Read The Nothing Man for Free Online Page A

silence for a moment, then a splash and a muted, "Yes?"
    "Brownie," I said.
    "Brownie! What in the-?"
    The door flew open. She pulled me inside, stood against me naked, her arms around my neck, her thick black hair buried against my chest.
    "Gosh, honey! Gee, it's good to see you! I-but you're soaked! Let me take-"
    "I'm all right," I said, and I pushed her away. "I'm going to keep on being all right."
    I walked on into the room and sat down in a chair. For a moment she stood where I had pushed her; then she came and sat down on the bed opposite me.
    She smiled at me, timidly, swinging her bare legs to and fro, holding her knees together while she swung her legs out from each other. "You're-you're not mad at me, Brownie?"
    "I wish you hadn't come back, Ellen," I said. "It's going to make things very hard for both of us."
    "No, it won't, honey! I-Did you know I only called the office one time today? Just once! They said you were gone for the day, so I said, thank you. I'll call again tomorrow and-and-that's all I did. Honest!" She nodded her head vigorously, her eyes fixed anxiously on my face.
    I said, "So you called one time. Why did you call at all?"
    "H-Haven't you any idea, Brownie?"
    "Sure. You had a dime."
    The smile faded and a sullen look edged into its place. Then the look faded, without disappearing, and the smile-a semblance of it-returned. "Maybe… I guess maybe you've got a right to talk that way. But-but think of me, honey! I h-hadn't done anything, and-"
    "Hadn't done anything!" I jeered. "You didn't need to do anything. I didn't know my way around when I married you. I'd never been anywhere or seen anything. After I did, I wised up. I saw I was married to a goddamned flabby-tailed dumbbell with a fried egg for a brain."
    "You dirty bas-! Oh, Brownie, don't! Don't, honey. You don't mean-"
    "The hell I don't! I've seen better tail on a mule."
    She stuttered and spluttered, trying to curse and beg me at the same time. Trying to fight down her temper. I'd touched her on her sore spots. She didn't have much in the way of an education. Her rear end was a little on the wriggly side.
    "Y-You burn me up! You-"
    "Not me," I said, "that hot little business of yours. Remember that poem I dedicated to you?"
    "You're goddamned right, I remember! Of all the dirty-"
    "By the way, what did you do with the rest of those sonnets? I was thinking, perhaps, you'd like to have them autographed."
    She told me what she'd done with them. Something indelicate but completely practical.
    "They didn't catch fire?"
    "You burn me-That's right! Sit there and laugh! You done-you did all this! Why shouldn't you laugh about it?"
    "Jesus," I said. "What a freak you turned out to be! Do the boys make you put a sack over your head?"
    It was going swell. She was getting angrier and angrier. I had her sold, and if I could just keep her that way… she'd live.
    I- She began to cry.
    She'd very seldom done that, really cried. She'd grown up in pretty rugged circumstances, and she'd never got the crying habit. But on those rare occasions when she did break down, she pulled all the stops. She cried like the child she'd never been.
    She didn't cover her face with her hands, and all of it was puckered and reddened. Her eyes were tight shut. Her nose ran. Her mouth, with the ludicrously drawn-down corners, opened so wide you could see her tonsils.
    I tried to laugh, and I couldn't. I jerked the cork on the second quart and took a big slug, and it didn't do any good. It had always got me to see her cry. It did now.
    _You do not have your head in the clouds, Brown_, I thought. _Your feet are of clay and the arches are falling_.
    I took another drink. I gripped the arms of the chair. I said, "Look, now. Now see here, dammit. There's no sense in-in-"
    And she shuddered and sobbed. "Y-You-you h-hurt my f-feelings…"
    And suddenly I was on the bed with her, dabbing at her eyes with my handkerchief, telling her to blow her nose, dammit. And she shuddered and