal like that, you wouldn’t even need the actress. The stealing would be sin enough.
All right, you, let’s have those negotiable bonds
. He didn’t know what bonds were either. And he didn’t have a gun.
    Suddenly his hands stopped moving and he looked down at them and the long curl of potato skin depending from the paring-knife, and he said aloud, “I do so know what bonds are and I don’t even need a gun.”
    At half past two on Thursday afternoon he was standing timidly at the edge of a wide expanse of polished marble inside the First National Bank. He no longer carried the folder next to his skin, with his undershirt and outer shirt tucked over it. (Ivy had said, as he left, “Lulu, I do believe you’re putting on more weight.”) He had secured one of the hospital’s big manila envelopes and crammed the bonds into it. The envelope was wet now where his hand grasped it. He peered all around and just didn’t know what to do.
    A man in a policeman’s uniform—but grey instead of blue—crossed over to where Lulu was standing. He had a gun. “Can I help you, sir?” he asked.
    Lulu swallowed heavily and tried to say, “I got some bonds.” But no sound came out. He coughed and tried again.
    “You want to talk to somebody about some securities,” the guard almost miraculously divined.
    Lulu managed to nod. The guard smiled and said, “All right, sir. Just step this way.”
    Lulu followed the guard to a low shiny wall with a mahogany gate that swung open both ways. Beyond the gate was an area containing a half-dozen desks and a half-dozen chairs, all very far apart like small islands in a big river. The guard pointed at one of the chairs beside one of the desks.
    “Just sit down there, sir. Mr. Skerry will take care of you in a moment.”
    The guard turned away.
    Lulu sidled through the gate, wondering with mounting alarm what “take care of” might lead to, and sat down on the edge of the chair with the envelope on his lap. The man behind the desk was huge. He had snow-white hair and ice-blue eyes and nobody in the world could have had a collar that clean. He finished doing something with a ruled card on the desk and then hit the card hard with a rubber stamp. Then he looked at Lulu, who shrank under the impact of a truly frightening smile. The man asked, “What can I do for you?”
    “Uh,” said Lulu. He dropped his eyes, saw the envelope, and remembered the bonds. He gave the envelope to the oversized Mr. Skerry.
    Mr. Skerry looked at him almost accusingly before he took out the bonds, and after he took out the bonds, and a third time after