A Manhattan Ghost Story Page 11

  I cursed. It was the first time that I’d cursed, and it made me feel very adult. I called to the child again: “You shouldn’t go out there!” But she continued walking. She moved the way small children do, in quick, anxious steps. She was clearly enjoying herself, clearly enjoying the very act of being alive.

  I cursed once more. I knew that I’d have to go out there and get her. “A little girl fell through the ice just the other day, you know,” I called. The girl in the green snowsuit looked up again and shouted back, “It’s okay. I can do it now.”

  And that’s when I saw that the little girl was Rebecca.

  At least I know now, twenty-one years later, that she was Rebecca. At the time, I told myself that the girl was only someone who looked strikingly like her, and I believed it.

  So I stepped out onto the ice, to go after her. And fell through. “It’s okay!” I heard as I scrambled through three feet of ice water back to shore. “It’s okay!” she shouted with great, childish exasperation and annoyance, the way kids announce, one day, that they do not need help anymore tying their shoes or buttoning their jackets:

  “It’s okay! I can do it now!”

  But that was a fluke, a mistake, something that was never intended. For a few moments I became—like lots of other people, I believe—an unwilling trespasser into a world that, until then, had easily kept me out.

  CHAPTER TWO

  But no more. Now it had me, and I knew that it had me. I knew it when the little ragamuffin with the half-dozen puppies tried so hard to get his “unfinished business” done.

  It is not what you might think—this world I trespassed briefly into at twelve, and nearly got trapped in at thirty-three. It is some of what you might think, certainly. But it is so much more.

  Go, answer the door, peer through the little security peephole at whoever has come to call. You see a face, a smile perhaps, a pair of eyes. And they tell you—open the door. Or they tell you—do not open the door. But if you have shut yourself up on the wrong side of that peephole for too long, they tell you very little. They tell you only what is within arm’s reach, not what is above, or below, or to the sides, or behind that smiling face.

  And a lot of them do smile.

  Rebecca smiled.

  Phyllis Pellaprat smiled. Phyllis Pellaprat slipped her clothes off and offered herself to me. And I took her. And enjoyed her.

  At the Hammet Mausoleum, Halloween, 1965

  I said to Sam, at a whisper, “I heard Joe Hammet say ‘Okay,’ Sam. Didn’t you hear him say ‘Okay’?”

  Sam shook his head briskly. “It was an echo. It was just—” he paused, looked around, then went on, his voice sharply higher in volume—”an echo!” The word “echo” came back to us from the cement walls almost instantly. He grinned at me. “Just an echo, Abner.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, disappointed. “An echo.”

  “Just like all of us are gonna be someday.”

  “Sure, like all of us.”

  “You understand that, Abner?”

  “I understand it. I’m not stupid.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I think we should get outa here, Sam. That’s what I’m sure of.”

  “Shit, why, Abner? We’ve only been in here thirty minutes or so. And the witchin’ hour ain’t till 12:00. We gotta stay here until then anyway.”

  “I can’t stay here till then, Sam. Jees, I gotta get home before 10:30—”

  “They,” he cut in, “gotta stay here forever, and you don’t hear them complaining, do you?”

  I readjusted myself on the cement floor. “I’m cold, Sam.”

  “So are they.”

  “No, they aren’t. They’re dead.”

  “Which means they’re cold, Abner. Don’t you understand that??

  “Sometimes I think you’re fulla shit. I really do, Sam. Sometimes I think that.”

  He grinned yet again. It was a slow, wide grin, and the candlelight on his round, freckled face made him look once more like a big pumpkin. He said, “So are they, Abner.”

  “So are they what, Sam?”

  “Fulla shit.”

  “Who?”

  “Them.” He nodded quickly to his right and left. “Them. These dead people here.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Sam.”

  “Think about it. They’ve been handed a bill of goods—”

  “By who?”

  “By us. By you and me, and by their wives and husbands, and mothers and fathers, and by everyone, that’s who.”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “So they’re gonna hang around, you know—”

  I stood. Sam reached into the plastic bag, withdrew a Mallo Cup, began munching noisily on it. “These are better than Reeses Cups, you know. They’re gooier.” He stuck his index finger into his mouth and sucked some chocolate off.

  “Sam,” I said, “you gotta have some respect.”

  He grinned up at me. “You think they mind, Abner? Hell, it’s good for ‘em. It tells ‘em there’s life out here—Sit down, goddamnit!”

  “No reason to get angry, Sam.”

  “Sure there is. We’re all dead. That’s why I’m angry. We’re all of us dead. You and me and everyone.”

  “You sound like a lunatic, Sam.”

  “I wanta always be a lunatic. When I’m shoveled into the ground, I wanta be a lunatic.”

  I sat down again. I was beginning to worry about my friend, Sam Fearey.

  Serena Hitchcock called the morning after the blackout. “Can you come into the office, Abner?” she asked, and I sensed that something was very wrong.

  “I can’t, Serena; I really can’t …” I was straining to think of some excuse when she cut in, “Abner, we’re not going to be able to do the photo book. I’m sorry.”

  I said nothing.

  “The company’s going into reorganization, Abner, and a decision has been made, by the Board, not to do any more big, expensive books. They don’t sell as well as they used to—”

  “Mine would, Serena,” I interrupted, but it was a feeble protest.

  “I know that, Abner, You know that. But the Board doesn’t. And they’ve overruled me. Why don’t you come in; we’ll sit down, and maybe we can come up with some other ideas. I still like your work, Abner.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I’ll do that. I’ll call you.”

  “You don’t sound terribly enthusiastic, Abner.”

  “You’re right.” A pause. “I’m going to take a small vacation, Serena.”

  “Vacation from what?”

  It was a good question. “I’ve got something else I want to do—something I need to do.”

  “This all sounds very cryptic, Abner.” I chuckled.

  “It does, doesn’t it? I’m sorry.”

  “So am I, Abner.”

  It was just past dawn, late in January, when Phyllis reappeared.

  I was sitting on the edge of the bed wondering when I’d get some sleep, because I had lain awake all night watching the digital numbers on Art’s alarm clock change. She was dressed in her fake mink coat, her white boots, her green dress, and she stood quietly in the bedroom doorway a long while with a slight, playful grin on her mouth. At last she said, “I lied, Abner.”

  “Did you?” I asked. “Did you lie?”

  “Yes, Abner. About several things.” Her slight, playful grin stayed, though her tone had become quiet and apologetic. “I lied about several things. About myself. About Art. About the accident. Several things. And I must apologize.” She was still grinning, and it was making me nervous. “Will you accept my apology, Abner?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. It was the truth. “I want explanations first, I think. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”

  “Do you think I’m capable of that, Abner? Do you think I’m capable of being reasonable?”

  “I don’t know.” I paused. “Could you stop grinning, Phyllis? Please.”

  “I lied to you about myself, about Art, about the accident. I lied to you
about several things. And I apologize. I can’t, Abner.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “I have to grin. I’m coming apart.”

  “I don’t understand. Coming apart? Tell me what that means.”

  “I reach inside, and I try to find it, but it’s not there; it’s just not there, and I wonder what it is—I wonder what it was.”

  “I don’t understand you, Phyllis.”

  “And I thought it was very surprising, Abner, that there still were days.”

  I got out of bed, stood next to it, watched her.

  “But there are days, Abner,” she said. “And we mark time in them.”

  “Phyllis, I love you, I need you.” I stopped. I found that I wasn’t talking to Phyllis anymore. The room was empty.

  * * *

  I stayed in the apartment for five days. It was a time of transition. I did a lot of pretty intense thinking in those five days. I got no sleep; I ate very little. Sometimes I turned cable TV on, with the sound off, and sat on the big, black leather couch. And I tried to make sense of Phyllis’s words: “But there are days, Abner. And we mark time in them.” And again and again, there on the big couch, with some crummy movie on the tube, I’d answer her: “But don’t we all mark time, Phyllis?” Which just took me around in a circle and got me to biting my own tail.

  Imagine this: Imagine being horny, and scared, and quivering with anxiety, and claustrophobic, all at the same time. I felt like a mound of drooling jello on the couch there, waiting for Phyllis to reappear and knowing, somehow, that she wasn’t going to—that, after all, I was going to have to go looking for her.

  It was an idea that made me queasy, an idea that made me sad and confused and frightened.

  Because I did love her. More than I ever loved anyone. But I didn’t know if it was enough. Because love isn’t always enough. Sometimes it is, but not always. Sometimes it’s better to run from it.

  I didn’t run from it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I have learned this, too: Pettiness survives. And jealousy. And pretentiousness, fear, loneliness, depression. I have learned that the living have not yet cornered the market on misery.

  On the third of February, I left the apartment for the first time in five days, went out to the street, and hailed a cab. It pulled up across the street; I ran to it, hopped in, and said to the cabbie, “Can we ride around a little bit?”

  “Sure we can ride around,” he answered, and pulled slowly away from the curb. “Anywhere in particular you want to ride around?”

  “I don’t know, the city,” I answered, and realized that that was a good way to get taken to Queens, so I added, “Midtown, I think.”

  He turned down Fifth Avenue. He drove the way most New York cabbies drive, as if they’re in amusement park bumper cars, and he was talkative. According to his ID card on the visor, his name was Matthew Petersak. He was chunky, round-faced—an everybody’s uncle kind of guy.

  “I got a sister,” he said; we were nearing East 73rd Street and getting caught in one of those traffic jams that seem to erupt out of nowhere in New York, like a bad cough, “and she’s a looker, you know what I mean? I mean she’s a real looker; nothin’ like me, you understand. I mean she ain’t, fat like me. She’s a looker. And she’s got all these guys comin’ round tryin’ to get into her little panties, you know what I mean? Tryin’ to get into her little panties, but she won’t let ‘em, she won’t let ‘em; she chases ‘em away; she says to ‘em, ‘You get away, you don’t get into my little panties.’ ” He laughed; ahead, several pedestrians were trying hard to make it across the street, on a crosswalk, but since traffic wasn’t stopped completely—it was just inching along—they wisely chose to stay on the edge of the sidewalk.

  The cabbie babbled on, “You wanta know her name? You wanta know my sister’s name, fella? It’s Loretta, and she’s twenty-nine years old and she’s still a virgin. You wanta know how I know she’s a virgin? I know she’s a virgin ‘cuz I ask her every time she comes in. I say to her, ‘You still a virgin, Loretta?’ I can tell if she’s lyin’, and she ain’t lied yet. And she’s still a virgin.” One of the pedestrians, a young blonde woman dressed in a black vinyl raincoat, stepped very cautiously off the sidewalk. ” ‘Cuz she ain’t married,” the cabbie went on. “That’s the way it should be for the women, don’tcha think? Not for the guys, just for the women, ‘cuz they’re different, you know. They don’t want it the same as us, or need it—” the blonde woman took another step out into the street—”the same as us.” He was looking at me in the rearview mirror; the cab was moving slowly forward. I nodded at the blonde woman; “Watch out there,” I said, and he said, still looking at me, “Don’tchoo agree, don’tchoo agree?” And the blonde woman took another step into the street, hoping, apparently, that the cabbie would stop. He didn’t. He hit her with his right front bumper and sent her spinning sideways, with her arms wide, and a look of tremendous surprise and fear on her face. It looked like she was doing some crazy kind of dance, and I found myself fascinated by her. She spun a long way, trying all the while to keep her balance. At last, she hit a police call box, first with her forehead and then with her torso; her arms encircled it, although her hands did not clench, and she collapsed there in a kind of kneeling position, with her knees and calves in the street, her belly and chest up against the call box—the side of her face mashed into it, and her arms thrown around it in a kind of loose hug. Her eyes were open very wide, and her mouth was moving a little: She was clearly in shock.

  I said to Matthew Petersak, “Jesus Christ! You hit her!”

  “And I’ll tell you another thing,” he said—traffic cleared suddenly; he picked up speed—”all this talk about a A-bomb—”

  “Fuck the A-bomb!” I broke in. “You just hit a woman back there!” I looked back; a crowd had gathered around the woman, and a couple of men were beginning to jog after us, on the sidewalk. “You might have killed her.”

  “Shit,” he said, “it wouldn’t be the first time.” The men jogging toward us picked up speed; Matthew Petersak picked up speed—he turned onto East 73rd Street, which was relatively clear of traffic. I yelled at him, “What in the hell are you doing?”

  He looked back. He grinned. “Only what I’ve always done,” he answered. “I’m only doing what I’ve always done.”

  And he came to a quick, jolting stop at Lexington Avenue. That’s when I jumped out of the cab.

  He hit his accelerator hard, turned down Lexington Avenue, and I quickly lost him among the hundred other yellow cabs on Lexington Avenue, all of them darting about, jockeying for position, and all of them precisely the same as the cab driven by Matthew Petersak.

  At the Hammet Mausoleum, Halloween, 1965

  “Like if I’m a lunatic now, I wanta always be a lunatic, you understand that, Abner?”

  “No,” I answered. “You can’t always be anything, Sam, except dust. You can always be dust.” I smiled to myself; I had uttered yet another profundity.

  “Shit, Abner—I ain’t dust now, so how can I always be dust? What kinda deal is that, anyway? You got shit for brains, or what? You know what I think?” He farted again.

  “Don’t do that, Sam.”

  He ignored me. “I think,” he said, and he fingered the wax that had dripped to the floor from one of the candles as he talked, “that we get put here, and we get into habits, and we like them”, and then we die, and we keep our habits, and we live happily ever after.” He took another Mallo Cup from the plastic bag, popped it into his mouth. “Neat, huh?” he said as he chewed. “Don’t you think that’s neat, Abner?”

  “Sure, that’s neat. So what are you going to be doing after you’re dead? Are you going to be coming back and scarfing up Mallo Cups?”

  “Maybe.” He grinned, lifted his fingers—they had wax on them—to a couple of inches in front of his eyes and examined them closely. “But there wouldn’t be any taste to ‘em, I don’t think.”

  “Why not?”

 
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just talkin’, Abner.”

  “Sure,” I said. “And what do you think I’m gonna be doing, Sam? After I’m dead?” I could feel myself being sucked into the mood he was trying to create.

  “You won’t,” he answered.

  “I won’t what?”

  “Come back. I’ll bet you won’t, anyway.”

  “Why won’t I?”

  “I don’t know—you’re not the type, I guess.”

  “And who is?”

  “I am. People like me.”

  “People who’re addicted to Mallo Cups?”

  “Sure. And people like Joe Hammet over there, ‘cuz he was a nice old fruit, and people like … like my Aunt Marie. ‘Cuz she’s so fuckin’ neat.”

  “You’re fulla shit, Sam.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  … they’d swarm over you like angry bees, the dead would, like angry bees.

  I had walked a good distance on Lexington Avenue.

  To my left, on my side of the street, and stretching to Park Avenue, stood a row of typical East 80s townhouses. They were four stories high, with tall, narrow windows, and they were painted variously gray, white, and blue. One, near the middle of the block, was a light shade of orange. Each townhouse had a set of concrete steps, and all of these were of the same length. Most of the steps had a black iron railing attached. In front of the townhouses, between the nicely kept sidewalk and the street, there were a number of young trees surrounded by circular fences, approximately one tree for every two houses. None of the trees was more than ten feet tall; they looked like the results of a recent block beautification program.

  The other side of the street was almost a carbon copy of my side, except that there was no light orange house, and a good tenth of the block, directly opposite me, was taken up by a square, two-story, red brick building. On the side of the building, close to the back, and halfway between the first and second floors, was a large, stylized picture of a smiling mouse, and the words THE MOUSETRAP: ANTIQUES in stiff, dark-blue block letters just above it.