by Walter Blum
And one more key, which he always saved for last. Unscrewing it from the chain, he held it up to the sun. It was so ordinary, it could go unnoticed. The kind of key most people used to open the front door of their house. But where was the door this one opened? He had tried it a dozen times in a dozen places. In most cases the key slid in easily enough, but it would not turn. For a while, he studied the key’s shape, fingered its ridges, explored each indentation in turn, peering at the words imprinted along the top although, after so many years, he already knew them by heart.
“Yale Key Company.”
And what did that mean? Nothing. Yale must have made millions of keys like this, and placed them in a million hands. People handled keys like this a million times a day, but for him this one was different. It was all that remained. If only he could see past the fog that stood between himself and what lay beyond. It was like trying to see through a sheet of gauze, a kind of theatrical scrim, a curtain that dropped out of the proscenium to cloud the scene and keep the audience from making out its details.
The panhandler was back. He thrust an arm through the invisible scrim. This time he had brought along a friend, a man as ragged as himself, having no doubt convinced him that anyone who passed out five-dollar bills might be good for a little more.
It was time to leave. There was no chance that he would ever find the door he was looking for. He was wasting his afternoon. He put the key away, took one more bite of the apple, tossed the core and the paper bag into a trashcan and started down the path toward the street. The panhandler and his cohort had already begun their assault. Adam hurried his steps, pressing the attaché case against his side, pursuing a path in the opposite direction from his office.
Something, someone was pursuing him, but from the prickling sensation in the back of his neck he knew it wasn’t the panhandler. Something was after him, and he was afraid to look around. At Grant Avenue, he turned right. A few feet farther he came upon a souvenir store with a jumble of porcelain knick-knacks and fans and chopsticks and silk skirts and feathery watercolors on display in the window. Without hesitation, he crossed the threshold and reached for the doorknob.
Suddenly the door flew open and he was no longer there, no longer in the city, no longer a part of the world he had known for the past thirty years.
He was somewhere else.
14
Between darkness and the dawn, a mist walled off the tower. The outside world seemed remote, part of a distant universe. Drops of moisture danced all around him. Transformed into a mirror, the windows reflected in their depths the ghostly image of a man in a chair, his arms in motion, the outline of headphones wrapped to his ears, records spinning, tables turning, tape recorders in motion, the microphone dipping like some enormous praying mantis from the strange metal contraption that held it, waiting to be spoken to, the immaculate listener that never talked back.
He could feel the warmth of the tower settling into his veins, pots in position, the furniture-store spot cued up on the turntable to his left. Not Goldman Brothers this time or Canelius Stationery or Argon Texaco but a new establishment that had moved into town a month ago from Atlanta, bent on advertising with jingles and announcers who relied on resonant voices and a longing to shout.
Ignoring the shrillness of the commercial, he faded up the previous turntable and sent the first song floating into the night. Beyond the windows and below he could see the city, the fields, the hills, the necklace of roads and lights and shimmering dots that moved in slow confusion from east to west, from north to south, sleeping in the dream that was the fog. Farther south, beyond his reach, he could picture the white clapboard house with the large brass knocker, the classical pillars, the verandah and the vines.
He tried to pour himself into the fantasy, but it was no use. The mood was off, the picture faded, the rainbow no longer shimmered in the dark.
If only she’d told him about it from the start. He’d slept late that morning, and she left him to fix his own breakfast while she went shopping. She loved to shop. It was almost as if her father had decided to put up that shopping center of his—all those stores and restaurants and parking lots, the walkways, the trees and bushes and flowers—simply to gratify her needs. He had no suspicion until then, not even a hint of it until the call came around ten-thirty, from the emergency room at the hospital.
He hadn’t even known she was pregnant.
When he asked her, she said she didn’t want to worry him, that there were possible complications, that this had happened to her mother and she didn’t want him to get his hopes up until she was sure. Again, he sensed she was lying. Having a baby should have been the most glorious event in her life, a time of wonder and promises to be fulfilled. If there were problems, they could have shared it. If there were complications as she suggested, he could have pitched in with moral support, if nothing else.
“I’m always here,” he told her.
She turned her head away. “Well, it’s done.” Tears formed in her eyes. “There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
It was as though a gray cloud had settled over their marriage. He tried to put himself in her shoes, but the depths of her pain would be forever hidden from him. It just wasn’t the same for a husband. Men could walk away from these things, turn off their minds the way you turned the volume down on a Harry James record. For a woman, there was no show, no music, no tower where the door could be closed to hide from the ache.
Trying to anticipate her moods from one wave to the next was like riding a roller coaster in the dark. The nights were the hardest. She would be waiting for him in the living room when he got home, curled up on the sofa in her silk bathrobe, staring into the shadows. Sometimes there would be an empty glass beside her on the end table, although neither of them had ever been much of a drinker. She was dry-eyed now, but he could see that she had been crying. Her voice was flat. He could barely hear what she was saying, and often they had nothing to say to each other. One afternoon, he went out and bought her a large brown stuffed bear with huge white button eyes and arms extended for a hug. He brought it home and set it on the sofa beside her, knowing how fond she had always been of stuffed animals. She never looked at the bear. In the morning it was still on the sofa, and he could tell it had not been touched.
He tried to keep a cool head, to reassure himself that all would pass with time, but there were times when her misery awakened flashes of anger in him. He hardly recognized in this sad, slow-moving creature the goddess who had filled his life with rapture. It was as though a hot, bright sun had collapsed and the light, seen from a distant telescope, kept growing smaller and smaller. If only he could share the grief, if only he wasn’t a man. If only she didn’t have to take it so hard. After all, it wasn’t as though she were the first woman to suffer a miscarriage.
“We can try again,” he said.
“It will just happen again,” she replied. They were sitting at the kitchen table, finishing off a chicken pot pie he had baked for her, in hopes it might cheer her up. It didn’t.
“Why should it happen again?” he wanted to know. “It’s just a fact of nature, that’s all. Some people lose the first one, and then they go on and have three or four healthy children. You believe that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
She sat there, twisting the diamond ring on her finger, a habit she had developed shortly after they were married. It was an involuntary thing; a tense effort to undo what could never be undone. Her words saddened him. He felt so helpless. He knew she was lying, but what disturbed him more was that she seemed to have simply given up. At times he wondered if she had any desire to conceive. Did she really want children? Rattling around the big house with its extra bedrooms and its yard big enough for an entire playground, he realized how meaningless Max’s generosity had become. There were only the two of them here. That tiny apartment, the one they had left not long after the wedding, would have sufficed.
Maybe it was the house that was at fault. There was
too much of it, and she didn’t even have to keep it up. Delia took care of that. She was the black woman who had been Max Goldman’s strong right hand after his wife died and a kind of surrogate mother for Susan when someone like that was most needed. Now Delia came in once a week to do the cleaning and take care of the washing and, although past 70 and somewhat slowed by age, managed with her magic dust rags and her proficient vacuum to leave the house sparkling and free Susan from the drudgery of daily life so she could fill her spare time with the job she’d taken as a volunteer aide at the public library, shelving books, answering phone calls, chatting with friends who came by to see how she was doing.
The library job should have been a godsend. It kept her busy, and involved. It should have been an ideal life.
It wasn’t. The only solution was for her to become pregnant again, once they began talking and loving as they had before, once the miscarriage was forgotten. But the dark cloud continued to hover. Never again would he experience the simple ecstasy of knowing that he was married to the most beautiful, the most wonderful woman in the world. Nothing was simple any more. The jar had been opened, and what remained was no longer satisfied to stay inside.
Tonight, by the time the Star-Spangled Banner was spinning on the turntable, he had already spent the better part of seven hours at the station. A deep weariness had come over him. These late hours tired him. He told the others that he came in early to plan music for upcoming shows, to work out ideas for future theme programs, but the truth was much less complicated. He hated to admit it even to himself, but he didn’t like going home.
Oddly enough, as he took down the final readings from the transmitter meters, he found his thoughts wandering to Simon Denning. Where had he gone? He could still see the men’s room at the Paradise Lounge, the green peeling walls with their overlay of graffiti, the glaring light from a single unshielded bulb, the mildewed brown floor and the smell of urine that would last into the next century. He saw Simon across the table, his face gaunt and pasty, nursing his drink. Even the voice had changed, and what had once been brash and ebullient was now hardly more than a wheeze and a whisper.
“Good people are hard to find,” Simon had said, or whoever this wraith was impersonating him. “Sometimes they have to be tested.”
Is that what was happening now? Had some cosmic force swooped down to throw a challenge at his feet, as it had with Simon, a test that had to be passed before one was allowed to climb to the next plateau? He recalled how disturbed he’d been when this thing first manifested itself, disturbed because he felt himself losing control, but also excited when it seemed that marvelous things were about to happen. Now the excitement had worn off, and he felt singularly ungifted. The blessing that sat in his pocket, unwanted, was nothing more than a key to a door that would never open, to a garden he had no hope of seeing into.
Not that he hadn’t done everything in his power to get to the bottom of it. Everywhere he went, he pulled out the key and tried it for size. One day he went down to the bus station and inserted it in a half dozen lockers, thinking that Simon might have left something valuable there—maybe a suitcase filled with money, or papers that would explain the whole thing—but it was obviously the wrong kind of key. He visited the bank where he deposited his paycheck, hoping the key might open a safe deposit box, but safe deposit keys, he learned, were long and skinny and quite distinctive.
“It’s a house key,” said the banker.
“You’re sure?”
“I have one like it for my house. So does my son-in-law.” Unfortunately, there were millions like it in circulation. “It could be any house in Canelius, or it might not even be here at all,” the banker explained.
“What are the chances of my finding the right house?”
“Fifty million to one, unless you get lucky.”
***
As it had for almost a week, closing up the station took longer than usual because he was in no hurry to go home. At one point, he was even tempted to lock up, turn off the lights and curl up in the big leather chair Mr. Baines reserved for visitors. What difference did it make where he slept? Who would know? He knew he had to overcome this sense of helplessness, that it was unhealthy for a grown man with a wife and a home and responsibilities to drag on like this, but what choice did he have? He felt as though he were locked inside a wall of stones and mortar as hard and unyielding as the tower he himself had created. He couldn’t go forward or back. He was trapped.
He needed something to distract him, something to take his mind off the miseries. A twist of the radio dial would bring in WLW in Cincinnati or KDKA in Pittsburgh, both late-night 50,000-watt clear-channel stations he enjoyed listening to, with disc jockeys who liked to talk. But he was not in the mood for that. Driving slowly down the hill and through the darkened streets, he became aware once more of the curtained windows and the secrets kept behind them. It was as though time were repeating itself. Not that long ago, he had nurtured a lust for what these people had and he didn’t. He pictured their meals, their children, their conversations, their love-making; he saw them moving through the rooms, and silently wished that these houses were his—or at least the life that went on inside them.
Now he had it, and still he was dissatisfied. He had just passed the intersection before his own house when he saw the car parked in the driveway. It was a bright red sports car, something foreign-looking and low to the ground and gleaming in the light of the street lamp at the curb. The garage accommodated two cars, but the intruder took up the middle of the driveway, blocking both doors and making it necessary for him to park in the street. He wondered what sort of person would drive such a car, and what they had done to deserve such a visit.
He found her in the living room on the sofa, alone. For the first time in almost a week there was no glass on the coffee table, and she was still wearing the outfit he’d seen her put on that morning. She looked up at him, an odd, sly look on her face.
“There’s a strange car blocking me,” he said. “I couldn’t park in the driveway.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s a Ferrari.”
He dropped into a chair opposite her. “That’s an expensive Italian car,” he said. “That’s a very expensive car. You have to have all kinds of money to own a Ferrari.”
“I know,” she said.
“Who does it belong to?”
“Me.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“Where—where did it come from?” he stammered.
For the first time in almost a week, he saw her smile. It was perfectly clear that the car had worked its intended magic, and it was also blindingly clear who had bought it. The Goldman touch was unmistakable. A wave of anger welled up inside him, but his wrath was dampened by the look of unabashed joy on her face. That night in the bedroom, they made love for more than an hour with a passion he hadn’t experienced since their wedding night. When, exhausted, they finally rolled over and fell asleep, he felt a sense of release, as though a bad dream had vanished and been replaced with the most wonderful serenity.
It didn’t last, though. In the morning, he was seized again with the realization of what Max Goldman had done to him. His father-in-law knew the magic formula. He had only to push the right button and the screen cleared, the picture became bright and in focus. What kind of husband lets that happen to him? Could a Ferrari in the driveway solve all problems, relieve distress, reawaken joy?
***
There was only one thing he could do about it, and the sooner the better. While Susan was taking her shower, he phoned Goldman in his office at the Mishniak Building and arranged for a meeting a few minutes shortly before noon. He didn’t know exactly what he would say, but he was sure it would come to him. After the delight and relief of seeing Susan restored to her old self, the black anger welling up inside him was even worse than before.
“Like it?” were Max’s first words.
Adam was not quite sure what he was referring to. “Like what?
” he asked.
“The office. What do you think?”
“It’s nice,” Adam confessed.
“More than nice,” Goldman gloated. “I supervised the decorating every inch of the way. It pays to know your furniture.”
The office had all the right touches. Brown leather chairs that lent an air of importance to the proceedings, natural wood paneling and bookcases a high-priced lawyer would have been proud of, intricately adorned Persian rugs and a huge desk with just a single telephone, an in-out basket and a gold pen-and-pencil set. It struck Adam that there was not an item in the office that Max would have displayed in his store, but then the goal here was not to save money but to put the visitor in a state of awe.
“My offer still stands, you know.”
Adam glowered. “Your offer?”
Goldman sat down behind the desk. “You know perfectly well what I mean.” He fished a box of cigars from a bottom drawer and offered one to Adam, who refused. “I asked if you wanted to come in with me, and I guess you weren’t ready at the time, but—well, does this mean you’ve changed your mind?”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“You won’t take my offer?”
“I have a career in radio,” Adam said.
“I know where you work, Adam, but…a career?” Goldman shrugged. “Well,” he said, twirling the unlit cigar between his fingers, “to each his own.”
Adam could see the manipulation at work. “Listen,” he said coldly. “I know you don’t much care for my profession, but it’s what I’ve chosen to do. It’s what I like to do. And I don’t appreciate your making up for it with fancy sports cars you know very well we can’t afford.”
“Ah, the Ferrari.” He stuck the cigar in his mouth and lit it. Smoke swirled around his head. “A beautiful piece of merchandise. Apparently you have some sort of prejudice against foreign sports cars, is that it?”
