Then she called again, two hours later. She was mock-severe with him, play-acting at being the overly protective type. She told him she had checked again with the doctor, and learned that Cole still hadn’t called, and so she’d made an appointment with him for this very afternoon, at three-thirty. “Now, you go,” she said. “You hear me, sweetie?”
“All right. I will.”
“I’m serious about this, honey. You go see that doctor, or you’re in trouble with me.”
That he didn’t want. Helen Arndt was his agent, his one remaining contact with the reality of his professional life. The last thing in the world he wanted was to alienate her. So he promised again to go to the doctor, and this time he meant it.
With the aid of a special note, and the alarm clock, he remembered to leave the apartment in time, and to keep the appointment with the doctor, who turned out to be a tall heavyset man with gray hair and tortoiseshell glasses and a permanent secret smile. His name was Bertram Edgarton, and his manner was cultish, an outer phlegm implying an inner activity of computer-like speed and power.
He asked no questions, beyond the initial request for Cole to state his problem. Cole stated it, in his usual fumbling way, because no matter how often he explained what had happened to him and what he was like now the words and the facts never came easy for him. He had to search the same compartments for the same fragmentary answers every time.
People usually helped this process by asking questions, helping him in his search for particular answers, but Doctor Edgarton was silent, sitting as heavy in his chair behind the desk as if he had grown there, his flecked eyes on Cole’s face. Cole bumbled and fumbled, trying first to explain his condition, and then to explain why he hadn’t sought medical help before, and then he was just trying to fill the silences. But soon he was repeating himself, and then contradicting himself, and finally he just stopped and sat looking sullenly at the doctor, who at last roused up and said that X-rays would have to be taken. He made a brief phone call, and gave Cole a slip of paper containing an address and a date and a time. “After the X-rays,” he said, “we’ll see.”
Riding along in the screaming subway now, he wondered what good the X-rays would do, what good the doctor could possibly do. X-rays, a rich doctor; it would cost money. The doctor had told him not to worry about paying yet, but still, he would have to pay sometime. Yesterday he’d sold his suitcase and a summer suit and a pair of shoes to make up the money for his rent; he had less than three dollars in cash, so money was much on his mind.
Nick rapped his knee, and motioned that theirs was the next stop. Cole nodded and stood and groped to the door. The car was full enough to have several standees, and since this was New Year’s Eve it seemed that most of these people must also be on their way to parties, but their faces were closed and stolid and indrawn, no different from the rush-hour faces on their way to work.
Cole’s face was reflected dimly in the glass of the door, and studying it he saw that he too bore the same expression. He tried a smile, his face close to the door so no one else could see it, but it felt strained and looked ghoulish. He turned away, and looked at the advertising posters instead.
The train shuddered to a stop, the doors slid back away from each other, and Cole stepped out onto the platform. Nick motioned, saying, “This way,” and they walked together to the end of the platform where the concrete stairs were. Beside them, the train jolted forward, and then rushed away as though racing a deadline to the junkyard.
When the noise of the train was gone, Nick said, “Most of the crowd you met already. I mean met again, since you’ve been back. If there’s anybody there you didn’t meet, they’ll know about your memory so you won’t have to go through that all over again.”
“Good.”
They went up the stairs to the street, and paused there to light cigarettes. Too casually, Nick said, “Rita’ll be there.”
Cole shook his head. Rita was something he had done stupidly, but he had no idea yet what the right thing or the bright thing would have been. In his mind was the idea that when he was his old self again he would not only know what he should have done last Thursday night, but also how to make up for it. He wanted to see her again—a note about her was now prominent in his bedroom—but not yet, not while he was still stupid.
Nick had taken a step away from the subway entrance, but Cole hadn’t moved, and now Nick looked back at him, saying, “What’s the matter?”
“Maybe I’m not ready for a party.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not sure—”
“Rita, huh?” Nick looked around the intersection, and pointed across the street. “Let’s have a cup of coffee.”
“All right.” Any delay was welcome.
The store was diagonally across the street. This was a dim and musty neighborhood, the streetlights yellowish, not strong enough to show anything clearly. The intersection was occupied at the corners by a dry cleaner, a bar, a small clothing store, and the candy store they were walking toward, with squat brick row houses radiating away in four directions.
Three high school boys in dark clothing, looking angry and morose, stood on the sidewalk in front of the candy store, watching Cole and Nick with a kind of bitter hopelessness. Cole and Nick passed them, and went on inside.
The magazine rack was to the left, the phone booths in back, the counter on the right. They sat down at the counter, and Nick asked the thin old man behind it for two coffees. Nick paid, and for a minute they sat in silence, till Nick said, “Something went wrong with you and Rita, huh?”
“Yes.”
“You want to talk about it, or no?”
“I don’t understand it, that’s all. We didn’t know each other, and we made each other nervous. She said she didn’t want to see me anymore.”
“You make a pass?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should of.”
“I don’t know.”
Nick stirred his coffee, frowning thoughtfully. Then he shook his head and said, “You’re a real problem, Paul. You’re a first-rate clown.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Say that again and I’ll get you lost in Jersey someplace.” Nick drank coffee, and put the cup back down on the saucer too hard. It made a sharp noise, and coffee slopped over onto Nick’s fingers. He cursed, and dried his hand with a paper napkin. Watching himself, watching his hands, he said, “Forget that. That Jersey crack. That wasn’t fair.”
“I feel the same way sometimes,” Cole told him. “Impatient. I get so impatient with me I want to throw me away and start all over again.”
“We’re all clowns,” said Nick. “All God’s chillun been nuffin but clowns.” He swung around on the stool to face Cole. “There’ll be sixteen, eighteen people there,” he said. “They got a four-room apartment. You want to keep away from Rita, it’s the easiest thing in the world. Same if she wants to keep away from you. She’s got to know you’re coming, so if she really doesn’t want to see you again she just won’t show up.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe shmaybe. You got troubles enough, you silly bastard, without making up extras.” Nick was getting more and more impatient with him.
Cole shrugged. “I guess so.”
“That’s all you ever say, damn you. I guess so, I suppose so, I’m sorry, I don’t know. Get with it, will you?”
“All right. I’ll get with it.”
“Good man. Drink your coffee.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Then let’s go.”
They left, and passed the three high-schoolers again, and Nick led the way down the street to the right. “It’s two blocks down,” he said.
They walked in more relaxed silence now, Cole feeling relieved about the Rita problem. It hadn’t been solved, but Nick had assured him it could be evaded, which was just as good. They crossed one intersection, and then Cole said, “What’s his name again?”
“Who?”
“This guy, at the party. The one whose house it is.”
“Oh. Fred. Fred Crawford. You met him last week, remember? Christmas Day. First guy we ran into.”
Cole nodded, remembering. “Tall, blond hair. He’s got kind of a paunch, but he’s thin.”
“That’s the one.”
“Tell me about him.”
Nick hesitated, and then said, “You first. Tell me what you remember.”
“I don’t remember anything.”
“You aren’t even trying.”
Cole stopped, and frowned as though he were in pain. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” he said. “It’s like I don’t have the energy.”
“Force yourself. Tell me about Fred Crawford.”
They stood facing each other on the sidewalk. Slowly, Cole said, “I remember what he looks like. I just told you that.”
Nick nodded. “Right. What else?”
“He’s married?”
“You asking or telling?”
“I’m trying to remember her. Red hair?”
“That’s up to you.”
“Well, let me know when I’m right, for God’s sake.”
Nick shook his head. “This isn’t Twenty Questions,” he said.
Cole shook his head like a boxer shaking off a daze. “I’m really trying, Nick, I really am.”
“Good.”
“His wife has red hair. She’s—she’s short and kind of heavy. Wait a second, she’s pregnant.”
“That was a year ago.”
“They’ve got a baby?” Nick didn’t say anything, and Cole spread his hands vaguely. “I don’t remember the baby,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“Never mind the baby. What about Fred?”
“What else? He’s a salesman, he tried to sell me something. A camera? Something like that. But how come I know him? I don’t know. I heard him sing one time, I remember him singing, he opened his mouth like opera singers do, that big O they make.” Cole turned, walked in a small circle on the sidewalk, and stopped where he’d started. “That’s all,” he said. “Maybe I’ll remember more when I see him. That happens sometimes, I remember more about a person when I see him.”
“You saw Fred last week.”
“That’s right, I remember that. I guess I knew more about him then, I forgot some of it.”
“Okay,” said Nick. His manner had been hard, but now it was gentle. “Okay, you did pretty good. Come on, we’ll walk and I’ll give you the rest.”
Cole fell into step with him. “I guess I need somebody to keep pushing me,” he said.
“I’ll tell the world. Fred’s a singer. He gets work sometimes with choruses, on television or making records, and in the meantime he works in a camera store in Manhattan. Their kid is a boy, and his name is Bruce, and I guess he’s about a year old now. His wife was in Robin Kirk’s class for a while, but she dropped out.”
“Robin Kirk. Acting teacher?”
“Good man.”
“Rita told me, I think. I remembered the name from that, but I don’t know what he looks like or anything. Is he going to be at the party?”
“Not Robin.” Nick said it as though the idea was inconceivable, but didn’t add any explanation.
They walked for a few seconds in silence, and then Cole said, “Was I still in his class?”
“Not for a couple of years.”
“Oh.”
“It might be a good idea to go audit the class a couple of times. It’s a part of your past, it might open up a few more memories.”
“All right, I will. You mean just go there.”
“Yeah. Here’s the house here.”
It was in the middle of a block of two-story row houses, with exterior steps to the second story, up to a shallow porch that ran across the face of the row from one end of the block to another, like a catwalk, with low brick railings to separate it into a rectangle per house. Going up the steps, Cole whispered, “Have I ever been here before?”
“Sure.” Nick was ahead, and he looked back and down at Cole, grinning happily. “You remember it, huh?”
“No.”
Nick went on up the steps, shaking his head. When Cole got to the top, Nick had already rung the bell. Nick said, “Now I know what a tragicomedy is,” and the door opened. A short red-haired girl with soft-looking breasts was there, smiling at them, telling them she was glad they could make it. Behind her, a room was full of people blocking light, talking together, and smoke rising toward a low ceiling.
Cole said, “Mattie,” because in seeing her he suddenly remembered her name, and that she was the wife of Fred Crawford, and that their child, named Bruce, was an ugly baby with red hair, looking, as infants do, as though he’d been left underwater too long.
Everybody was pleased that Cole had remembered Mattie’s name, particularly Cole, and they stepped into the party in high good spirits.
The Crawfords’ living room was long and narrow and underfurnished. An anemically modern sofa, composed of a thin wooden plank and two blue-covered foam rubber cushions, was the largest and most substantial piece of furniture in the room. Two benches served dual purposes; half covered by a square yellow cushion for seating space, and half bare, holding lamp and ashtray, the lamps with long tubular shades. Four kitchen chairs had been brought into the living room to give more of the guests a chance to sit down, but these were unoccupied, most people preferring to stand in tight talkative clusters.
Cole didn’t see Rita in his first scanning of the room, and felt relieved. He hoped she wasn’t here, and wouldn’t be coming. Several people noticed him, and waved, and he waved back. Nick said, “I’ll get us drinks,” and went off to the kitchen, which was next to the living room at the front of the house. Mattie, with a vague smile, had already drifted away, deeper into the room.
Feeling shy and exposed, because he knew these people now only slightly while they knew everything about him there was to know, he pushed one of the kitchen chairs into a corner and sat there, content to watch and listen without becoming involved. Nick found him after a while, and pushed an ice-cube clinking drink into his hand. He murmured something about a chick, winked at Cole in a distracted way, and went away again. Cole sat in the kitchen chair and sipped at his drink, and watched and listened.
He never left the chair. From time to time, Nick or Mattie or Fred Crawford would bring him a fresh drink, and stand by his chair to chat with him for a minute or two before hurrying off again. These brief chats were like duty visits to a friend in the hospital, and Cole choked on gratitude, being silent and morose when one of them tried to talk with him. Mattie and Fred, of course, had the whole party to concern themselves with, and Nick seemed mainly to be trying to seduce a girl who had come to the party with another man, though whether Nick was serious about it or just killing time Cole couldn’t tell.
At one time or another, nearly everyone at the party came by to talk with Cole, curiosity and sympathy glittering on their faces. Cole tried to rouse himself from his apathy, and pay attention and detect individual reactions to him, but the struggle was too hard. He was bowed down by the feeling that he was a freak, a curiosity; in the eyes that turned from time to time to look at him he saw no acknowledgement that he was still a person. Rita was there; he saw her after a while, and occasionally caught further glimpses of her, but he never saw her look in his direction.
One time when Nick was standing near him, having just brought him a fresh drink, he said, “Are the parties always like this?”
“Like what?”
Cole shrugged. “Talking and everything.”
“Sure. Nothing coming back?”
“Just little bits, like always. Edna would like this.”
“What?”
“She’d be thrilled, you know it?”
Nick was frowning at him. “Who?”
“Edna,” said Cole, as though it were obvious, and suddenly realized what he was doing. The plane of reality had shifted, this
world and the stopgap world were bleeding together, obscuring what few outlines did exist. It was the alcohol doing it, so it was a temporary thing, but it frightened him just the same.
Nick was saying, “Edna who? What are you talking about?”
She’d sit here the way I’m doing, he thought, but he said, “Nothing. I made a mistake.”
“You okay, Paul?”
“I’m fine. The booze is getting me, that’s all.”
“New Year’s Eve comes but once a year.” Nick grinned and winked. “Be seeing you, buddy.”
A little while later a girl came over, pulling a kitchen chair with her, and sat down in front of him. She said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” he said, trying to remember her. She was pixieish, small and well-built, and slightly drunken in a high and happy way. He couldn’t get a name for her at all.
She said, “You’re the amnesia boy, right?”
“That’s right. I don’t remember your name.”
She laughed. “Doesn’t surprise me at all. You never met me before.”
“Oh.”
“I came with Bobby Loomis. You remember him?”
“I’m not sure.”
She wave negligently. “That’s him over there, trying to put the make on our hostess. He’s a shmo.”
“Oh.”
“You really got this amnesia, huh?”
He nodded. He thought her manner was probably offensive, but he wasn’t offended. He was like the self-conscious man on roller skates; knowing for sure that everybody is staring at him, he doesn’t have to worry about people staring at him anymore. This girl openly displayed the attitude he felt hidden behind the eyes of all the others here, so he was more relaxed and comfortable with her. He said, “Yes, I’ve really got it.”
Memory (Hard Case Crime) Page 23
