Vigil for a Stranger

by Kitty Burns Florey

  hall closet (camelhair topcoat, trench coat, scarves, down jacket from Lands’ End, hiking boots, empty suitcase in the back);

  kitchen cupboards (All-Bran, canned tuna, spaghetti, Newman’s Own marinara sauce, Progresso lentil soup);

  refrigerator (milk, beer, celery, butter, a plastic bag of almonds, mayonnaise, a dessicated onion wrapped in plastic, and frozen spinach and half a loaf of French bread in the freezer);

  linen closet (sheets, toilet paper, an extra blanket, a sheep-shaped hot water bottle with a fluffy cover);

  broom closet (broom, Raid, shoe polish, carpet sweeper);

  bookcase (mysteries, spy novels, a few classics—War and Peace, Great Expectations, Jude the Obscure, a dictionary, Out of Africa, letters of E.B. White, The Soul of a New Machine, Less Than Zero—all in paperback, none inscribed, underlined, or annotated, including a copy of Van Gogh’s Letters that made my heart jump until I saw that it was new-looking, the spine not even broken);

  medicine cabinet, which I inspected after my own shower with the water in the sink running hard (generic aspirin, scissors, Ban, Aqua-Fresh, Dr. Scholl’s Athlete’s Foot Powder, and a prescription bottle of antibiotics dating back two years—two capsules left);

  record shelf (heavy on jazz piano, Vivaldi, and Ella Fitzgerald).

  That was all, really. Odds and ends: tape and string, scissors, pens, plastic wrap, telephone (no book of phone numbers), dishes and silverware and pans, salt shakers, paper napkins—oh, the usual, nothing even slightly interesting, nothing that said one word about Orin Pierce except that he was a tidy man with simple tastes—or a man who, perhaps, wished to reveal nothing about himself.

  It was almost as if the apartment were a particularly brilliant stage set, created as part of the characterization of the star in a one-man show called Orin Pierce—the kind of set the audience applauds when the lights come up. So perfect! So authentic! Right down to the honestly dog-eared books, the mud clinging to the hiking boots, the odd laundry or bookstore receipt in the pockets of his jackets, the handle of the suitcase found with a luggage ticket from Lambert Airport in St. Louis to Kennedy Airport in New York. What was missing: bank statements, cancelled checks, tax information, bills. I assumed he kept all that in his office or with his accountant. Also photographs, personal letters, junk, quirks, eccentricities—but of course none of this was necessary for the creation of this particular character, who was composed of the memories, quirks, and eccentricities of someone else: me.

  It would not be inaccurate to say that after my careful inspection of Orin Pierce’s apartment, he was more of an enigma to me than ever. And yet I willingly, gladly let him assume a major role in my life. I didn’t know if I loved him or not. I never told him I did, though I was haunted by what he once said, that no one had ever loved him the way I loved Pierce. Certainly, I had a craving to be with him that resembled love. When I was not with him, I thought of him: this also resembled love.

  In a sense, although we had our games when I called him by Pierce’s name, he was taking the place of Pierce in my life. As time went by, I found that I no longer thought of the real Pierce, the old Pierce—not even the way I did in the days before I met Orin, when I used to think of Pierce so much: “often, but a little at a time,” as Swann’s father thought of his dead wife. I was finding that when I tried to bring Pierce into my mind, it was Orin’s face that I saw, his voice I heard. This made me sad, but I didn’t fight it, and that also seemed to me a sign of love.

  When I explored Orin’s apartment, or tried to put together what I knew about him, my motive was not so much, any longer, to prove that he was or wasn’t either Pierce redux or Orin Pierce of Sarasota, but to solve the mystery of who he was. Orin never talked about his past: childhood, school, old loves, dashed hopes, struggles to make it in the world—all of this was missing from his conversation. It was as if he began to exist the day we met. He was still telling me I should check him out: birth certificates, school records, old friends—let’s fly down to Florida and visit his mother, let’s go to St. Louis and see his friend Jake Thomas. Or I should investigate Pierce’s death, get in touch with Pierce’s family. We could go to New Mexico together for a vacation; we could stay in a hacienda he knew in Chimayo, and we could look up police records of the accident, the investigation, the way the bodies were identified.

  This was no longer what interested me. It was he who was curious about Pierce; what I was interested in was Orin. Not just the facts—it was the essence I wanted, the truth, the reality that wasn’t revealed on a birth certificate or an employment record. I wanted to know him as I knew James. “Tell me who you are,” I demanded of him—in the Metro, across the breakfast table, in bed—but invariably he pretended not to understand. He would turn the conversation to something impersonal, entertain me with stories about the people he met in his work and on the landmarks committee, talk about what he read in the newspaper. He joked, teased me and made me laugh, or he would say nothing at all and lower his mouth to my breasts.

  Sometimes I suspected that his place on 57th Street was a stripped-down duplicate of wherever he really lived. I wondered if the walls of his other home were lined with photographs (of me? of Charlie? of his professor-parents?). I wondered if the drawers there were stuffed with letters instead of neat, unused piles of notepads and envelopes, if the books on the shelves were underlined and scribbled in and branded with bookplates bearing his name.

  Tell me who you are. He kept slipping out of my grasp, and it occurred to me one day that this was precisely what Pierce used to do.

  Chapter Nine

  Out of the blue, I got a phone call from Alison Kaye asking me if I wanted to have lunch with her.

  “I ran into Orin the other day,” she said. “He was telling me about you, and I remembered our phone conversation that time. Do you want to get together?”

  My first thought was that she wanted to sell me something. I was trying to remember what she did, what Haver & Schmidt was. Did I ever know?

  I couldn’t think how to get out of it, so I said yes, of course, we could have lunch any time. As we talked, I realized I didn’t want to get out of it, even if she was trying to sell me something. Alison Kaye had become one of the people I associated with what I thought of as “the whole Pierce thing”—the part of my life that began with her sitting next to me on the train. She was someone who regularly ran into Orin, who seemed to know him pretty well; possibly, she could tell me something useful, though I was hard pressed to imagine what that could be.

  “I think we’ll have a lot to talk about,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to it.”

  We picked a day—the next Thursday. I decided to have lunch with her and then check out the folk art exhibit at the Whitney. I told James I was going to New York during the week to meet a friend of Beth’s who also worked in watercolor. James said, “Fine,” as he always did.

  Raymond took me aside one night at Jimmy Luigi’s and asked, “Is something bugging our boy James?” and I responded, looking surprised, “Not that I know of.” I had the feeling that Raymond wasn’t fooled. He had also commented, more than once, that he didn’t see me around much lately, a statement to which I could give no convincing reply. I’ve been busy elicited a skeptical grin.

  I called Orin and told him I was having lunch with Alison.

  He seemed momentarily disconcerted. “Oh—right—I ran into her,” he said. “We were talking about you.”

  “What does she do? Does she want to sell me something? I mean—why would she want to see me?”

  Orin said, “Alison doesn’t sell anything you could possibly be interested in,” and laughed. For a moment I wondered if Alison was a high-level call girl or a crack dealer. He said, “Don’t worry—you’re not in for another real estate spiel. But hey—you’re sure you’re not in the market? I’ve got a nice little place in Gramercy Park, just what you’re looking for, and I’m sure I can work out some creative financing for you. It needs a little work, but i
t would be perfect for an artistic-type lady like you.”

  This was one of our jokes—Orin doing his sleazeball-realtor routine. It was designed to change the subject, but when I pressed him, what he told me about Alison was perfectly innocent: she designed custom software configurations for small business. She was one of the best in her field. Orin said, “She did some incredible work for us here at Parker. What makes her so good is that she knows the hardware, too, inside and out. She used to be at Intel, actually. She was in hardware for years.”

  This meant very little to me: I couldn’t help thinking of hardware as bad and software as good—sharp-edged tools and missile parts versus a pile of wool freshly sheared from a sheep, a divan piled high with cushions. I knew this was stupid, I even knew generally what these words really meant. There was no way to live in the world and not know such things, though I didn’t have a computer. I kept the books for Jimmy Luigi’s with the help of an adding machine and huge pebbled black ledgers that suggested Bleak House and Bartleby the Scrivener. James special-ordered them from a stationery store in Boston. He would probably have liked it if he’d caught me making entries with a quill pen. Most of his friends in the business had succumbed, but James scorned the idea of using a computer for the simple operations necessary to running a pizza parlor: computers represented the world he gave up in order to make the best pizza in New Haven. When computer salesmen called, which for some reason they regularly did, James said, “The only machine I need for making pizza is a brick oven, thanks.”

  I asked Orin why on earth Alison could possibly want to have lunch with me. He said it wasn’t because she wanted anything from me—she was just a nice, friendly person who was intrigued by the situation.

  “The situation?” I could see why he was trying to change the subject. “What situation? Ours? You told her about it?”

  “Well, it was her Filo-Fax that brought us together. I thought she deserved to know.”

  I felt the blood rush to my face. “Oh, God, Orin. Now she knows I lied to her on the phone. What in hell is she thinking?”

  “She’s thinking it’s great.” He was cheerful, but there was a note of worry in his voice, and he added quickly, “She thinks you’re really nice, and she’s interested in this just as—I don’t know—” He faltered again. “Human nature. I mean, this is interesting.”

  “How much did you tell her?”

  “Not much, obviously. Though she knows we’re seeing each other. I just told her that thanks to her, I’ve met a wonderful woman that I’m crazy about. She thought it made a great story.” He paused, said, “Chris? You’re not offended, are you? I’m sorry. Really—I didn’t think. I ran into Alison at a cocktail thing, and we just got talking. Do you mind?”

  When I wasn’t with him, I constantly imagined him in a New York that was infinitely more racy and glamorous than the city he showed me. I imagined him meeting young and beautiful women at cocktail things and having conversations about software. I imagined them in his bed, their red lips on his skin, their lacquered fingernails on his spine. Their flesh was young and firm, they had perfect legs. I hated these thoughts: they were not thoughts I had ever considered myself capable of having. In spite of my troubles with Emile, my lonely times, my various failures with men, I was never that kind of woman—insecure, dependent on men’s approval. I’d seen my friends weeping over men, waiting by the phone, giving in to jealous fantasies, berating themselves for bad complexions or small breasts or big feet. Bridget was the worst: she spent years in thrall to a really dreadful man who treated her like dirt. I used to hold her hands and pat her shoulder and try to either talk her out of it or console her. I understood her miseries, but I didn’t actually experience these feelings myself. I considered myself lucky that though I liked men I could shrug them off when necessary. Even Emile. It was Denis I missed, the loss of Denis I reproached myself with.

  Even Pierce. I loved Pierce the way I loved—what? The pond out behind our house. The sun. The idea of the dark heart of the jungle, with its tigers and elephants. I knew that I would never have Pierce, and that though he never quite managed to make it with me, he made it with countless other women. But that was never what I tortured myself with.

  I used to be a different person: I was myself, I didn’t wear leather shoes, I never told lies, I didn’t wear eyeshadow, I didn’t spend money on clothes, I didn’t speculate about the skin of younger women, Raymond didn’t look at me with amused distrust. I was doing well: I almost said that to Orin on the phone. I was doing so well and now I’m coming apart, I’m crumbling, I’m breaking down, I don’t know who I am, I’m losing all my hardware, I’m becoming a pile of software, I’m a mess.

  “Christine? Do you mind?”

  “I don’t know, Orin.”

  “I certainly didn’t tell her anything much. Just the basic facts, that my name is the same as someone you used to know, and you wondered if I was the same guy, and you decided to look me up. And then we fell for each other.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Christine—what do you think? Jesus.”

  I said, “I’m sorry. It just strikes me as so odd that she wants to have lunch with me.”

  He said, “You have a way of finding the most ordinary things odd and the oddest things ordinary.”

  “I do? Is that true? Is that my problem?” How simple: I just had to turn a switch.

  “It’s not a problem, it’s one of your lovable little quirks,” he said, and then, “I miss you. Am I going to get to see you next week after your lunch with Alison?”

  “Can you?”

  “Thursday night? I can’t imagine why not. Can you stay with me? Or do you have to go home to the white-clam king of Connecticut?”

  “I don’t know, let me think.” I hated it when he made fun of James, whom he insisted on considering a ludicrous figure. I didn’t tell him about James’s pigtail, which was getting quite long.

  “In fact, why don’t you just stay until the weekend? I’ll have to work, but maybe you could go to museums or something, and I’ll try to keep my schedule to a minimum. We’ll have the nights.”

  Oh God, it was tempting. I thought of James, and hated myself—Orin’s ridicule always made me feel tender toward James. But I knew that it would be a relief to be away from him and from the nothingness that was growing between us.

  “Do it, Chris. Please. What a time we’ll have.”

  “I’ll have to think about it. Sometimes I work on Thursday nights.”

  “What—slinging oregano?”

  “Yes, slinging oregano. Orin—stop it.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just want to see you so badly.”

  Alison was wearing another suit, a lightweight blue wool with a straight skirt and an open-neck blouse. I wore my new red dress. We met at Chez Duroc—Chez D—a pretty little French restaurant just off Madison Avenue.

  “This must seem strange to you,” she said immediately. She looked quizzically at me over her menu. She was not quite as pretty as I remembered her, or as young, but she was still very attractive: a sharp-nosed face, bright lipstick, the thick, perfectly-streaked hair. “That I wanted us to meet for lunch.”

  I started to say something polite, and then I decided to be honest. “Yes, I guess it did—a little.”

  “But I remembered our phone call, and you seemed so nice—I mean, I liked you on the phone.” She smiled at me. “And then Orin told me this amazing story, and I thought: I have to meet this woman! I love it when things are extravagant, larger than life. Don’t you? It’s such a romantic story.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course!”

  She beamed at me. I figured out that she was about thirty-six. Her make-up was perfect; there was a pearly blue line between the edge of her lower lid and her eyelashes; each eyelash was pristinely stiff with mascara; her cheekbones were plum-colored fading to the same pink as her lipstick. Her eyes were so brilliantly green she must have worn tinted contact lenses.

  �
��And Orin is such a dear,” Alison went on. “I thought, well, I’ll have lunch with Christine, and then the four of us can get together for dinner some night—I’ll bring Roger—my fiancé. Did Orin mention Roger to you?” I shook my head. “Oh, you’ll love Roger. I really want to do this soon. But for the moment, let’s order and get that over with, and then we can really talk. I want to know everything!”

  Alison ate a lot—she said she had to because she had low blood sugar—and she ordered a bottle of wine that she kept sloshing into our glasses. She was not what I expected: from her appearance, her absorbed efficiency that day on the train, the incredible schedule I glimpsed in her Filo-Fax. I had imagined her as brisk, cold, overbearing—definitely a hardware kind of person—not someone I would feel comfortable with. But though her self-confidence was staggering, she was relaxed and friendly. She said she needed a long lunch hour to unwind from the morning and fortify herself for the afternoon and evening.

  “All the guys I know like to brag that they work hard and they play hard,” she said, and made a face. “As if those are virtues. I think it sounds desperate and pathetic—not the working hard part, I like to work hard, I thrive on it—up to a point, of course. But playing hard—isn’t that sad? Although what it comes down to with them is women and booze.” She grinned; her teeth were what you’d expect. “But I like to enjoy myself. You know what I mean?” She held up a shrimp speared on the end of her fork. “I believe in pleasure.”

  Alison also believed in talking—very fast, very intimately. She told me about her childhood and asked about mine, which fascinated her: Jamesville High, and parents who ran a motel in the country. She had never heard anything like that before “My God,” she said. “A real high school with cheerleaders and car washes and an honor roll.” She went to the Dalton School in Manhattan. I told her that the only Dalton girl I knew at Oberlin had a nervous breakdown during Orientation Week.

  “Exactly,” Alison said with triumph. “See what I mean?”