A Manhattan Ghost Story Read online

  “Yes,” I said. “The book.” I nodded at the linguini. “That looks good, Serena. Your own recipe?”

  “Sure,” she said. She gave me a quick once-over and pursed her lips, as if in annoyance. “You look terrible, Abner.”

  I looked down at myself, grinned. “Yes,” I said, “I do, don’t I? I haven’t been home. I spent the day in a theater.”

  “Oh?” She sipped the wine, and a look of great pleasure spread over her face. She held the glass up. “You want some of this, Abner?”

  I shook my head. “No. Thanks.” I patted my belly. “Not on an empty stomach.”

  “Sure,” she said, put some more linguini in her mouth, and went on as she chewed, “You want to do the book on spec, Abner, go ahead. I can’t promise you anything though.” Some of the red clam sauce dribbled down the right side of her chin. She dabbed it away with the violet napkin.

  “Yes,” I said, “I know that. But this book is something that I really need to do. It’s why I came to New York in the first place.”

  “Uh-huh.”

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

  “I’m not.” She sipped the wine, set the glass down, pushed her plate away. “I wish I were, but I’m not.” She stood, said nothing for a moment, looked confusedly at her plate, then up at me. “I’m sorry, Abner; did you want some of this stuff? It’s not very good, but if you’re hungry, I’ll get you a plate.”

  I said something about not wanting to put her to any trouble.

  “It’s no trouble, Abner,” she said, and went quickly into her kitchenette, got a plate from the cupboard, went to the stove with it, ladled some linguini onto the plate. She said, over her shoulder, “You have to forgive me, Abner. I’ve been … somebody else, I guess. Since my brother’s murder.” She turned from the stove, came to the table with the plate of linguini and red clam sauce, set it in front of me. I stared at the plate a moment, looked apologetically up at her. “If you could tell me where the silverware is, Serena …”

  “Oh, sorry.” She turned quickly, went back to the kitchenette, got some silverware, came back to the table. “I really loved him, Abner. I didn’t know just how much.” She put the silverware down next to the plate. “I guess that’s an old story, isn’t it?” she went on. “You don’t really know how much someone means to you until he’s gone.” She smiled sadly, hesitated, then went back to her seat at the table.

  “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Abner? You’ve lost people, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “My parents,” I answered. I scooped up some of the linguini; it was quite good.

  “They died together?” Serena asked, and I noticed that her tone had changed, had become lighter.

  “No,” I answered.

  “Separately, then?” she said.

  “Yes.” I nodded at the linguini. “This is very good, Serena.”

  “They died … close to one another?” she asked. “In time, Abner? Within a couple of weeks of each other? That’s nice. It happens that way quite a lot, you know.”

  “No,” I answered. “My mother killed herself. My father died several years later.” A short pause. “Can we talk about the book, Serena?”

  “I’m bothering you, aren’t I?” She shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry. Just trying to … make some sense of it all, I think.”

  “Yes,” I said, and then, because I could see her pain clearly in her eyes and around her mouth and because I thought she was reaching out to me with it, I hurried on, “I’ve met some people, Serena.”

  “People?” She held the bottle of wine up again. “Are you sure you don’t want any of this, Abner?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  She set the bottle down. “What kind of people, Abner?” A stiff, flat grin appeared on her mouth.

  “I’ve met a woman,” I explained. I ate some more linguini, complimented her again on it, continued, “And she’s … taught me quite a lot, Serena.”

  “Does this woman have a name?”

  “Yes. Her name’s Phyllis.”

  “Phyllis? I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone named Phyllis.” She picked up her fork, popped some linguini into her mouth, set the fork down, dabbed at her lips with the violet napkin. She looked very civilized; I liked that. She continued, “You must love this Phyllis very much.” She sipped her wine, set the glass down, picked up her fork again. She nodded to indicate my clothes. “Assuming, I mean, that she’s somehow the reason you’ve been letting yourself go like this.”

  “In a way, I guess she is,” I said.

  “What’s she like?”

  “You mean Phyllis?”

  She put another forkful of linguini into her mouth, chewed it slowly, swallowed. “Yes, I mean Phyllis. Tell me about her.?

  “Phyllis is dead.”

  The phone rang. Serena stood, dabbed at her mouth again, said, “Excuse me, please,” and went to answer it. She said good-bye to whoever had called a minute later, went to the kitchenette, and brought back a small salad and some bread in a wicker basket. She sat, held the basket up, “It’s sourdough, Abner. Would you like some?”

  “No. Thanks,” I said. The linguini was filling me up quickly. “You go ahead.”

  “Thank you, I will,” she said, and spread some butter on a piece of the sourdough. The butter was soft, the bread warm, apparently, because the butter formed little yellow pools on it. Serena took a small bite; some of the butter clung to her lip. “And that’s why you look the way you do?” she asked. “Because Phyllis died?” She looked properly concerned.

  “No,” I said.

  She dabbed at the butter on her lip with the violet napkin. “I don’t understand, Abner.” She ate some more linguini, gathered some salad up on her fork. “Phyllis’ death didn’t upset you? I would say that that’s very unusual, wouldn’t you? Assuming, of course, that you were in love with her. Didn’t you tell me you were in love with her?”

  “I was in love with her, yes. I still am in love with her, Serena.”

  She put the forkful of salad into her mouth. A small piece of lettuce fell to her lap; she picked it up, set it next to her plate. “Then that’s the problem, I’d say. You’re in love with … you profess to be in love with a dead woman. That’s the problem. When did she die?”

  “In December.”

  She brought the glass of wine to her lips, hesitated. A look of confusion passed swiftly across her face. She sipped the wine, set the glass down. “In December? Was this a woman you knew in Maine?”

  “No.”

  “Where then?” She dabbed at her lips with the napkin, again.

  “Here,” I answered. “In Manhattan.”

  “Oh?” She picked up her dinner fork, set it down, picked it up again. “Oh,” she repeated. “Someone you had known for some time, then?” This seemed to please her. She scooped up another forkful of linguini, put it into her mouth, and chewed slowly, as if savoring it. “Someone you met before?”

  “No, Serena.”

  She stopped chewing for a moment, started again, swallowed. “I’m sorry, Abner. You’re confusing me.”

  I looked away, out the window that overlooked the large garden behind the row house. The garden was brightly lit and I could see that there were people walking in it, despite the snow—a woman pushing a baby carriage and a man, several yards behind her, dressed in a red turtleneck sweater and blue jeans, who was walking with his hands in his pockets and his head down. I said to Serena, “I want to tell you something. About Phyllis.” I looked away from the window, into Serena’s eyes. She looked back expectantly.

  “Yes,” she said, “go ahead.”

  A big, quivering grin broke out on my face. I was nervous. I grin when I’m nervous.

  Serena repeated, “Go ahead, Abner. I’m listening.” She had a forkful of linguini poised halfway to her mouth.

  I looked out the window again, at the brightly lit garden. I saw that the wo
man pushing the baby carriage had stopped and was leaning over it, as if tending to her baby, and that the man in the turtleneck was closing on her. I said, “She’s a part of something, Serena, that’s … much bigger …” And I grinned again.

  “You mean Phyllis?”

  “Yes.” I looked away once more, toward the garden. The man in the turtleneck was very close to the woman leaning over the baby carriage. He still had his hands in his pockets, his head lowered, and the woman looked up at him as I watched. I believe that she smiled. I looked at Serena. “Yes,” I repeated, grinned once more, forced it down. “We lived together for three weeks.”

  Serena thought a moment, then said, “You’re confusing me, Abner. Please, don’t confuse me. You said Phyllis died in December. Isn’t that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you said that you met her here. In Manhattan. Isn’t that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  She picked up her fork, set it down. “You’re making me nervous, Abner. You’re making me very nervous.”

  “I can see that,” I said. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to make you nervous, I want to give you … hope.” I smiled.

  She reached for a slice of sourdough, stopped—her hand halfway there—brought it back, picked the fork up again. “I sweat when I’m nervous, Abner. I don’t like to sweat.”

  I said again, “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re telling me that you lived with a dead woman for three weeks.” And now a small, quivering grin appeared on her lips.

  I looked out, at the garden, again. The man in the red turtleneck had passed the woman pushing the baby carriage, who was still leaning over it. I looked back at Serena. I said to her again, “I want to give you hope, Serena.”

  “Dead is dead!” she cut in, and speared a piece of sourdough with her fork. She repeated, though without emphasis this time, and with a little whimsical smile playing on her lips, “Dead, Abner, is dead.” She began munching on the sourdough. She nodded at the breadbasket. “Eat. You need to eat, Abner. I want you to eat.”

  “Serena, I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.” I glanced at the garden again. The woman there still was leaning over the baby carriage. I looked back. “But I’m scared, Serena—” I looked at the woman in the garden. She had lifted one foot. I looked back. Serena had speared another slice of sourdough. She was buttering it. Her hand was quivering. “You’re scared?” she said, and grinned. “You’re scared?”

  “I’m scared,” I acknowledged. I looked at the woman in the garden. She was bent over violently at the waist, her right leg at right angles to her left, which was straight. I looked back. Serena was still buttering her slice of sourdough; it was beginning to shred.

  “Abner,” she said, her eyes on the sourdough, “I’m not going to try and humor you. I’m not going to play any silly games with you. I am going to tell you again that you are making me very nervous, and I don’t like to be nervous. I sweat when I’m nervous. I’m sweating now. And you’re making me nervous—” her butter knife went through the bread, spreading some of the butter onto her fingers; she didn’t seem to notice—”because I honestly feel that you need help of some kind. Maybe because of the setback with the book, I don’t know. If so, then I’m partially responsible, and so that makes you—to some small degree—my responsibility. So I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to eat this bread, and then I’m going to phone someone I know who will talk with you—”

  “You think I’m nuts, Serena?”

  She looked up suddenly, surprised. “Of course I think you’re nuts.” Another grin, short-lived.

  “Will you at least listen to me?” I said.

  “No. I’m sorry.” She took a little bite of the sourdough and chewed it delicately.

  In the garden behind the house, the woman leaning over the baby carriage had stuck her head further into it, so her right leg was high in the air. I said to Serena, “I wish I was.”

  “Was what?”

  “Nuts.”

  “You are nuts, Abner.” She took another small bite of the sourdough, and again chewed it delicately. “And I wish, I really wish that I could afford to sit and talk with you about it, but I can’t. Please understand—the luxury of being nuts comes with certain—” she thought a moment—”certain miseries. And one of those miseries is having to accept the fact that … acquaintances—and that’s all I am; I am not your friend—are not going to listen to you.”

  I stood. I looked at the garden again. I saw the baby carriage. I did not see the woman.

  Serena said, “So if you are not going to have any more food with me, I’d like you to leave.” Another grin. “And quickly, please.”

  I looked at her. “Hope, Serena,” I said. “There is hope, believe me.”

  She shook her head. “No. There isn’t. Now, please, will you leave? For a while you were very entertaining. But no more.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I pushed my chair back, stood, nodded at the linguini. “Thank you, Serena. It was good.”

  “No problem,” she said.

  “And I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  She said nothing.

  I went to the door, looked back. She was not looking around at me. She was sitting with her face buried in her hands. I believe that she was weeping softly.

  I left the apartment and went down to the street, then back, into the garden.

  CHAPTER TWO

  To the baby carriage there, which was big and black, with lots of chrome.

  And empty, too. Except for the face of that woman—a nice face, with large hazel eyes and full red lips:

  Which moved and pleaded with me, “My baby, where is my baby?”

  It was a long way back to Art’s apartment. More than sixty blocks. I ran it. I jogged it. And when I got there, I sank into Art’s black leather couch and I watched a cable channel that was showing something filthy. I immersed myself in it. Completely. As I never before had. I got a hard-on; I found myself smiling. It was a retreat, a haven—it was life, for God’s sake! Tacky as it was, it was life.

  And I did not know how long Phyllis had been sitting on the couch with me. When I noticed her, at last, I screeched out of fear and surprise, and she turned her face toward me. She was grinning.

  She said, her voice lower than I remembered, and harsher, “I told you that you wouldn’t like it out there, Abner.”

  Her face was flatter somehow, her skin tighter; and her smell had changed, too. It had softened, become more subtle, and distant.

  She was wearing what she always wore; her fake, white mink coat, her green dress, her white, stacked-heel boots. I said, “I miss you, Phyllis.”

  She continued grinning. It was hard and humorless. “You have me now,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said, and I took her hand. She stiffened, as if in pain. She said, “No, Abner.” And she still was grinning. “No, Abner.” And I heard the same kind of quivering anger and grief in her voice that I had heard in the whorehouse East 80th Street. “I am coming apart, Abner.”

  “I miss you, Phyllis,” I told her again.

  “I am coming apart,” she said. “We come apart. We all come apart.” Her grin changed slightly. “The way dolls do.”

  I shook my head.

  “It happens, Abner. It has to happen.”

  I shook my head more violently. I said nothing.

  “We leave, Abner. We go away.”

  I lowered my head; it frightened me to look at her.

  “We leave,” she said again. “We go away.”

  I looked at her. I saw that she was the woman I had stopped outside the house on East 80th Street.

  And she said now, as she had said then, “I ain’t no one else, honey. I ain’t never been no one else.”

  And I grabbed her, pulled her to me, wept, babbled into her shoulder. I was desperate to keep her; I would have held her for days on end to keep her.

  God, I loved her.

  I love her even now.

&n
bsp; Her body felt like a sack of loose sand. And I held it, weeping, until she slid away from me.

  She scared me. Good Christ, she scared me!

  But not enough. She slid away from me; her fingers traced lightly down my shirt, my thigh, my calf. I grabbed for her; I grabbed hard.

  And got her hand clean off at the wrist.

  And watched her slide away, through the floor, like water soaking in.

  At the Hammet Mausoleum, Halloween, 1965

  “Why do you like it here, Sam?” I asked.

  “It’s quiet,” he answered.

  “Yeah, well, libraries are quiet, and I know you don’t like libraries.”

  “And it’s … a place to be.”

  “A place to be, Sam?”

  “Yeah. Forever. You gotta end up being someplace, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  He reached out and fingered Flora’s skull. “Like Flora here. She’ll be buried with me, I guarantee it, Abner.”

  “That’s nice, Sam.”

  “It ain’t nice, Abner. It’s the way that things have gotta be. You try and spend forever with something you love. God, Abner, you make bein’ dead sound like a Tupperware party or something. Nice, shit! Nothin’ is nice.’”

  “You’re damn spooky, Sam.”

  “Sure I am.” He pushed himself to his feet suddenly, swiped at the back of his pants, smiled down at me. “You wanta pick those things up, Abner—” he nodded at the candles, which had burned to half of what they were when we got there, and at Flora’s skull—”I think we’d better get outa here, okay?”

  “Sure enough, Sam.” I was happy. “Whatever you—”

  “But first,” he cut in, “I gotta have just one little look at Joe Hammet. I gotta touch him, Abner. I gotta see how real he is. I gotta see how real he is anymore.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was an afternoon early in February, the day after I’d gone to Serena’s apartment and also the day after Phyllis had come to Art’s apartment, that Stacy showed up there. I’d been sleeping fitfully when I heard her knock. I think I knew it was her at once, and when I answered the door, after throwing on one of Art’s robes, which was much too short, I realized that I did not want to see her, that I thought of her as an intruder.