After Gregory

by Austin Wright

  PART TWO

  Rome

  FOURTEEN

  The miracle: first, a messenger. You thought it was a Gregory call from the police, Sam Indigo, or a sneaking reporter, perhaps. Mr. Crestmeyer shouted, Hey White, someone to see you. A middle aged man, dressed like the royal guard or an admiral, with braid and a gold R on the peak of his cap. Arrogant eyes handing you a card and saying, You Stephen White? Scrutinizing amusement. What do you want with me? Your illegal birth certificate, the criminal question of your right to live?

  Jack Rome wants to see you.

  Who?

  Which is a dumb question no matter how many rivers you’ve crossed, like asking who is John D. Rockefeller or Howard Hughes or Henry Ford. If the man had said, God wants you, you would have said, Who?

  Jack Rome. You’ve heard of him.

  So you remembered Crazy James on the road, and you thought practical jokes. Why would he play a joke on you? What does he want me for? you said.

  Don’t know, son, I’m only the messenger. Interview. Rome Company. Job, probably. You’re a lucky man.

  An engraved card. In the top center a recognizable logo, old English R twined in snakes through its loops, below that the name JANE DELAWARE and a telephone number, and in the lower corner, modest and plain, ROME ENTERPRISES, NEW YORK AND LONDON.

  Believe me, you’re in luck. Take this card and call this number, tonight before ten. Don’t forget, you won’t regret.

  You saw him go out the door, grinning, and the fine rich old car he drove off in with a license plate as a registered antique.

  If I was you I’d call, Mr. Crestmeyer said.

  It’s a joke.

  Better a joke than miss out.

  In the evening the name of Jack Rome sizzled through the dinner Lucy Angles cooked. She said, Who’s he? Amy and Joe recapitulated Crazy James who had claimed to be his right hand man. Joe said he was one of the six richest, but they couldn’t find the list in the almanac. Amy remembered him at the controls of his airplane with a black mustache and earphones. Stowe said he was a scruffy old man with a long white beard covering a syphilitic face. Joe said, That’s somebody else. Hank remembered Jack Rome kidnapping his own wife and son from the Landis Community on grounds they had been brainwashed. Amy connected that to what Crazy James told about in the car. You asked, was that the same Landis who held a revival in the Coliseum the night Peter Gregory went into the river? Joe said Osgood Landis the television evangelist and his daughter the Virgin Miranda, who heals the sick and the lame with her smile. They tried to seduce Jack Rome’s family. Joe said if Jack Rome was Mafia, you’d better be careful. Everybody agreed the message was a prank by Crazy James, but why would Crazy James play a prank on Stephen White whom he hardly knew?

  So you called the number, which must be private since the woman’s voice did not have a letterhead, she only said Hello when she answered. Stephen White? I was hoping you’d call. Mr. Rome would like to speak with you himself, could we set up an appointment? You: Mr. Rome? Mr. Rome? She: Mr. Rome. In person. You asked, What for? Her voice was nice, polite, easy: You’ll find it worth your while. You said, You must have the wrong person. No, she replied (laughing) we know who you are. You said, nobody knows me, it has to be a mistake. She laughed like a sweet bell. Why don’t you come around and let him explain? You’ve nothing to lose. At the very least you can tell your friends you had coffee with Jack Rome in his office.

  The appointment was for ten in the morning. You were so sure it was a joke you almost didn’t go. But you couldn’t resist. You wore the suit you had bought to work in Crestmeyer’s store. Tried to think what you were afraid of. You enter the office in your cheap suit and say, I’m here to see Mr. Rome. Someone will say, Get out: nobody sees Mr. Rome, nobody. Or he does see you: takes one look and says, Who the hell are you? It was impossible, and your heart thumped with the gossip of alternatives.

  You followed Jane Delaware’s directions, subway to the Rome Building. Glass outside, carpet and dark paneling inside. Elevator to the fifteenth floor, office marked ROME INVESTMENTS, receptionist who took your name, looked at the Delaware card, buzzed someone and asked you to wait. Now you’d find out. Office large and bright, desks and cubicles, men and women in shirt sleeves. A receptionist took you to another elevator, summoned with a key. This one was small, carpeted, with hunting pictures on the walls, unnumbered colored buttons. Press the black one, rise fast with the wind rushing through the shaft. Door opens, you are surrounded by light, a living room in the sky with thick carpet, deep chairs and tables and lamps, bookcases, glass walls on three sides looking out over the top of the city. You’d be thrown out the window when they discovered who you were. A tall young woman came silently toward you across the carpet, greeting, Mr. White? Plain white blouse and black skirt, intelligent face, directing you to that deep chair looking out at the skyscraper tops. Wait amid the named peaks: Chrysler Tower, Empire State Building, the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Beyond them, distant and almost dissolving in the haze, the tiny figure of the Statue of Liberty, and wiry bridges pinning the sides of the rivers together.

  Stephen White? The man strides in, holding out his hand. I’m Jack Rome! You could see the exclamation point. And still the joke was deferred. Thin small man neat in a black suit, a tie becoming expensive while you watched. Young. Black mustache, thick, face around the mustache smooth, eyes large and black looking first at you with serene and confident humor then darting around among the skyscraper peaks at his feet incorporating them into his point of view. Sit down glad so grateful to you. ( Jack Rome the Great was grateful to Stephen White.) You in one low chair, he in another, both facing out, the view. One ankle over his knee, scratching under the sock like poison ivy, a cigarette then another tapping them out in a large abalone shell on the floor. Later a girl in a skirt shorter than the fashion brought him milk on a tray, coffee for you. My view, he said, pointing not to the girl but the buildings, the view which reduced the city to its hazy essence eliminating its crowds by height like what you had seen first with truncated base from across the industrial plain.

  So Stephen, tell me about yourself.

  It must be a mistake, you said, thinking maybe this wasn’t Jack Rome but an impostor designed to draw you in. Or it had to do with the name you had stolen, by diabolical coincidence.

  Tell me anyway.

  What do you want to know?

  Start at the beginning. Where were you born?

  Where were you born? Trap question, obviously, and it took stammering Stephen White a moment to remember, Queens.

  Jack Rome laughed. Whether or not you were born in Queens, it doesn’t matter. You can’t guess why I invited you here, can you? Obviously not. Carefully now, enunciating clearly, Jack Rome said this: I am trying to locate someone I want to help. I hope you can help me find him and advise me what to do.

  More than ever sure, you said, I really think you’ve made a mistake.

  Do you think Jack Rome makes mistakes? I don’t think Jack Rome makes mistakes.

  The intelligent young woman who let you in has disappeared, likewise the short-skirted bare-legged one who brought you coffee. Whatever Jack Rome thinks he knows, you must insist he has no power over you. The blue-tinted windows color the whole city and blunt the sharp sunglints from the chrome and steel dust below. He said, I am thinking about a young man who recently drowned himself in a midwestern city.

  Like falling from the window here, where the people below have no dimension, the shock of your first breath as you start to drop. This young man with all the advantages, high school teacher, father of a family though separated from his wife, must have been feeling despondent, though why he should, a young man with all the advantages like that—

  Ah, you do know me. Insides rising on the way down, question whether the heart will erase before you hit. Fight back, though, don’t let on yet, see how much he knows.

  Jack Rome: there was also this other young man, a happier story, came from somewhere
or nowhere, recently hitchhiked across the country to this very city, living here now, no one knows his name for sure.

  The blue tint of the glass makes you wonder how long the view will keep its color before it fades. Jack Rome wonders if you might know one or the other of these two young men so as to help him find them as well as judge the advisability of aid to one or the other.

  (Aid?) Why should I know them?

  My information suggests you do.

  You’d like to know what information, and he says, the Rome organization’s spread is wide, its fling is far, it has operatives, a network, that sort of thing.

  Your fall has been arrested by the talk of aid, this suggestion of benignity that can only be a trap, and you have this sudden desire, which you must beware, to share your secrets with Jack Rome.

  I suppose your reluctance comes from fear of divulging what your friends would like to keep secret, but if you bear in mind my benevolent purpose. That is, if you think Jack Rome has the power to help. For instance, one question is, which of these two men should be helped?

  Why should that be a problem, if one of them drowned?

  That’s the clear thinking we need, proving it was no mistake to call you in. So there is only one candidate after all, right? But the question is still significant, for here is the interesting thing. The rumor in the Rome network is that the two young men are one, the man who drowned is the man who hitchhiked, which can be explained in two possible ways: either a miraculous resurrection and possible Second Coming, or he didn’t drown at all, but cast off his old identity and took on a new. Jack Rome’s eyes were large and black and clear like the robin’s. Now Stephen tell me, which do you think is the more plausible explanation?

  Why ask me?

  Jack Rome grinned. Well tell me this. Why should the hitchhike man be so anxious to deny the suicide man?

  Maybe that’s because if he becomes known, it won’t be a suicide anymore.

  Would that be bad?

  I’d think if his life was bad enough for suicide, he wouldn’t want to go back to it.

  Jack Rome laughed again. What could he do instead?

  He could start over.

  Do you think he can?

  He can try.

  Look at the blue tinted view again, gorgeous, a mirage of distance and power and concealment. Jack Rome lights a cigarette, leans back, scratches his ankle, sneaks a look at you, blows smoke rings. He says, What’s your real name?

  Don’t you know?

  Should I help him?

  You are wary still, wondering why he wants to do that, the lack of motive, the threat of benevolence, a bomb of irony, Trojan Horse.

  You don’t seem to trust me.

  I don’t understand your reasons.

  Did you ever hear of anybody named Peter Gregory?

  Are you asking me?

  Don’t fool with me any more. I need to know so there is no mistake. Do you know Peter Gregory?

  I’ve heard of him.

  Where is he now?

  You stare and do not speak. You will not surrender on your own or volunteer what you have not been asked. Yet your wish seeks release. Ask me, it says, don’t make me say it, and after a long pause he does: Are you Peter Gregory?

  Now it is possible to reply. Back to normal, How did you know? you say.

  My operatives, never you mind. Good, now we can talk.

  On the question of miracle, you realized this: It would not be a miracle for Jack Rome because for him it was simply a thing to do. Nor would it be a miracle for Amy, Joe, or any other bystander, for it’s always others who get the luck. The miracle was for you, and since it was a miracle, you’ll never know if it really was luck and what the catch was.

  One sperm in a million reaches the egg. If you are a sperm you’ve got one chance in a million, which means we are a society of lottery winners. The improbabilities in the case were threefold. First, the odds against Jack Rome’s knowing who you were. Second, against his caring. Third, against his acting upon it. Never mind. The odds were against you, but if there are odds there’s always a chance, and somebody has to win. It might as well be you.

  FIFTEEN

  Jack Rome in his low chair, with his pipe, legs crossed, looking down his nose over narrow pointed shoes at his view, his city without people. Turned again to look at you, the large black robin’s eyes in his delicate face with the big black mustache, and you could not tell the irises from the pupils.

  Looking at you, I give you assurance of my good will. I mean you no harm and may do you good. I shall not divulge your secrets. (Four things were going on here. There was the formal and institutional language. There was the message. There was the messenger’s frail appearance. And there was the effect of supernal power incarnate in room, building, view, time, concentrated in that frailty.)

  Thinking, there’s no reason to tell him anything, though he had the blackmail power to crush you. Your curiosity about the good he promised overshadowed the sinister mystery of why he was interested.

  Jack Rome: Let’s get our facts straight.

  He read from an open file folder. Your name was originally Peter Gregory. (Yes.) On a night in May you left your car at the public landing with an ostensible suicide note. About a week later you turned up in New York with a different name. (I suppose so.) Since then you have been living in the Village with Joe Fingerton and four others, and you are employed in Mr. Crestmeyer’s typewriter shop. (That is correct.)

  I have a question. Did you actually go into the river, or did you leave the note to throw people off? (I went into the river.) Did you expect to drown? (I believe I changed my mind in the river.) In the river? A genuine change of heart? Good. Then you went to New York. How did you do that? (I hitchhiked.) Right. Those are the most important facts, you see, and I want to be sure I have them straight.

  May I ask? How did you find me?

  That’s immaterial.

  Not to me, you said. It’s not immaterial to me.

  It wasn’t any of your friends, he said. It’s irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the case.

  You didn’t think it was irrelevant, but what could you say? Not knowing made Jack Rome look like a god, which he wasn’t.

  Now let’s see, he said. Peter Gregory was born thirty-five years ago in Westchester County, New York, correct? (Yes.) Parents both dead. Your father was an ACLU lawyer who had an alcohol problem. (My father was a gentle kindly melancholy man. He was much loved by those who knew him.) I’m sure he was. He died of a heart attack when you were in college at the age of twenty. (Yes.)

  Your mother was Pamela Muskin. She was institutionalized for a mental breakdown two or three years after your father’s death. Confined a dozen years, until her death last fall. (She died of cancer, a long illness.) Yes. Did you have some fear of insanity running in the family? (No.) No? You have no brothers and sisters. (Yes.) How would you describe your relations with your parents? (Fine.)

  Eventually you’ll talk more openly and intimately. I have the ability to do you good. (Yes.) You had two uncles. Your uncle Bart died before you were born. He jumped out of a hotel window on the day his ex-wife remarried. Your uncle Phil was a stockbroker, who was lost at sea alone in his sailboat somewhere in the North Atlantic. (Your researchers are thorough.)

  They’re the best. How do you interpret Phil’s death? When he died your uncle was in process of appealing a conviction for illegal trading practices. If the appeal had failed he would have gone to jail. (Are you suggesting he was running away from the law?) Not at all. But is it confirmed his boat actually sank? (My uncle was on his way around the world, sailing by himself. It was a well-publicized trip, planned with ample time to complete before the appeal came to trial.) Fine, but that’s no answer to my question. (There was a storm when radio contact was lost. It was a forty foot sloop. No way that boat could have eluded discovery around the North Atlantic.)

  I’ll take your word he was not running away from legal embarrassments. But did he perhaps seek his deat
h? (I can’t judge that.) Your uncle was a restless man, true? (It’s true he was tired of everyday life. He didn’t look forward to old age. He was an adventurous spirit and didn’t like the confinements that faced him.) Confinements? (I don’t mean jail.) Of course you don’t. You mean offices, lawns, street traffic. Age, retirement, illness. Your uncle made his living dealing in paper fortunes, but he always wanted something else. For your uncle, the real life was not indoors with people but outside in the weather. For him life was tangible when felt in the body. He didn’t want to die in a hospital.

  (Did you investigate him too?) I have natural insight into what people are, based on what they do. You should be glad of that. Are there other relatives? (My grandfather Muskin is in a retirement home near Chicago. He doesn’t know who he is.) Your grandfather used to be a minister, liberal. Does he remember that? (When I last saw him, my grandfather remembered a liberal minister but didn’t know who he was.)

  Too bad. Now let me check my knowledge of you. You grew up in Westchester. In school, adequate, not brilliant, shy demeanor, considered a loner. (I never considered myself a loner.) Summers with family in Maine. (Yes, yes.) College in Chicago, graduated 1974. Graduate school. First a college teaching job in Cincinnati while you were still in graduate school. Didn’t get the degree, quit graduate school, fired by the college, got a high school job instead. (Not fired, released when my term ran out.) Whatever you say, young man. Teaching high school English ever since. Career from the beginning modest, average, I won’t say mediocre but call it inconspicuous. (If you say so.)

  A touchy moment, a bit of a silence here, as if he had come to a switch requiring him to choose which track to follow next. You studied his face for what he might be concealing and interrupted his thought with a question of your own. Tell me, if you know so much. Is Peter Gregory really dead back there?

  He brushed the smoke away from his face. That’s a natural question, isn’t it? Who’s to say? What can a community do when someone leaves a suicide note without a body? When my researcher inquired, your case was open. Such cases generally remain open for years, no matter what people think. I wouldn’t worry. Nobody has betrayed you, as far as I know. Nobody was pursuing you at the time of my inquiry. But as to what they believe—your wife, your children, your colleagues—your guess is better than mine, because you know them and I don’t.