Read Think Of a Number (2010) for Free Online

themselves in some kind of order, some sensible concatenation. However, the only thing that became clear to him was that he was hungry. He got up, went into the house, made a sandwich of havarti and roasted peppers, and ate alone. Madeleine seemed to be missing, and he wondered if he’d forgotten some plan she might have told him about. Then, as he was rinsing his plate and gazing idly out the window, he caught sight of her meandering up the field from the orchard, her canvas tote full of apples. She had that look of bright serenity that was so often for her an automatic consequence of being in the open air.
    She entered the kitchen and laid the apples down by the sink with a loud, happy sigh. “God, what a day!” she exclaimed. “On a day like this, being indoors a minute longer than you have to be is a sin!”
    It wasn’t that he disagreed with her, at least not aesthetically, maybe not at all, but the difficult personal fact for him was that his natural inclinations tilted him inward in a variety of ways, with the result that, left to his own devices, he spent more time in the consideration of action than in action, more time in his head than in theworld. This had never been a problem in his profession; in truth, it was the very thing that seemed to make him so good at it.
    In any event, he had no immediate desire to go out, nor was it something he felt like talking about, arguing about, or feeling guilty about. He raised a diversionary subject.
    “What was your impression of Mark Mellery?”
    She answered without looking up from the fruit she was transferring from her bag to the countertop, or even pausing to consider the question.
    “Full of himself and scared to death. An egomaniac with an inferiority complex. Afraid the bogeyman is coming to get him. Wants Uncle Dave to protect him. By the way, I wasn’t purposely eavesdropping. His voice carries well. I bet he’s a great public speaker.” She made this sound like a dubious asset.
    “What did you think of the number business?”
    “Ah,” she said with dramatic affectation. “‘The Case of the Mind-Reading Stalker.’”
    He stifled his irritation. “Do you have any idea how it might have been done—how the writer knew what number Mellery would choose?”
    “Nope.”
    “You don’t seem perplexed by it.”
    “But you are.” Again she spoke with her eyes on her apples. The tiny ironic grin, increasingly present these days, tugged at the corner of her mouth.
    “You have to admit it’s quite a puzzle,” he insisted.
    “I suppose.”
    He repeated the key facts with the edginess of a man who cannot understand why he is not being understood. “A person gives you a sealed envelope and tells you to picture a number in your mind. You picture six fifty-eight. He tells you to look in the envelope. You look in the envelope. The note inside says six fifty-eight.”
    It was clear that Madeleine was not as impressed as she ought to be. He went on, “That’s a remarkable feat. It would appear to be impossible. Yet it was done. I’d like to figure out how it was done.”
    “And I’m sure you will,” she said with a small sigh.
    He gazed through the French doors, past the pepper and tomato plants wilted from the season’s first frost. (When was that? He couldn’t remember. Couldn’t seem to focus on the time factor.) Beyond the garden, beyond the pasture, his gaze rested on the red barn. The old McIntosh apple tree was just visible behind the corner of it, its fruit dotted here and there through the mass of foliage like droplets of impressionist paint. Into this tableau there intruded a nagging sense of something he ought to be doing.
What was it?
Of course! His week-old promise that he would fetch the extension ladder from the barn and pick the high fruit Madeleine couldn’t get to by herself. Such a small thing. So easy for him to do. A half-hour project at most.
    As he rose from his chair, buoyed by good intentions, the phone rang. Madeleine picked