Free The Rise & Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman Page B

into her coffee, losing half the pastry in the mug, flakes floating, as he rhapsodized about his mushy avocado. Humphrey prided himself on the purchase of expired produce, which he talked supermarket stockers into saving for him. Despite moderate indigestion, he kept Tooly and himself going this way on almost no money. And Humphrey wanted nothing more than this existence: nibbles and books, gesticulating and pontificating, with Tooly there to answer back. “Movement is overrated,” he said.
    She herself was subject to the laws of Slob Gravity, able to remain inside for days, her nose in books, consuming whatever vittles materialized on the Ping-Pong table. At other times, though, she marched outside, walking tirelessly around the city, marking her map, scanning for building doors left ajar and talking her way inside. Whichever condition—activity or indolence—held sway, Tooly struggled to break its spell. When slobbing around the apartment, she could barely propel herself farther than the bathroom and back. When striding block after block, she required a force of will to return home at all.
    “Do you think,” she asked, following an hour of reading on the couch, “that I should get dressed at some point?”
    “It’s nearly one P.M. —throw caution out of window.”
    “If I threw caution out the window, I’d have to open the window. It’s too cold,” she said. “But I should get ready.”
    He knew this meant a meeting with Venn. “Why you should go? Stay here. Is more comfy. You wait and I find you nice job.” Another of his pastimes was writing on her behalf to grand organizations, informing them of a young lady they must employ. She wished he’dstop this, but few of his correspondents answered anyway. When they did, Humphrey claimed it as the nearest miss. Yes, perhaps the U.N. secretary-general hadn’t hired her, but he had answered on proper letterhead.
    “It wasn’t Kofi Annan who wrote back,” Tooly noted. “Some person in his office. An intern, probably.”
    “Small details,” he said. “I beat you in chess?”
    “I really have to go.” She sneezed, and his face lit up. Humphrey kept pharmaceuticals under his cushion, and prescribed to anyone who as much as cleared his throat. He especially loved treating her—he had done so often when she’d been sick in childhood. But Tooly couldn’t oblige with an illness today. “It was only dust.”
    “Fine, fine—you must go to meeting? Go,” he said. “Just because I can at any moment fall, and my heart stops, and nobody here to call help? No problem. I wait on floor trying to breathe till you come home.”
    “I ban you from falling over and dying while I’m out.”
    “I die very quietly. I try not to bother you.”
    “I know you’re joking, Humph, but I’m actually starting to feel bad.”
    “Do what you like.” He leaned on her, rising unsteadily to his feet. “But I am going out. Cannot sit around all day. I have items and activities.”
    “You idiot,” she said, grabbing him for a cuddle.
    “Leave me, crazy girl!” He squirmed away, sweeping the mussed gray-black hair off his forehead. “You don’t go to see him. You come with me on book consult. No?”
    “Sorry, Humph. And I’m walking there, so I should leave.”
    “At least you take subway with me. It’s very colding outside.”
    “For a Russian, you’re so whiny about the weather.”
    “I am low-quality Russian.”
    “I’ll accompany you to the station. But that’s it.”
    When they stepped outside, she inhaled deeply and the cold air seemed to awaken her a second time. A burning smell was in the air—weldingat the ironworks across the street. Their corner was dotted with industrial workshops, many in red-brick garages inside padlocked chain link fences crowned with razor wire. They cut down Hamilton Avenue, walking against the flow of passing vehicles. A few bereft brownstones gave onto the rusted expressway undercarriage, with the Red Hook projects on the