Read Inappropriate Behavior: Stories for Free Online Page A

sleeve in his palm and wiped away the condensation. It was then that he said, in a gasp and a squeal, “There he is.”
    I looked out the window, down into the parking lot, where the man who had crawled to his car the previous Monday was this Monday doing a perfect phys. ed. crabwalk across the parking lot: his arms directly perpendicular to the ground, his knees bent at T-square-grade right angles, kicking forward on cue to propel himself to his car like some sort of Cossack dancer. Whereas the week before he carried his attaché case in his teeth, today it rested on his perfectly flat chest, at no point threatening to upend. When he got to the third row, to his dark green Ford Taurus, he bent his arms a bit, and then, all in one motion, sprung to his feet and caught the attaché between both hands. He pirouetted to face the building, raised the attaché above his head like a championship belt, and offered the slightest of bows. With that he turned again, unlocked his car, got in and drove away.
    I stood and continued to stare out the window, having no idea at all what to make of this. Just as I was about to turn and ask Smith . . . what, I don’t know . . . he took an audibly deep breath and expelled that breath with, “God, I admire him.” He stood in reverie just a second more, then turned, patted me onthe back and said, “Well, see you tomorrow.” And with that he was gone.
    Maybe now would be the time, in a quick hundred words or so, to explain something to you, about me. I am a simple man, basically, in terms of how I view the world. I do not believe the world is a confusing place, so long as one does not unnecessarily complicate one’s view of it. I do not believe in UFOs, Bigfoot, angels, mysticism, magic, channeling, that there was a second shooter on the grassy knoll, or that 9-11 was an inside job. I do not believe that there are any underlying mysteries. I do not believe in looking either above or below the surface of things, because I think there’s more than enough on the surface to keep us occupied for the length of any one life, which, I believe, is all we get. I do not believe in God. I do not believe in heaven. I do not believe in hell. I believe that life is this world alone, is what we make of it, each to his own abilities and needs.
    Knowing all of this about myself, I can, I think, be forgiven for a moment of stuporous inactivity, a stunned paralysis of movement and speech, even of thought. I find it hard, however, to let myself off the hook, for by the time I was able to move, Smith, along with the rest of the seventh floor, was gone, and I was left all alone. I knew I should do something, that seemed clear. But what? How does one react to a grown man crab-walking across a parking lot with an attaché on his chest, especially when that man, or his actions, have apparently inspired some sort of cult following among the people with whom one works? I thought at first to move, quickly, to flee, to get out of that building, use my sick time for a few days until I figured out what to do, or figured out a way to never go back. But then I caught sight of Smith, walking, as normally as Smith could, across the parking lot to his car. I saw him get into a gray Saturn, and as soon as he did I sprinted from my desk down the seven flights of stairs and made it to the parking lot just in time to see him drive away. He turned left out of the parking lot and I ran madly to my car to tail him.
    When I got onto the access road, I could see Smith’s car heading west on the highway, so I floored it and jumped two lanes of traffic to follow him. Just as I hit the highway, my cell phone rang. It was Marcie.
    â€œWhen are you coming home?” she said as I wrenched my neck to hold the phone while keeping both hands on the wheel. I was doing nearly eighty, and Smith was still well down the road. The late September sun hung blandly in my windshield, and I reached up with my left