A Manhattan Ghost Story Read online

  “I, uh—” I began, and faltered.

  “Money?” he said. “Is that what you’re after?”

  “No,” I said. “I have money.”

  “Good,” he said, “so do we.” And he pulled Serena back and closed the door.

  At the Hammet Mausoleum, Haloween, 1965

  Sam stopped working at the last screw on the top hinge and nodded at the plastic bag just outside the circle of candles. “Wanta get me a Mallo Cup there, Abner?”

  I went over to the bag, peered inside, saw little, because of the darkness, stuck my hand in. I shrugged. “It’s empty, Sam.”

  “The shit it is. I put a half-dozen Mallo Cups in there and I know I didn’t eat all of ‘em.”

  I checked the bag again. “You must have, Sam, because the bag is empty.”

  “Damnit to hell!”

  “They’ll just rot your teeth out anyway, Sam.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you sound like my mother, Abner.” He began working at the last screw again. He’d been working at it for some time, five minutes, at least.

  “Probably rusted, huh, Sam?” I suggested.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “You got it?” I was surprised, apprehensive.

  He held the screw up in his fingers. “Got it!” he said again, as if declaring some great victory. He stuck the screw in his pocket, studied the hinges, and the edge of the vault door for a while. Finally, he cursed.

  I said, “What’s the matter, Sam?” and went over to him.

  “This is a fucking waste of time,” he said.

  “What’s a waste of time, Sam?”

  “It’s not gonna come open. No way, no how.” He nodded at the edge of the vault door, where it joined with the mausoleum wall. “I gotta pry it open somehow, Abner, and I couldn’t get even a pussy hair in there.”

  “Yeah,” I said, pleased.

  “So let’s go,” he said, and put the tip of the screwdriver to the opening between the vault door and the wall.

  “Yeah,” I said again, and started for the area where Flora’s skull was, so I could begin cleaning the place up. I heard a metallic popping sound behind me, then I heard Sam yell, “I got it, goddamnit! I got it!”

  I turned, looked. The vault door was hanging open from its left hand edge, and one end of Joe Hammet’s silver casket was visible. “Put the door back, Sam,” I pleaded. “Why don’tcha just put the door back and we’ll clean the place up and get outa here, okay?”

  He didn’t answer. He reached into the vault, got a hand-hold on the coffin, pulled. I heard a brief scraping sound, then he called to me, “Shit, Abner—you gonna help me with this or what?”

  I said nothing. I took a couple of steps toward him, stopped, saw that he’d gotten the casket several inches out of the vault. He tugged at it again. It moved a few more inches. He shouted, “For Christ’s sake, Abner—”

  “Okay,” I said sullenly. “Okay.” And I went to the other side of the coffin, reached, got hold of the handle.

  “On three,” Sam said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “One-two-three-tug!”

  We tugged together. Hard. The casket moved nearly a foot out of the vault.

  “On three,” Sam said again.

  “On three,” I said, and realized that I was getting into the spirit of things.

  “One-two—” He paused, took a breath. “Three.” We tugged. Harder this time. We got the casket at least three more feet out of the vault. Far enough, in fact, that it would have been off-balance and fallen to the floor, had the ceiling of the vault not been only a few inches from the top of the casket.

  “Again,” Sam said.

  “Again,” I said.

  “One,” he said, “Two, and—”a pause; a breath— “three!” We tugged. The casket all but sailed out of that vault. It hit the cement floor with a low, but very powerful whumping sound, like two cars hitting each other at slow speed, and seemed to go on shuddering from the impact for at least a minute. Sam and I stayed quiet while this was happening. I think we both entertained the idea that old Joe Hammet was shaking himself awake.

  And, at last, Sam said, “Criminey!”

  “Yeah!” I said.

  We knelt over the casket, then, in unison, as if we had come to pray at it. We fingered it; it was made of metal, and it felt like metal, though it was very cold. Sam said, nodding to indicate the perimeter of the casket, “It’s screwed together, Abner. It’s screwed together.”

  “Unscrew it,” I said.

  “Yeah.” And he started to work at what looked like half a hundred screws. A little, lopsided smile appeared on his lips as he started the work, and as he progressed with it, that smile increased, got as broad as the smile of a clown, until, when the last screw came out, he was literally grinning from ear to ear.

  So was I.

  He said, “The grand opening, Abner!”

  “This is it!” I said.

  And together we lifted the lid on Joe Hammet’s coffin.

  We did not look in until we’d put the lid down, in front of the coffin, near Flora’s skull. We stood facing each other, eyes locked, for a few moments; then we lowered our heads and looked in.

  Sam said, “So what?”

  I said nothing.

  “So what, Abner? So what? So we got a dead man here.”

  Still I said nothing.

  “Might as well be looking at hamburger.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Might as well be looking at a piece of chicken, right, Abner? A piece of white meat.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Meat that stinks, too, right, Abner?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “White meat chicken with hair, besides.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “White meat chicken all dressed up.”

  “Tennessee Tuxedo.”

  “Let’s put him back,, okay, Sam?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Poor old guy,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Sam said.

  We got the coffin lid and put it back. We lifted the coffin, amidst lots of quiet groaning and cursing, and stuck it back in the vault. We put the door on, screwed the screws in tight, put the caps in place; then we gathered up Flora’s skull, and the candles, and the wrappers that the Mallo Cups came in. And we left the mausoleum.

  Just outside—it had stopped raining and some stars were visible—Sam said, “Did he look like he was smiling, Abner?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said. “But maybe they all do. Maybe they can’t help it.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Like maybe their muscles freeze,” I said. “So they just keep on smiling forever and ever.”

  “Could be,” he said.

  ” ‘Cuz what they got to smile about, Sam?”

  “What have any of us got to smile about?” Sam said.

  “Being happy,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Being happy.”

  And we went to our homes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I was asked no questions at a hotel called The Emerson, on East 115th. The counter man—short, frail, black, dressed in a ragged, white, button-down shirt and blue, rayon pants—looked very properly bored. He took a week’s rent in advance, gave me a key to Room 432, told me not to vomit on the bed—”Or I throw you out, okay?” I said okay, and went up four flights of crumbling cement fire stairs to my room.

  I had managed to catch a bite to eat at a diner on East 109th. Not a big meal—I ate only because I knew I should. Half a grilled cheese sandwich, a full cup of coffee.

  Room 432 of the Emerson Hotel is small, and nasty. It’s painted blue and gold; the bottom half is blue, the top half gold. The paint is nearly as old as the hotel, probably. When traffic is heavy on East 115th Street, the building vibrates sympathetically and the paint flecks off here and there, especially on the wall that faces the street, where there is some kind of moisture problem.

  The floor has a large, threadbare, red oriental rug on it—fro
m Woolworth’s, I imagine, circa 1960—and there is a wrought-iron, floor-standing lamp, no shade, alongside a green, one-drawer writing desk near the door. The bed is wrought-iron as well, the mattress lumpy and soft. A Gideon Bible rests on a small, dark wood nightstand close by.

  My first night in this room, I woke early, at about 2:00, and found Phyllis standing naked beside the bed. And when I reached for her, she put one leg over me, straddled me, kissed me.

  And whispered, “We had some good times, didn’t we, Abner?”

  I whispered back, “We did, Phyllis.”

  “Lots and lots and lots of good times.” She still was whispering. “Lots and lots of good times.” The yellowish glare from street lamps on East 115th Street was illuminating her left side, and I ran my fingers across her cold cheek, down her shoulder, her breast, her hip.

  I felt her shiver under my fingers, not as if in pleasure, but as if in pain. I said, “I’m sorry,” my voice low and quivering, and I realized that somewhere deep inside me fear was trying hard to get out.

  She straightened so the glare of the streetlamps shone nicely on her torso, she put her hands behind her head; raised her head; her mouth hung slightly open.

  And the light on her brightened, as if the sun had risen and its light was on her, not the glare of the street lamps.

  She slid off me, off the bed, up onto the sill, and into that light, out, over the edge of the window.

  And when I went to the window, I saw the glare of street lamps on streets wet from a quick rain, a taxi making its way west, some people here and there. And I saw Art, too; he looked briefly up at me, just long enough that I could see the overwhelming fear on him. And then the people around him—the casually dressed woman, the small boy, the young black man, and several others now, too—hustled him off, around a corner, and he was gone.

  I stood at that window for some time. I watched the streets lighten as the sun rose. And I screamed, very loud and very long. Until, at last, the counter man pounded on the door and yelled something about keeping the noise down, that if I belonged in Bellevue, maybe that’s where I should put myself.

  It was the first time in my life—I believe—that I had done something completely spontaneous, something uncontrollable, and it felt incredibly good, as good as sex. So I did it again. And the counter man pounded louder and stronger. And after a few moments, I fell silent.

  I opened the door. The counter man said, “What’re you—outa your fuckin’ head?”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him.

  “You want a fix, you go get one; just don’t bring the man down on my hotel, okay?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s truer than you know,” he said, turned, and went back downstairs.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Several nights later, I made my way into a small park on Second Avenue, near East 77th Street. It was 10:00 or 10:30, and there were only a few people there—a couple of old men, a bag lady feeding the pigeons crowding around her, two young guys, one of them asking the occasional passerby if he wanted any dope. It was a typical New York City park scene, and I took a little solace from it, because it was so comfortably mundane.

  I put myself on a bench near the edge of the park, stuck my hands into my coat pockets, and lowered my head. Almost at once, I felt someone sit down beside me. I kept my head lowered; out of the corner of my eye, I could see the person beside me. It was a woman, and she was dressed as Phyllis used to dress, in fake, white mink and green silk and high, white boots.

  But I was frightened and did not want to look at her.

  One of the guys selling dope came over. I looked up at him. He smiled, his mouth full of gray and rotted teeth. “Hey, you looking to get high, man?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “How about the lady?”

  Again I shook my head.

  “It’s good stuff.”

  “No. Thank you, no,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Okay,” he said, and walked off.

  I looked at the woman sitting next to me. She was a white woman, in her mid-forties, I guessed.

  “Hi,” she said.

  I said, “Hi.”

  “Round the world, fifty dollars; straight fuck, twenty-five.”

  “No, thank you.”

  She hesitated. “A few quick feels, right here—ten bucks; that’s pretty good.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  She stood. “You smell anyway,” she said.

  “Shit,” I said. And she went away.

  I sat alone on that bench for quite some time. I heard the noise of traffic decrease; I felt cold, late evening air come in, and I became aware that the park itself was emptying. And then a cop came over.

  “Got some ID?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I told him.

  “Uh-huh. You want to look at me when I’m talking to you?!”

  I looked at him. He was a very typical New York cop—stocky, with short, black hair, a square face, and a distinct no-nonsense, I-don’t-like-this-jobany-more-than-you-like-me attitude. “You want to show it to me, then?”

  I got my wallet out, handed him my driver’s license and a Visa Card. He studied them both a good long time and finally handed them back. “What are you doing here, Mr. Cray?”

  “Sitting,” I answered.

  “I can see that.”

  “Resting. I’m tired.”

  “You have no home?”

  “Yes. But I like it here. Am I doing anyone any harm?”

  “You want to stand up, please, Mr. Cray?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I asked you to.”

  “I don’t count that as reason enough.”

  “Stand up, please.”

  I stood.

  “Raise your arms, please.”

  I raised my arms. He frisked me. “Okay, you can sit down.”

  He nodded to his left, toward East 78th Street. “I’m going to walk down the block there, Mr. Cray. I’m going to go over to Second Avenue, to East 79th; then I’m coming back here. I walk fast. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. And if I find you here, we’ll go through this little routine all over again, only I won’t come up empty-handed. You understand what I’m saying to you?”

  I nodded. “Yes, I understand.”

  “Good boy. We like to keep our city clean, Mr. Cray.” And he walked off. I waited ten minutes, then got up and started out of the park. I passed him on the way out. He nodded at me, and I nodded back. And I saw Art DeGraff across the street, at the corner of East 78th and Second Avenue. I stopped walking.

  “Keep a move on,” the cop said behind me.

  I glanced back at him, then at Art again, who was crossing the street now. He had apparently been waiting for the light to change.

  The cop said, “Keep on moving, Mr. Cray, or you and I will have another go-round.”

  I walked. I did not believe that Art had seen me; he was in the glare of a street lamp, and I was in relative darkness. His back was to me now, at any rate; and he was walking at a casual pace, as if he had nowhere in particular to go.

  I was a good half-block away. I started to call out. “Art—” I said, and stopped. And I saw what I had not seen seconds earlier. I saw the people around him. To his right, the young woman in a gray pleated skirt and red-checkered blouse. Beside her, a child, perhaps four years old, who had ragged, blonde hair and was wearing blue overalls and a white shortsleeved shirt. The young black man, cigarette in hand, was there, to his left. And there were people in front of Art, too, though I could see little more than their heads bobbing.

  “Art! I called, because I suddenly, and strangely, felt protective of him, as if what he had done to Phyllis, and to Stacy, didn’t matter any more, as if the people near him meant him harm, and I wanted to help him, though it was a feeling that lasted only long enough for me to yell to him. I got no answer, and he continued walking. The woman looked around, though, very briefly. The little group was passing a well-lighted stor
efront, so I had a good view of her. She had short, dark hair, dead gray eyes, round cheeks—the sort of woman one sees on detergent commercials—and she had a little smile on her lips. A kind of Mona Lisa smile. We’re taking care of him now! it said.

  I watched them until they disappeared around a corner, down East 79th Street, I guessed.

  And then the streets began filling up.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  People in coats and hats, people carrying umbrellas, carrying briefcases, carrying babies on their backs, and people lugging groceries home; people arm-in-arm; people in polo shirts, in hand-me-down dresses, in gray suits; people laughing, sweating; people carrying tennis rackets, showing off new shoes, coaxing youngsters to come along; people looking in shop windows.

  Old people who had trouble walking, old people jogging, old couples smiling affectionately at one another, as lovers do.

  Teenage couples with their hands on each other’s rear ends; boys on street corners learning about lust.

  It was daytime.

  And Manhattan’s streets were crowded, as they always are then.

  But it was not daytime. It was a little after 2:00 A.M.; it was 2:15, and a waning gibbous moon should have been setting behind me.

  I heard then, from just to my right, “Hello, Abner.” I recognized the voice. It was Phyllis’ voice. And when I turned, I saw that she was standing beside me, dressed as she always dressed, in fake, white mink and green silk and stacked heel, white boots.

  And she was whole. She was as beautiful as I remembered, just as beautiful as I remembered she was.

  And she said to me, a soft, pleased smile playing on her lips, her gaze on the crowded streets, “This is our city, Abner!”

  That was four months ago.

  She used to come here, to Apartment 432 of the Emerson Hotel, now and then. I used to hear the clop-clop of her boots on the bare wood floor in the hallway, and I used to listen to the clop-clop get louder as she got closer, and I heard her gentle knock on the door. I listened; I waited. And after a while, she called softly to me, “Abner, please, I love you.”

  But I stayed away. I sat on the edge of my bed and I stared at the door until she went off. She never stayed long. A minute, no longer. Maybe less. Maybe far less. Perhaps just a second or two.