REV ROAD - CHAPTER FIVE

but for all its plainness, the Knox building did convey a quality of massive common sense.

if it lacked grandeur, at least it had bulk

Oat Fields mouth did not close while chewing and it left

white streaks of food on the rim of his water glass

You’re absolutely right oat

Earl W heeler kept saying

it was his memory’s vision of Oat Fields eating mouth that made

the spasms of vomiting come again and again

higher authority had decreed that Oat fields

could get along without a right hand man

which were the

colour of oyster meat

their facees loosened into wavering

pink blurs as they drowned at their desks

he was sometimes guiltly aware of taking

a dim pleasure to the very discomfort of the office

hadn’t she given him

every possible encouragement for months

undalting past him in the aisle like that, bending close over his desk

to hand him a folder smiling in a special oblique way that he’d never seen her use on anyone else

the former debutante, the chic

childless wife and irripressable playmate

which lay splayed with childish

awkwardness under the desk

he thought he looked surprisingly dignified

in his new suit, with its coat and tie almost exactly like his father’s

Imagine falling

from the very top floor

felt a shiver of wonder down his spine

at the enormous granite strength and stillness of the building. Wow!

I think you’ll find things’ve changed a little

since your old man’s time Frank

in something called the

sales promotion department

Others may fail to see the humour of it

but it filled Frank with a secre anstringent delight

by then the Knox Building

could have been a thousand miles away

a girl as totally unlike the wife of a knox man

as the apartment was unlike a knox man’s home

i mean the great advantage of a place like knox is that you can sort of

turn off your mind every morning at nine

she said it in a flattering

definitley femine way