A Manhattan Ghost Story Page 16

  “Yeah, like a—” I stopped.

  “Like a what?”

  “Nothing, Sam. I’m getting cold. Why don’t we get outa here, okay?”

  “You can go. I’m staying for a while. I like it here.”

  I sighed. “You know something, Sam? I bet that if old Joe Hammet came in that door—” I nodded sagely at the mausoleum’s door—”you’d faint dead away.”

  He shrugged again. “Maybe. Like I said, it’s the not-knowing that gets you scared. So maybe I would, and maybe I wouldn’t. It depends on how friendly he was, I guess.”

  “Oh, yeah? You mean if he said, ‘Boy, it’s a nice day,’ and gave you one of his big smiles, you’d get up and shake his hand?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe that’d scare me more than if he was carryin’ his head between his legs and pukin’ at the same time. I don’t know. It depends, Abner. Everything depends.”

  * * *

  I stood with my back to Art’s door for a very long time. I didn’t think for a moment that it would keep anyone out, but I thought the gesture was important.

  I watched morning light slowly fill the apartment. I listened to Manhattan come fully awake. I thought that love was often enough, but that sometimes it isn’t—sometimes it isn’t enough by a long shot.

  And I thought, too, that what I most wanted was to be able to work on the big photo book that I’d come to New York to do. I wanted to take ten thousand pictures; I wanted to feel the Nikon in my hands, wanted to push chemicals around in a darkroom, I wanted to make decisions about lighting and about angles, and moments out of time.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I called Serena Hitchcock at 9:15.

  “Serena, it’s Abner Cray. Can we get together soon? I’d like to talk about the book.”

  “Abner, there is no book, you know that; it’s been cancelled.”

  “I want to do it anyway, Serena. On spec. Can I do it on spec? I need to do it.”

  “I’d prefer to talk about other projects, Abner. I have several in mind—”

  “I’d really like to do the big book, Serena. The one I came here to do.” I waited. She said nothing. “Serena, I thought you’d be pleased. Are you there, Serena?”

  “I’m here.”

  “And?”

  “And I wish I could help you, Abner—”

  “I said ‘on spec,’ Serena. I’ll do the book, and I’ll show it to you, and if you don’t like it, you can give it back.”

  “I know that I’ll like it, Abner. But that’s not the point—”

  “I’ll come down to your office. We’ll talk. I need to do this.”

  “You sound … manic, Abner. No, don’t come here. Please. You can come to my apartment, it’s in the West Village—you’re familiar with the West Village?”

  “Sure I am.”

  “Okay. Come over after 7:00, closer to 7:30 really. I’m at 230 West 11th. You’ll see my name on the directory.”

  “Thank you, Serena.”

  “Sure,” she said, and hung up.

  I went to breakfast at the small Greek restaurant near the apartment. I sat at the same table; I ordered scrambled eggs, fresh-squeezed orange juice, whole wheat toast, coffee.

  The owner of the restaurant—a dark-haired, smoothfaced man in his early forties, wearing a soiled, white apron over a shortsleeved white shirt and black pants—said from behind the counter, “I thought you were not coming back,” and glanced quickly about, apparently to see if there was anyone else within earshot. There wasn’t. A very thin young man with receding blonde hair and a thick mustache was seated at a corner table reading The Christian Science Monitor, a couple of nicely dressed women in their early thirties were talking animatedly in a booth on the other side of the restaurant.

  The owner went on, at a high whisper, “I thought our little friends scared you away.”

  “Little friends?” I said.

  “The cock-a-roaches,” he said, his accent now plainly in evidence. “The bastard cock-a-roaches. I saw you squash one of them and I thought it scared you away. I’m glad for my restaurant that it didn’t.”

  “Your food’s good,” I said. “And I don’t care about cockroaches.” I smiled. “It’s hard to get away from them anyway, in New York.”

  He swiped at the counter with a dishcloth. “It’s hard to get away from many things in New York,” he said.

  “Like the pollution,” I said.

  He swiped at the counter again, his smile stuck on his face. On the other side of the restaurant, the two nicely dressed women still were talking animatedly. In a far booth, the young man with receding blonde hair and thick mustache still was reading his Christian Science Monitor. “I’m glad you like my food,” the owner said. “All the time I make good food.”

  “Yes,” I said, “you do.”

  He swiped at the counter again. “Not like some of the others,” he said. “Some of the others don’t care no more. I care. I always care.”

  I speared some egg with my fork, pushed it around the plate. “Yes,” I said again. The fork scraped shrilly against the plate, sending a shiver down my back. I put the egg into my mouth; the egg was cold.

  “Fifty years I been makin’ good food for my customers. Gets to be a habit, you know. You want more coffee?”

  “No.” I stood. “Thank you. No.” I fished in my pocket for some change, put two quarters on the table, watched as a fat cockroach scooted up from the underside of the table, across the top, over the quarters, and disappeared around the other side. “No,” I said again, and found that I was grinning oddly. “I think I’d better get—” the cockroach scooted across the table top again—”to work,” I finished, and started for the door.

  “Sure, go ahead,” the owner said, that smile still stuck on his face. He swiped at the counter again. “Sure, go ahead,” he repeated. In a corner booth, the two nicely dressed women still were talking animatedly. At a table, the young man with the blonde mustache still was reading his Christian Science Monitor. “Sure, go ahead,” the owner said again.

  I looked at the door. It was open; some people were walking hurriedly past, and a light snowfall had started that was already beginning to collect on the single cement step.

  “Sure, go ahead,” the owner said again. He swiped at the counter. “Go ahead. It’s good for my restaurant that my little friends didn’t scare you away.” He glanced at the women in the corner booth. “More coffee, girls?”

  Both of the women looked over. One was a redhead, her skin very pale, her lips thick with bright red lipstick. “No,” she said. “No, thank you. We’re going to leave soon.” And she turned to the other woman, an incredibly well-endowed brunette in a tight, pink dress, who was holding a small, black purse on her lap. “We should leave soon,” she said to the woman, and the woman said to her, holding her hand horizontally at her throat. “I’m full up to here with coffee. I’ll never sleep.”

  “Sure,” the owner said to them, “go ahead. Sure, go ahead.” He looked at the young man reading the Christian Science Monitor. “Some for you, young man.”

  “None for me,” the young man said.

  “I’ll never sleep!” said the incredibly well-endowed brunette in the tight dress. “I’m full up to here.”

  The young man pushed himself away from the table, dropped his newspaper, bent over, picked it up, went to the door, hesitated, went out, turned right, was gone.

  The owner whispered, “He didn’t pay me,” then shouted, “Hey, you come back here!” and ran around from behind the counter, dishcloth still in hand. He stopped, grinned, looked at me, said, “He’ll be back. He’s one of my regulars.”

  “Yes,” I said. I was making my way slowly to the door. “One of your regulars,” I said.

  “And you?” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  “It’s good for my restaurant that my little friends didn’t frighten you away.” He went back around the counter, swiped at it with the dishcloth.

  “No,” I said. I was at the
door now. I went through it, turned right on Lexington Avenue. “No,” I said to myself, when I was half a block from the restaurant. I shook my head violently. “Not me,” I said.

  And a middle-aged man in a rumpled, brown suit who’d been walking parallel to me said, “Got a lot on your mind, huh, bub?” and chuckled, hurried on, said loudly, when he was a yard or so in front of me, “New York’s just chuck full of ‘em,” and chuckled again.

  “Not me,” I said again. “Not me, mister!” I shouted.

  At times it is imperative that we grab hold of something that seems real, something that has mass and weight, something that can cut, something mechanical, soulless, gauche, temporary.

  We need such things when we feel certain that we are going to be caught up, suddenly—or already are caught up—in something exquisite, and eternal. Like death, or love. Or both.

  And we need such things because they can help affirm for us that we are, ourselves, soulless, gauche, and temporary. Sure it’s a lie, I know that it’s a lie, but it’s how most of us make it from one day to the next.

  * * *

  I went to a small shop called Gifts for Giving, on Madison Avenue, near East 79th. I had been in the shop once before, very briefly, several years earlier, in search of a birthday present for Stacy and I’d found that it dealt in goods that could only be called exquisitely tacky. There were lava lamps—in pastel green and gold—and picture clocks, “Starving Artists” oil paintings, toilet-paper holders with built-in AM radios, battery powered mittens, and even a miniature wooden outhouse whose door opened to reveal a tiny, pantless ceramic man in the midst of urinating.

  I went to this shop after breakfast and I happily prowled the all-but-empty aisles unbothered for several hours, until a fat, balding, thirtyish man wearing rimless glasses, a pink shirt, and shiny gray pants come over, said he was in charge, and asked if I could “please loiter elsewhere.”

  “I’m still deciding,” I told him.

  “On what?” he said, clearly incredulous.

  “On what I’d like to buy, of course. I’m trying to find a birthday gift. For a friend.”

  “You’ve been in here for quite a while, mister, and if you haven’t found anything yet, I’d say you probably never will.”

  I shook my head. “No, you’re wrong. There’s so much … stuff.” I grinned. Nearby, some aprons were on display. I picked one up, looked it over. It was a full length white apron, and imprinted on it, in big, black letters, were these words:

  GOT MORE TIME FOR MISBEHAVIN’

  SINCE I STARTED MICROWAVES’!

  “This is nice,” I said. “I think she’d like it.”

  “Your wife?” he said, sounding suddenly less incredulous. “Is this something for your wife, sir?”

  “No. A friend. As I said.” I laid the apron down on a display table behind me. “I’ll let you know,” I said.

  He glanced about, picked up a needlepoint picture on another display table, held it up to me. “Perhaps she’d like this, sir. It’s a fine sentiment, I’d say.”

  The picture had these words on it:

  TIME ENDEARS

  BUT CANNOT FADE

  THE MEMORIES

  THAT LOVE HAS MADE.

  I took it from him, studied it a moment, said, “Yes, it is a fine sentiment,” and set it next to the apron.

  “Can I show you something else, sir?” asked the balding man.

  “No, thank you,” I answered, “I’d like to browse some more, if you don’t mind.”

  “Take your time, sir.”

  “Yes. I will.”

  “It’s the only thing any of us have, isn’t it, sir?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Time. All we’ve got is time.” He smiled a wide, flat smile. “All we’ve got is time, sir.” His eyebrows shot up, as if he were doing a Groucho Marx imitation. He said it again, “All we’ve got is time, sir.” His smile was stuck. His eyebrows stayed up. His head looked like a cueball with a happy face painted on it.

  “I’d better go,” I said.

  “Whereto, sir?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere else.”

  “There is nowhere else, sir.”

  “Sure there is.” I started for the door, felt his hand on my arm, looked back. He was still smiling. His eyebrows still were up. He said, “The apron, sir? Do you want the apron?”

  “No,” I told him.

  “Or the picture? It’s a fine sentiment.”

  “No. I’d just like to leave.”

  “Certainly, sir.” He let go of my arm, gestured with his hand, quickly, toward the door. “Go ahead. Leave. Please. We want you to leave.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “So are we,” he said.

  And I left.

  I went, my head down and my hands thrust into my pockets, to a porno movie house off Broadway, on 49th Street. Something called Vixens In Cellophane was playing, and I seated myself in the last row, which was empty, in the corner, and I wept.

  At the Hammet Mausoleum, Halloween, 1965

  “Sam, I’m hungry,” I said.

  “Ain’t nothin’ to eat here,” he said, and grinned, “unless, of course—” He inclined his head slightly toward Joe Hammet’s vault.

  “Jesus H. Christ, Sam, that’s disgusting!”

  He laughed quickly.

  I stood. “That’s disgusting,” I said again. “And I’m sicka sittin’ here watchin’ you turn blue from not breathing and gettin cold and havin’ my rear end go to sleep.”

  “I can’t help what your rear end does, Abner.” He nodded at the spot where I’d been sitting. “But if you’re my friend—”

  “Course I’m your friend.”

  “Then you’ll sit down.” He sounded distinctly and suddenly sullen. “I like it here, Abner.”

  I thought a moment. I sat down again. I said, quietly, “For real, Sam?”

  “For real, Abner. I like it here. I don’t know why, but I do.”

  And I felt, at once, more affection for him than I ever had before.

  BOOK THREE

  Heaven can wait

  And all I got is time until the end of time.

  —Meatloaf

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was close to 6:30 when I left the theatre. I did not go back to Art’s apartment, though I needed a shower and shave and a change of clothes. I went straight to Serena Hitchcock’s apartment. I thought of her and the book and the cancelled contracts as gritty, almost venal links with reality. And I thought of Art’s apartment as a link to something else altogether.

  Her building was one of a series of three-story, red brick row houses on West 11th Street. It was streaked brown from air pollution and steep, snow-covered concrete steps led to a set of heavy, black-painted wooden doors which opened onto a brightly lighted foyer. I found her name on the building’s directory—she was on the third floor—rang her once, then again, and again. She answered on the fourth ring.

  “Hi, Serena,” I said. “It’s me. Abner. You decent?”

  “You’re early,” she said. “You’ll have to wait a few minutes, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She clicked off. I waited with my hand on the doorknob. After several minutes, I rang her again.

  “Yes?” she said, clearly annoyed.

  “Hi, Serena—”

  “I’m not dressed, Abner.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  She clicked off. I put my hand on the doorknob again. I saw a man and woman, dressed well, as if for an evening at the theatre, come out of a first floor apartment and walk quickly toward the door, the man with his arm around the woman’s waist. They saw me, and he grimaced slightly; I smiled at him, let go of the knob. From behind the closed door he said, “You’re not coming in.”

  I pointed toward the ceiling. “I’m waiting for someone,” I said.

  “Then you’ll have to continue waiting,” he said. “Back away from the door, please.”

  I backed away from the door; he opened it, an
d they walked through. He closed it firmly, and they moved quickly past me, eyes averted, through the first set of doors.

  I rang Serena again.

  “How’s it going, Serena?”

  “You can come up now, Abner,” she answered, and the door buzzed. I grabbed it, pulled it open, went inside, and climbed the three sets of noisy, wooden stairs—which tilted noticeably to the left, so climbing them was something of an adventure—to her apartment, at the rear of the building. I knocked, she answered at once, and showed me in.

  Her apartment was small: a living room, kitchenette, and bedroom, I guessed, the walls a soft cream color, the floors well-polished oak, and the living room furnishings, two chairs, a couch, a loveseat, all of the same type—heavy beige fabric on chrome frames. There were two large chrome-framed prints hanging, one of lilacs with the name Galen in blue beneath, over the loveseat. The loveseat was near a south-facing window that looked out on a spacious, well-lighted garden behind the row house. The other print, near the chrome and glass dining room table, was a colorful, stylized painting of various vegetables—corn, cucumbers, several tomatoes—and the words EXHIBITION, 1964 beneath it in black.

  “Very nice,” I said, and nodded to indicate the apartment.

  “Sure,” Serena said. We were standing just inside her front door. She was dressed in black designer jeans, a white, long-sleeved blouse, and she made no attempt to hide the fact that I was imposing on her. She nodded at the dining room table. “Do you mind if I finish eating, Abner?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Fine.”

  We went to the table; she sat, and immediately started in on what looked like linguini with red clam sauce and a glass of wine. She nodded at the other end of the table, said, “Sit down, Abner,” put some of the linguini into her mouth, and chewed it very slowly and delicately. It was clear that she was enjoying it.

  I sat at the other end of the table.

  “Now, what is it you want to talk about, Abner?” she said, and dabbed at the edges of her lips with a pale violet napkin. “The book?” she went on, and put the napkin on her lap.