Cogitor, Ergo Sum
The search for the missing woman had not yet turned up a single clue. Vera Unruh read the front-page article with mounting fascination. No signs of violent struggle had been discovered in the woman’s apartment. Vera shook her head at the meager imagination of police officials who could think of nothing more original to propose than that she might have been “the victim of foul play.”
Vera felt that she knew that woman. She saw the distraught figure pacing before an unlocked apartment door, listening for an ex-lover’s footsteps, sounds that alone could sustain her very existence…
“Time to leave, Vera.”
“Yes, Harry, I know.” Her boss yanked her back to the cold gaze of the clock on the opposite wall.
“By the way, Bob says you helped him clinch the deal on that old three-decker on Irving Street. Who’da thought there’d be someone stupid enough to go for the full 75K? Anyway, Bob says his clients kept telling him how pleasant you were to deal with over the phone.”
“Thanks, Harry. I try to be helpful.” Five o’clock. She felt the usual nausea. She saw herself after perhaps an hour, maybe even as long as an hour and a half (how long could she put it off?) re-entering her apartment, closing the door behind her. She couldn’t sit here and delay him any longer. He was waiting politely for her to leave so that he could double-lock the door after her. She placed the newspaper back on her desk. She kept the desk super-neat because it was almost smack up against the front window. As long as she sat there she was the broker’s public image. She liked looking up every once in a while and waving at a familiar faces that passed by outside.
“Tomorrow morning you might want to check out the ads I circled, Harry. They’re private owners I spoke to who might be willing to let us list them.”
“Thanks. I’ll look into it. Where do you get time to do that, Vera? Ain’t you busy enough holding the joint together?”
She got up and approached the door, which he was already holding open for her. “I fit it in when it gets a little slow,” she said. “The one thing I hate is to be idle.”
“I know that,” he said.
Glancing to her left, she saw Harry’s wife in the car parked at the curb, waiting for him, eying her with pursed lips. Mentally she draped a sign around the frumpy woman’s neck saying WIFE: ENDANGERED SPECIES. Vera proceeded to the right down the busy street, walking homeward in the soft summer sun, relishing the clamor of rush hour all around her. She felt as if invisible strings ineluctably drew her toward home. Walk as slowly as she might, stop and linger where she would, she could at most merely delay the inevitable. She thought of how again, today, for the umpteenth time, Harry had told her she had too much smarts to remain just a secretary, as she had for the past three years, and that she ought to take the Real Estate Broker course at the community college-a snap for a college grad like her. It flattered her to be so well thought of, of course, but she could already see the hours and hours of enforced isolation it would entail, studying at home night after night, alone with the inanimate printed page. The hours spent in class would hardly be enough to compensate.
