Steven Millhauser: We Others: New and Selected Stories

ROBERT SUTLIFF. Some sixteen hours later, Robert Sutliff arrived at the station on the 7:38. It was an hour after his usual time. The lights were on in the lot, though the sky was still gray with the last light. He had worked late — tomorrow’s design presentation was a big one. He still needed a few hours after dinner to do a little fine-tuning, a little last-minute cleanup on the three logos he was planning to show them, each with six presentation pages, with and without type. That way he’d give them the illusion that they were actively involved in the decision process, that they were making a contribution to the final product, while he slowly steered them in the direction of the third mark, the one they wouldn’t be able to resist: the yellow-gold ring surrounding a solid dark coffee-colored circle, as if you were looking at a cup of coffee from above, and in the center a design of classic simplicity, in five bold yellow lines: a horizon line, a half circle representing the rising sun, and three sun rays. Coffee and morning, coffee and the energy of the new day, the energy of a new beginning, all in a visually striking, distinctive, versatile design. It worked perfectly on a two-inch business card, and it would work just as well on a ten-foot billboard or the side of an eighteen-wheeler. He hurried down the platform stairs, the stone shining dully under the orange lights. He would talk up the first two designs, the tame one and the way-out one, then hit them with the winner. His car was parked toward the back of the lot, not far from a light pole. As he reached into his pocket for his key, he heard someone walking up to him. Sutliff turned. The man raised his arm and swung at Sutliff’s face. Sutliff heard the sharp sound of the slap, like a gunshot. “Hey!” he shouted, but the man was striding away. His cheek burned. The man had struck him hard, but it wasn’t a punch, he hadn’t made a fist. Sutliff angrily began to follow him, shouted again, and stopped. That was not how he did things. He knew exactly how he did things. Sutliff looked around, rubbed his cheek, and got into his car. He drove quickly out of the lot, turned onto Main, made a left onto South Redding, and stopped at the police station. A man in a trench coat, no hat. Five ten, five eleven. Short hair, brown, darkish, hard to tell. Clean shaven, mid-thirties. A stranger. They would send a car out right away. Sutliff thanked the officer and continued on his way home. What angered him about the whole thing was that people liked him; people took to him. It was part of his success. It had been that way as far back as kindergarten. It had all come together in high school, where he’d set a new record in the hundred-meter dash, acted the part of Tom in The Glass Menagerie —Blow out your candles, Laura! — and nailed Sandra Harding in her living room in front of the fireplace after the spring dance. UPenn, Harvard Business. Now he was someone to watch, someone on the way up, though always with a friendly greeting, a kind word for everyone. The man had looked at him angrily. Sutliff tried to think who it could be. He had a good memory for faces; it was no one he knew. Sutliff loved his wife, his daughter, his work; there had been the one brief fling in the months before Amy’s birth, but that was two years ago, no husband in the picture, no brother, she’d been good about it, disappointed but not bitter. He had nothing to reproach himself with. Who would do this? His cheek felt hot. The man had swung hard but hadn’t made a fist, hadn’t wanted anything from him. A crazy mistake. The police would take care of it.

AT BREAKFAST. At breakfast Walter Lasher turned over a page of the Daily Observer and saw a small item: Robert Sutliff, of 233 Greenfield Terrace, had been attacked by a man in the parking lot of the railroad station at 7:41 p.m. The unknown assailant had slapped his face. Police were looking for a man about five ten or eleven, with short dark hair, wearing a tan trench coat. Lasher glanced up at his wife, who was pouring herself a second cup of coffee. He was aware of a sharp, exhilarating sense of relief, almost of gratitude. The man had not singled him out from all the others, had not come after only him. Lasher knew Sutliff, though not well. Sutliff was younger, moved with a different crowd, had come up from the city a few years ago. They nodded on the morning platform, said hello in the hardware store. Lasher’s sense of relief was suddenly charged with uneasiness. The man’s hair had been light-colored, not dark. All the more reason for coming forward now, telling what he knew. Sutliff hadn’t even mentioned the color of the eyes. Details were streaming back: the pale angry eyes, the stern mouth, the buttons on the shoulder straps, the looped belt. It would be difficult to go to the police, since he’d be forced to explain his earlier silence. Better to think it over, give it another day or so. The man had to be stopped. People had enough to worry about without this kind of crap. Lasher, reaching for his coffee, missed the handle and rattled the cup on the saucer. Anna looked up. “Nothing,” he said. “I didn’t say anything,” she said.

CHARLES KRAUS. Charlie Kraus, marketing manager of Sportswear West, returned from the city at dusk and walked down the steps into the parking lot. He’d read the paper at breakfast that morning and had discussed the incident on the way to the city with Chip Hynes and Bob Zussman, who had said: “It’s always a dame.” Kraus wasn’t so sure. Just like Zussman to use a word like that: dame. Kraus glanced at the rows of cars stretching from the station building to the chain-link fence at the far end. The sun had set, but the sky was still pale gray — the lights hadn’t yet come on. Two feet away, the taillights of an SUV suddenly glowed red. Kraus stopped and let the car back out. He wondered, not for the first time, how many people got hit by cars in places like this each year. Parking lots were an example of efficient but flawed design: you found a way to bring as many cars as possible into a confined space, but anyone walking to or from a car was in constant danger of being struck by a vehicle backing out. All solutions were impractical. One night it came to him: a system of overhead walkways with a separate stairway leading down to each car. He could patent it and make a fortune. In the morning he’d laughed at himself. Kraus looked around. Not much place to hide: just row after row of cars. Those ailanthus trees and sumac bushes along the fence, a big trash bin over by the slope. To take you by surprise, a man would have to crouch down between two cars, where it would be a cinch to spot him — especially at this hour, with two dozen people walking to different locations, cutting across, looking around. At night it was a different story. The fluted-steel light poles were too far apart, the high-pressure sodium lights didn’t give off as much illumination as the halide lights the Public Works folks had wanted, but hey, you get what you pay for. It wouldn’t be all that hard to keep out of sight. The thought angered him. He’d moved to this town ten years ago because it was safe. Good schools for his kids, plenty of parks, the beach: all of it safe. That’s why you moved to the suburbs. That’s why you gave up delis with jars of fat pickles on the counter. If he wanted to spend his time worrying about what could happen in a parking lot after sunset he might as well go back to Brooklyn. The whole thing would probably blow over by the time he flew out to Chicago next week. The hotel had one of the best gyms in the country, with big windows high up over the lake. Just ahead, a man stepped around the back of a van. Kraus glanced over. The man strode up to him, raised his hand, and slapped him hard in the face. He looked at Kraus for a moment, then turned briskly away. The look was hostile and cold. Kraus waited for the man to disappear — he must have ducked behind a row of cars — then took out his cell phone and called the police.