Worms, by Paul Auster (excerpt)

Baumgartner is sitting at his desk in the second-floor room he variously refers to as his study, his cogitorium, and his hole. Pen in hand, he is midway through a sentence in the third chapter of his monograph on Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms when it occurs to him that the book he needs to quote from in order to finish the sentence is downstairs in the living room, where he left it before going up to bed last night. On the way downstairs to retrieve the book, it also occurs to him that he promised to call his sister this morning at ten o’clock, and since it is almost ten now, he decides that he will go into the kitchen and make the call before retrieving the book from the living room. When he walks into the kitchen, however, he is stopped in his tracks by a sharp, stinging smell. Something is burning, he realizes, and as he advances toward the stove, he sees that one of the front burners has been left on and that a low, persistent flame is eating its way into the bottom of the small aluminum pot he used three hours ago to cook his breakfast of two soft-boiled eggs. He turns off the burner, and then, without thinking twice, that is, without bothering to fetch a pot holder or a towel, he lifts the destroyed, smoldering egg boiler off the stove and scalds his hand. Baumgartner cries out in pain. A fraction of a second later, he drops the pot, which hits the floor with an abrupt, clattering ping, and then, still yelping in pain, he rushes over to the sink, turns on the cold water, sticks his right hand under the spout, and holds it there for the next three or four minutes as the chilly stream pours down over his skin.

Hoping he has warded off any potential blisters on his fingers and palm, Baumgartner cautiously dries off his hand with a dish towel, pauses for a moment to flex his fingers, pats his hand with the towel a couple of more times, and then asks himself what he is doing in the kitchen. Before he can remember that he is supposed to be calling his sister, the telephone rings. He lifts the receiver off the hook and mumbles forth a guarded hello. His sister, he says to himself, finally remembering why he is here, and now that it is past ten and he has failed to call her, he fully expects Naomi to be the person on the other end of the line, his cantankerous younger sister who will no doubt begin the conversation by scolding him for having forgotten to call her again, as he always does, but once the person on the other end begins to speak, it turns out not to be Naomi but a man, an unknown man with an unfamiliar voice who is stammering out some sort of apology to him for being late. Late for what? Baumgartner asks. To read your meter, the man says. I was supposed to be there at nine, remember? No, Baumgartner doesn’t remember, he can’t recall a single moment in the past days or weeks when he thought the meter reader from the electric company was scheduled to be there at nine, and therefore he tells the man not to worry about it, he plans to be home all morning and afternoon, but the electric company man, who sounds young and inexperienced and eager to please, insists on explaining that he has no time to explain just now why he didn’t show up on time, but there was a good reason for it, a reason beyond his control, and that he will be there as soon as he can. Fine, Baumgartner says, I’ll see you then. He hangs up and looks down at his right hand, which has begun to throb from the burn, but when he examines his palm and fingers, he sees no signs of blistering or peeling skin, just a general sort of redness. Not so bad, he thinks, I can live with that, and then, addressing himself in the second person, he thinks, You stupid ass, consider yourself lucky.

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