Free The Knife Thrower by Steven Millhauser

aisle. Even as he drew in his breath sharply he realized his mistake: she was older than Martha, heavier, hardly like her at all. He had sucked in his breath—an unmistakable gasp. Harter thrust the booklet back on the shelf and strode through the bulb-lit barn into the bright day.
    The barn was red, the sky was blue. Along one side of the building was a row of bookstalls stuffed with paperbacks and sliced into sun and shade. A girl of about eighteen stood bent over a shady stall, and as she moved partway into brilliant sunlight, somethingflashed for an instant: a tiny earring? She had very short straw-colored hair parted on one side, and she wore crisp-looking dark blue jeans with the cuffs rolled up above the calf and a long-sleeved white shirt that came down over her buttocks. The flash reminded Harter of something, it was on the tip of his mind, but at the sound of his footsteps on the gravel the girl glanced up and let her gaze linger for a moment before she returned to browsing. And Harter was seized by the certainty that she was approachable, that he could strike up a conversation with her, maybe even drive off with her to a country inn for a cup of coffee: she had let her gaze linger that extra moment. He would tell her everything. She would be moved by his unhappiness, she would reach across the table and place her hand on the back of his hand—and as Harter turned back to his car, for it was all impossible and absurd, he imagined that in the space of that arrested glance she had seen, in the grave face of a stranger, a secret grief.
    At home Harter lay down heavily on his bed, but even as he closed his eyes he could feel his heart beating with disturbing swiftness. He could almost feel the blood surging through his veins as it rushed to reach the farthest limits of his body: his toes, his fingertips, his tingling scalp. The little man had stopped suddenly, as if struck in the face. And Martha asprawl in her lavender nightie, blowing her nose into a pink tissue—he’d forgotten the pink tissue. The room had been nearly dark. Martha disliked the lamp on the night table, with its bright, revealing bulb, and on the first night she had insisted on dragging out some sort of glass lantern with thick red-and-blue panes. It was there on all his visits, to cast its dim, romantic light over the room and permit her to overcome, a little, the exteme modesty that at first he’d found so touching but thathad come to irritate him more and more. The little man had entered quietly—Harter couldn’t remember hearing the doorknob turn—and had taken a full step into the room before suddenly coming to a halt. He hadn’t said anything but had stood rigidly there while Harter fumbled with his exasperating buttons. And now he remembered how Martha, with wisps of hair sticking to her wet cheeks, had pulled her nightie over her breasts, as if she were suddenly shy—a big, bewildered girl. For a few moments she stopped crying and stared at the man in the doorway, who did not move. Harter wished he had paid more attention to the few things she’d ever said about him, but the truth was, he hadn’t wanted to think about the husband at all. He had made it abundantly clear to Martha that he wished to be spared the details of her married life. Although Martha had an annoying habit of refusing to speak unkindly of people, she had once called her husband “stubborn”; Harter hadn’t invited her to give instances. Another time she had called him “old-fashioned,” which somehow made Harter imagine that he wore well-polished shoes with little holes in the toes and liked his socks to be rolled into balls. He had never asked a single question about the man, whose photograph he had seen only once on the bureau before Martha had made a habit of concealing it. His last name was odd: Razumian. He traveled a lot. A salesman, was he? A stubborn and old-fashioned little man. He wanted to meet with Harter. But why? Maybe he needed assurances.