Read The Stranger for Free Online Page A

past the 7-Eleven, and saw the Walgreens. He sighed. He parked in the lot and sat in the car for several minutes. An old man hobbled by, his prescription bag death-gripped between his gnarly hand and the top of his walker. He glared at Adam, or maybe that was just the way he looked at the world now.
    Adam headed inside. He grabbed a small shopping basket. They needed toothpaste and antibacterial soap, but that was all for show. He flashed back to his youth when he’d throw a bunch of toiletries into a similar container so it wouldn’t look as though he was just buying condoms, which would remain unused in his wallet until they started cracking from age.
    The DNA tests were located near the pharmacist. Adam walked over, doing his best to look casual. He looked left. He looked right. He picked up the box and read the back:
    THIRT Y PERCENT OF “FATHERS” WHO TAKE THIS TEST W ILL DISCOVER THAT TH E CHILD THEY ARE RAIS ING IS NOT THEIRS.
    He dropped the box onto the shelf. He hurried away as though the box might beckon him back. No. He would not go there. Not today, anyway.
    He brought the other toiletries up to the counter, grabbed a pack of gum, and paid. He hit Route 17, passed a few more mattress chains (what was it with northern New Jersey and all the mattress stores?), and pulled into the gym. He changed and worked out with weights. Throughout his adult life, Adam had cycled through a potpourri of workout programs—yoga (not flexible), Pilates (confused), boot camp (why not just join the military?), Zumba (don’t ask), aquatics (near drown), spin (sore butt)—but in the end, he always returned to simple weights. Some days he loved the strain on his muscles and couldn’t imagine not doing it. Other days he dreaded every moment, and the only thing he wanted to lift was the postworkout peanut butter protein shake to his lips.
    He went through the motions, trying to remember to contract the muscle and hold at the end. This was, he’d learned, the key to results. Don’t just curl. Curl up, hold it a second while squeezing the bicep, curl down. He showered, changed into his work clothes, and headed into his office on Midland Avenue in Paramus. The office building was four floors and sleek glass and the architecture stood out only in the sense that it was stereotypically an office building, indistinguishable from every other. You would never mistake it for anything else.
    “Yo, Adam, got a second?”
    It was Andy Gribbel, Adam’s best paralegal. When he first started here, everyone called him the Dude because of his scruffy looks similar to the Jeff Bridges character. He was older than most paralegals—older, in fact, than Adam—and could easily have goneto law school and passed the bar, but as Gribbel once put it, “That ain’t my bag, man.”
    Yes, he had said it just like that.
    “What’s up?” Adam asked.
    “Old Man Rinsky.”
    Adam’s legal expertise was in the field of eminent domain, which involved the government trying to take away your land to build a highway or school or something like that. In this case, the township of Kasselton was trying to take away Rinsky’s house for the purpose of gentrification. In short, that area of town was politely labeled “undesirable” or, in layman’s terms, “a dump,” and the powers that be had found a developer who wanted to level all the houses and build shiny new homes, stores, and restaurants.
    “What about him?”
    “We’re seeing him at his place.”
    “Okay, good.”
    “Should I bring the, uh, big guns?”
    Part of Adam’s nuclear option. “Not yet,” Adam said. “Anything else?”
    Gribbel leaned back. He threw his work boots up on the desk. “I got a gig tonight. You coming?”
    Adam shook his head. Andy Gribbel played in a seventies cover band that played in some of the most prestigious dives in northern New Jersey. “Can’t.”
    “No Eagles songs, I promise.”
    “You never play the Eagles.”
    “I ain’t a fan,” Gribbel said.