A Manhattan Ghost Story Read online

  “Going up, sir?”

  I stopped, looked back. I saw the face of an incredibly aged man sticking into the hallway from the elevator. A smile was on the face—the kind of smile one associates with people who want very much to be of service. The smile dissipated; the mouth moved; I heard again: “Going up, sir?”

  I came back, stepped into the elevator. The old man—who was wearing a regulation elevator operator’s suit, black and purple and well-starched, and who was holding an elevator operator’s cap in his left hand—parked himself stiffly in a corner, near the controls. “Step to the rear, please,” he said.

  I stepped to the rear.

  “Floor, please?” he said.

  I told him the fourth floor; he pressed the correct button, and the car started up, wheezing and clanking. I told the old man that I hadn’t seen him earlier, when I’d arrived at the building.

  “That’s because I just got here,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I’m doing what I’ve always done.”

  “Oh,” I said again.

  “I don’t need to get paid for it. I’m doing what is familiar and comfortable. I enjoy doing it. Fourth floor, sir.” The doors opened. I got out, turned.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “My pleasure, sir,” he said. The doors closed.

  I have learned this, too: I have learned that the living are not very different from the dead. And I have learned that you often have to have a very good eye indeed to tell the difference.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I thought that I was going to enjoy living in Art’s apartment. I liked his tastes (I always had). Everything was well-made, and functional, and there were lots of earth colors, which appealed to me. Several feet in front of the white marble fireplace stood a huge, tar-black, smooth leather couch with a rounded back and rounded, overstuffed arms. Behind the couch, and arranged rather loosely in the large room, were several chairs—a wing-backed with rust stripes on a brown background and, facing it, near a window that overlooked East 79th Street, a dark rust, armless chair. A straightbacked, dark wood chair stood near a tall cherry secretary which housed Art’s stereo equipment and TV. He had hung several prints—one of Picasso’s Boy with Dove and another, a stylized picture of an old church with too many harsh right angles and dark colors that, I think, was supposed to be reminiscent of Andrew Wyeth, but it was too nasty and depressing for that. The walls were dark beige and looked as if they had been recently painted because they were very clean.

  That first night in the apartment, I stocked the refrigerator (except for a pint of very sour sour cream, a half-full jar of Marie’s Thousand Island Dressing, and an aluminum-foil-wrapped clove of garlic, it was empty when I arrived), called Manhattan Cable TV and arranged for a temporary installation (it surprised me that Art didn’t have cable; he was an inveterate movie fan) went over my contracts for the big photo book, and, finally, settled down to wait for Phyllis Pellaprat to reappear.

  At just past seven, Art called.

  “Abner? Hi.” He sounded a little down.

  “Art?” I was surprised to hear from him. “Where are you calling from?”

  “I’m in Nice—”

  “Jesus,” I interrupted, “it must be nice.” And I chuckled.

  “Sorry?” he said.

  “I said it must be nice, Art.”

  “Oh. Yes. It is.” A brief pause. I felt foolish. He went on. “Is everything okay there, Abner?”

  “Sure, Art. Everything’s fine.”

  “Just before I left, I was having some trouble with the heat.”

  “No, Art, the heat’s fine, nice and toasty. By the way, I’m having cable TV hooked up, temporarily. Is that okay?”

  “Cable TV?”

  “Manhattan Cable. Just temporarily. I’ll tell them to cancel it if you—?

  “No,” he cut in, “that’s fine, Abner. No problem.” A brief pause; then, his voice lower, “Abner?”

  “Yes, Art?”

  “Have you spoken with Stacy lately?” He sounded troubled. “In the last month-and-a-half, I mean.”

  “No,” I answered. “I haven’t seen her since Thanksgiving. We had dinner together, at her parent’s house. Why?”

  “No reason. Just wondering. I miss her, I guess.”

  “Sure you do, Art.”

  “I made quite a few mistakes with her, didn’t I, Abner?”

  “I don’t know, Art. We never talked about it very much.”

  “But circumstances … change people, Abner. Circumstances change people.”

  “Circumstances, Art?”

  “Sure. Things happen. You know. Things happen and you get a chance to think. About life, I mean.”

  “Yes, I understand that, Art.” It was a lie. “Why don’t you call her?”

  “Stacy? You mean call Stacy?”

  “Uh-huh. Why not?”

  “No, Abner. I don’t think so. I’d like to; God, I’d really like to, Abner, but it’s too soon.”

  “Too soon? I don’t understand.”

  “Well, you know.” He seemed very ill-at-ease now. “You know, Abner—I mean, after your father died, and after your mother … died, you had to have time to … time to readjust, didn’t you?”

  “I guess so. Sure. But I still don’t understand what that has to do with you and Stacy.”

  “Not very much. Not directly, at least. Nothing at all, really. It’s just the parallel, I think—you get hold of something … something comes into your life …” A brief pause. “Something comes into your life, Abner, and it’s very, very beautiful; it’s exquisite, you understand; it’s something that you’ve always wanted, something you’ve always dreamed of …” He stopped. I think I heard him sniffle. He went on, “You get hold of it; you hold onto it, and for a while everything’s really great. And then one morning you wake up and you realize that you don’t have it anymore, that it’s been taken away from you, that someone’s taken it away from you, some stranger has taken it away from you …” Another short pause. “This wonderful, wonderful thing you had hold of, Abner, has been taken away from you.” He stopped again. When he continued, his voice had changed, had become stronger. “Anyway, I’m sorry, Abner. I don’t want to tie you up; I can’t talk too long—”

  “You’re not tying me up, Art.”

  “It’s already been a couple of minutes, hasn’t it?”

  “I guess so—”

  “You’re a friend, Abner. You’ve always been a friend, isn’t that right?”

  “Sure I have. Sure. I still am.” A short pause. “You sound a little strange, Art? What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” he said. “I don’t know, Abner. Circumstances are wrong, I guess. Can you understand that?”

  “No, Art. I can’t.”

  Silence.

  “Art?” I coaxed. “Are you there?”

  After a moment he came back on the line. “Yes, I’m here, Abner. Enjoy the apartment, okay? Enjoy the Cable TV. Enjoy yourself, Abner.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I will. Thanks.”

  “Good,” he said, and hung up.

  I had wanted to tell him about Phyllis, of course, and I was sorry that I hadn’t had the chance to. Then it occurred to me that it was probably better that I hadn’t. After all, how was I going to tell him that his girlfriend and I were going to share his apartment? What was I going to say?—”Hey, Art. when I got here Phyllis was here and she kind of … well, what I mean is …” I could see myself getting stupidly tongue-tied and not knowing how in the hell to get myself out of it. In all likelihood, though, Phyllis and Art were on the outs; otherwise, he wouldn’t have gotten so worked up about Stacy. That seemed logical enough. And it made me feel better about having Phyllis around.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  At a little past eight that first night in Art’s apartment, I went out again. I took two cameras with me—a battered, old Nikon F and an equally battered Hasselblad—a tripod, and several rolls of very fast black and white slide film. I
was remembering what Serena Hitchcock had said about doing something off-key. I knew it was all related to her brother’s murder, which I thought at the time was very sad, very hard to take, and I knew she hadn’t been speaking as an editor, a professional, but I thought it was a good idea anyway. Night shots in black and white are often by nature off-key, and my plan was to take some shots with the shutter open for several seconds, to suggest the movements of traffic and pedestrians against the static backdrop of the buildings themselves. Something atmospheric. Something off-key.

  From the corner of East 79th Street and Fifth Avenue I turned south, so I was heading toward midtown Manhattan. I stayed on the east side of the Avenue, across the street from the Park, because there was more light, and because I had never had trouble believing the horror stories I’d heard about Central Park at night.

  I could see occasional random movement beyond the tall, wrought-iron fence, the hard spray of car headlights on the trees lining East Drive, and the erratic, quick glint of something small and bright in the Park, as if fireflies were loose inside it.

  I was dressed in jeans and a wool-lined denim jacket; it wasn’t enough (the temperature was in the upper twenties), but anything bulkier would have restricted the free movement of my hands and arms (if the opportunity for a good candid shot suddenly presented itself) and would also have made it harder for me to run (if some down-on-his-luck New Yorker decided to grab one of my cameras). I thought I had most of the bases covered.

  Fifth Avenue early that cold January evening was a loud and brittle place to be. The traffic was thick and jarring and smelly, and the sidewalks were cluttered with the kind of people that only a city like Manhattan can produce—people who are quick-moving and purposeful and independent, people who could easily have sprung up from the streets and sidewalks.

  I was near East 62nd Street, a couple of blocks from Central Park South, when I saw a young man walking toward me. He was dressed only in a ragged T-shirt, jeans, and sandals—no coat, no gloves, no hat. I smiled. I have always enjoyed New York’s crazies; they’re easy to talk to, and they usually love being photographed. I swung my Nikon up and aimed it at this particular crazy: I had a 43-86mm zoom on the Nikon; I focused, took a few shots, and reached into my camera bag for a faster lens. That’s when the guy saw me. He was about half a block away. He slowed, looked quizzically at me, and stopped walking when he was a couple of yards off. I saw that there was something imprinted on his T-shirt: “War is not healthy for children or other living things.” I thought how quaint that was.

  The guy nodded at the Nikon. “What you doin’ with that thing, man?” he asked. He had a big, square head, a short and ragged reddish-brown beard and mustache, and his eyes suggested strongly that he’d gone without eating for some time. His voice cracked often, and it was a soft, high tenor, so I had trouble hearing him above the noises of traffic.

  “I’m a photographer,” I told him. It was my stock answer in such situations, and it usually was explanation enough. Few people want to get in the way of someone’s work.

  “Yeah?” he said. He seemed very ill-at-ease. “Photographer for who?”

  “For myself,” I answered. I was smiling blandly; I was certain that I looked friendly, sincere, harmless. “I’m doing a book.”

  “A book? Shit, ain’t we all doin’ a book?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Ain’t we all doin’ a book?” he repeated. “Ain’t we all doin’ a book.”

  “No,” I said; I was a little offended. “Not all of us.” I nodded at the Nikon. “If you don’t want me to take your picture—”

  “You working for the government, man?”

  “No. I’m working for myself, as I said. I’m doing a book.”

  “Ain’t we all?” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Ain’t we all doin’ a book? Ain’t we all doin’ a book?”

  He was beginning to make me nervous.

  “Aren’t you cold dressed like that?” I asked him.

  He nodded at the Nikon again. “What you doin’ with that thing, man?”

  “I’m a photographer.?

  “Yeah,” he said. “Photographer for who? You working for the government?”

  “No, I’m working for myself.” I realized that we’d been over that territory already. “But, as I said, if you don’t want me taking your picture—”

  “Photographer for who?” he said.

  I didn’t answer. I put the fast lens and the Nikon in my camera bag.

  There are several kinds of crazies in New York City. There are the cute crazies, like the guy who dresses up in a bunny costume and skates down Broadway, and the pathetic crazies, like the ones who hang around at Grand Central and like the old men feeding pigeons and the old women who spend much of their time at the New York Library, and there are the malevolent crazies, like the big, powerfully built man wielding a baseball bat who used to prowl the East Village dressed only in white jockey shorts. And there are the certifiable crazies, the ones who have no business at all being outside the walls of Bellevue. This guy, I judged, was one of those, and I didn’t want to have too much more to do with him.

  I smiled at him again, nervously this time. “Okay,” I said, “catch ya later,” and turned to go back the way I’d come.

  “Ain’t we all doin’ a book?” I heard. “Ain’t we all doin’ a book?”

  I glanced around at him. He was leaning against a building now, his eyes lowered and his big head twitching to the left in time with that phrase: “Ain’t we all (twitch) doin’ a book. Ain’t we all (twitch) doin’ a book?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Ain’t we all (twitch) doin’ a book? Ain’t we all (twitch) doin’ a book?”

  I watched him for a few moments longer. He’d apparently forgotten about me. He reminded me precisely of a wind-up toy that’s gotten itself stuck against a wall.

  I hurried back to the apartment, made myself a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup, watched something X-rated on cable TV, and went to bed at a little after 10:00, which is early for me. The cold air makes me tired. It has always made me tired.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Phyllis came back to the apartment at about 2:00 that morning. I heard her come in; she was singing softly. I couldn’t hear the words clearly, but it sounded like a nursery rhyme, and since I had been only on the edges of sleep all night, hoping she’d come back, it woke me.

  I called to her from the bedroom: “Phyllis?”

  She went on singing.

  “Phyllis?” I called again, and added, “Is that you?”

  “Yes,” she called back, “it’s me.” And she continued singing.

  I’d left the bedroom door open, and I stared now at the doorway—very dark and monolithic at the center of the cream-colored walls—and waited for her to appear in it. I waited a full five minutes. Then I called once more: “Phyllis?”

  She still was singing. She did not answer me.

  “Phyllis, are you going to sleep on the couch?”

  She went on singing. Her voice sounded a little raspy, as if she were coming down with a cold.

  “Did you lock the door behind you, Phyllis?” I called.

  I still had my eyes on the doorway; she appeared very quickly in it, as if she had been there all the while, and I was simply not seeing her. “Jesus!” I breathed. “You scared me!” I could not see her well in the darkness, but I could tell that she was wearing only a bra and panties.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you, Abner.” Her voice was low, and that slight raspiness gave it a kind of gritty sensuality. “I don’t want to scare you, Abner.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Did you lock the door behind you?”

  “The door’s locked.”

  I reached to my right to turn on the bedside lamp.

  “No,” she said, and there was urgency in her voice. “No, Abner, the dark is better. Don’t you like the dark?”

  “Yes,” I said, and settled back. “Art ca
lled.”

  “Art?”

  “Uh-huh. At about eight o’clock. He was checking to see if everything was okay here. I didn’t mention you; I didn’t think it would be … politic.”

  She didn’t acknowledge that. She started singing again. I could hear the words now: Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird … And I liked the way she sang it. “Do you think it would have been politic, Phyllis?”

  She still didn’t acknowledge me. She took her hands from the edges of the doorway, let her arms hang loosely at her sides, stepped into the room a few feet, stopped. She continued singing. I asked her, then, “Where are you going to sleep, Phyllis? Are you going to sleep here? With me?” She stepped further into the room; she was in pale light coming in through the window. She reached behind herself, unfastened her bra, slipped out of it, let it fall. She came forward, stopped at the side of the bed. I could see her very clearly now. I reached up, cupped her breasts in my hands. I told her her breasts were lovely; I used the word lovely. It was a word that seemed to please her; she smiled slightly.

  She slipped her panties off, swung her leg over so that she was straddling me. I kept my hands on her breasts; my thumbs diddled with her nipples; I felt her nipples erect. She was still singing, very low and deep in her throat. The raspiness was gone.

  “I like the way you sing, Phyllis.”

  She leaned over; her mouth was close to mine. She smelled of damp wood. “You like what, Abner?”

  “You, Phyllis.” The odor of damp wood grew stronger, more offensive. “All of you.”