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37

 

 

Alan Hamel wringed his hands, sitting at his desk on the fourth floor of the Political Science building at Sloan City university.

Somewhere out there, he thought, looking out into the blinking night, is a confused old man. The university failed. We failed to take care of our own.

He picked up the phone and called the Bronsky household. The phone rang a couple of times and Alan began to wonder if he was going to reach anyone. Finally, a voice came on the line.

"Hello?" It was Nora.

"Hi Nora, it's Alan. Is Ned there?"

"No, Alan, he's not home yet."

"Umm, he hasn't been in. I haven't seen him in a week."

"A week? Well, where is he, Alan?"

"I don't know, that's kind of why I'm calling you. Has he come home during the week?"

"No, but that's - he's so busy that I usually know, I mean he usually tells me when he has something going on but he does get a little forgetful and there have been a couple of times when he's gone off to a conference, right from school, with you or with somebody else from the faculty, so I - "

She sounded defensive. Bronsky was originally a linguist who had made a second career out of social criticism, writing and lecturing on governments and media. He had recently turned 70. Nora was only 64.

"I know, Nora, I know," Alan said. "Well, I think, honestly, we're going to have to face up to the fact that Ned is 70 years old and he's just - he might not be able to look after himself as well as he used to."

Nora gave a heavy sigh on the line.

 

"Oh Alan! If anything's happened to him -"

"Okay," Alan said. "It's okay. Do you want to call the police, or should I?"

Nora sighed again. "I'll call them. I- you know, he's so smart and he's so popular, he's in demand, and ... we don't like to think about that day, when - "

"When you become a shell," Alan said. "When you start to ... to lose the race."

"Yes," Nora said.

"I know," Alan said. "It affects everyone. There actually might be a day like that, especially when you get to be 70 or 80."

"I know," Nora said.

Pause.

"Well, thank you for calling. I'll call the police now. Thank you, Alan."

"He'll be okay, Nora," Alan said. "You know, he's my friend. I love him. I want him to be okay, as badly as you do ... I'm sure he'll be okay."

"Thank you, dear. I hope so."

"Okay, bye Nora."

"Goodnight."

Alan heard the click and hung up his phone. He toyed idly with a gold penholder on his desk, a solid gold metal statuette of the half-topless French Liberty. He looked at his bookshelf, which contained several Bronsky titles along with the political studies journals and textbooks and academic monographs.

Any one of us, he thought. When the day comes, it doesn't matter if we're Einstein or Hitler or Ned Bronsky. If we're 70 and no one's looking after us, we could just get up one day and get confused, and just start wandering around outside. And we might never come home.

An agnostic, Alan prayed anyway, that Bronsky had just gone to Brazil or China or something, gone to give a lecture and not told anyone. He leaned back in his swivel chair, put his feet up on his desk and thought about it. He was only 59, but he suddenly felt fragile and paranoid.

The phone rang, and he jumped.

"Hello?" he said abruptly, hoping it would be Nora with good news.

"It's me," said a woman.

"Oh! Hi sweety," he said, getting a mental picture of his wife, Stacy Sun.

"What's going on? Are you coming home soon?"

"Yes, yes I am. I had to - Ned's missing."

"Ned Bronsky?"

"Yeah, Ned Bronsky."

"How long has he been missing?"

"A week. Nora hasn't seen him either."

"Oh, I remember Nora Bronsky," Stacy said warmly. They had met at a birthday party. "Wow, how scary. Did you call the police?"

"Nora called them."

"Jeez. Maybe you should call the press or something."

"Oh! That's right!" Alan knew Ned so well that he had forgotten Ned was something of a celebrity -- so was Stacy, sort of, but not really -- and would be recognized on the street easily, especially in Sloan.

"Gee, Stacy, that's a really good idea."

He paused. "You know, maybe it's up to Nora to do that," he said. "She's kind of old and frail herself, and I don't want her to have to deal with a lot of crap from-"

"You're right. She can make that decision."

"If he doesn't turn up soon--" He winced at using the language of a lost set of house keys. "I'm sure I'll be talking to Nora again in a day. If she doesn't bring it up, I'll suggest it to her then."

"Yeah. Good." Stacy paused. "Well, how about coming home and eating some dinner?"

Alan nodded. "I'm leaving now. I'll see you soon."

"I love you."

"I love you. Bye bye."

"Bye."

He hung up the phone and glanced at idly at Liberty. He stood up and left his office, turned off the light and locked the door behind him.

After Alan was well on the freeway in his orange Camry, there was a noise outside his office window, way back at Sloan City U.

A hundred human beings, now collected into a glob of shiny, molten gold, crept up to the window from below. They slithered under the window. They got a little jammed up, trying to enter too quickly, so the part that was already inside the office re-formed itself into a human hand with an opposable thumb, and clicked open the latch locking the window, then pulled it open so the rest of the gold blob could creep inside.

Once inside, the blob slithered up the side of Alan's messy desk and made a fumigation-tent shape over the gold statuette and penholder. The whole mass emitted a low rumble while absorbing the gold. Discarded plastic pens clattered to the desk, as the gold around them was slurped up, into the blob. The blob crept back to the window and, by arranging itself into a variety of invented shapes, managed to latch the window from the inside while holding it open, then slip itself the rest of the way out before the window slammed shut and locked, leaving it undisturbed.

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