I stood with one hand on the gate.
“May I help you with something? Are you looking for someone?”
His eyes met mine briefly, and for an instant his face came alive, first something almost like joyful recognition, then sadness, then that blank expression again. He merely stood there in the rain and cold, and I was the one who began to shiver.
“I said, may I help you?”
Still he stood there silently. I debated going back into the house rather than leaving Martina alone with this guy just outside, but I didn’t. I tried to shrug him off as one of the city’s peculiar sights. So I opened the gate, stepped through, shut it again, and walked briskly down the steps, and started to get into my car.
Then I noticed that the man was pointing at me. His hand was shaking, not from cold, but for gentle emphasis, as if to say, yes, I know you. I know everything.
I got into the car quickly, slammed the door shut, and locked it, then looked up to see the stranger walking away from me toward the end of the block. I watched him go until he was around the corner. Then I started the car. When I got to that corner, I looked for him, but he was gone.
There. There, too, it began.
* * * *
Joe Meese lived in the Germantown section of the city. It was an easy drive, the streets empty because of the weather. Joe’s street was lined with trees, so many of them that in the darkness and the wind they whipped and writhed and swayed like waves in a hurricane. The rain came in curtains, then sleet again, rattling like pebbles on the car’s roof.
I ran to Joe’s front porch, rang the bell, and stood there shivering, nervously hopping up and down, muttering to myself, “Come on. Come on—”
There was a familiar barking on the other side of the door. Heavy claws scratched wood. It was Woof, the Meeses’ oversized setter/collie/whatever. If I stood on tiptoe I could see the eager brown-and-white face staring up at me through the door’s glass panels.
“Hey! Bark louder. Make them let me in.”
The tone of the barking changed, no longer a challenge, but instead an expectant yelping.
“Glad to see you, too. Now, make enough noise so Joe can hear you.”
The dog obliged, and I rang the bell again.
The door swung open, and there was Joe, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other.
He didn’t stand aside. I made to step past him, into the house.
“Jesus, Joe, you pick the damndest nights—”
His hand slammed into my chest, cigarette and all.
“Just one moment, buddy. Where do you think you’re going?”
“What?”
I was so flabbergasted I didn’t know what to say. I just let him push me back through the doorway.
“I said, what do you want here, mister?”
“But—but—”
“Look, whoever you are, I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but I’ll just have to ask you to leave or—”
The dog jumped up, trying to lick my face. Joe shoved it aside with his foot, and said, “Sit!” very firmly. Woof sat, looking up at me longingly.
“If this is some kind of joke,” I managed to say, “I don’t get it, Joe. Please stop.”
“I don’t get it either,” he said, pushing me back into the rain. I could tell by his voice and his face that this was not a joke, that he was on the edge of being scared and trying not to show it. And in his eyes, there was no recognition at all.
“Joe—”
“You must have come to the wrong house. This must be a mistake,” he said.
He slammed the door in my face.
I stood there in the rain, looking no doubt as lost as the old man I’d seen in front of my own house. What had happened was so contrary to all expectations that I didn’t feel anything just yet. My mind tried to shut it all out while my body went on auto-pilot, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting in my car, staring up at a streetlight through the rain as it rippled down the windshield.
I sat there—I don’t know how long—just numb, trying to cling to the feeble excuse that it was all an extraordinarily tasteless joke, for all Joe Meese had never been one to play stupid jokes, and, in any case, he wasn’t that good an actor; or that somehow, inexplicably, I had lost my way in the dark and the rain (or maybe bratty kids had turned the street signs around) and found myself on a very similar street, but not the right street, and by one of those incredible coincidences which would be rejected by Ripley’s Believe It Or Not for implausibility, there just happened to be a total stranger living there who looked exactly like my long-time office buddy, Joe Meese.
* * * *
There was a lighted window at the end of the street. I leaned forward, peering through the rain, and recognized the grocery store at the corner. Often, during Joe’s parties, someone had been sent to that store to pick up extra dip or ice or whatever.
Almost before I realized I was doing it, I got out of the car again and ran to the grocery store. I burst through its door, and stood there, panting for breath, surveying the familiar shelves and counters.
“Nasty one out there tonight,” the clerk said.
“Yeah,” I said, and hurried over to the pay phone, which was in the back by the store’s single video-game machine.
I hesitated for a moment, as if before some irrevocable decision, and then dialed Joe’s number. Luck was with me. He was the one who answered the phone.
“Very funny,” I said.
“What? What’s funny?”
“Joe, this is Alan Summers.”
“Alan! I hope Martina told you about the party. Come on over, old pal, old buddy! Fred’s here, and Roger, and Bob Steele. You know how hard it is to make them wait on a good poker game.”
“Look,” I said as slowly and deliberately as I could. “I’m at the grocery down the street. I have already been to your house, but you turned me away like I was a complete stranger barging in uninvited. Now would you mind telling me why?”
There was a pause.
“Joe?”
“Alan…I don’t get what you’re saying. I have been here all along, with the others, and no one has come to the door since half an hour ago, when Roger arrived. I think you are the one who needs to explain.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I’ll be right over, okay? Then maybe this’ll make some sort of sense.”
“Okay.” His voice was cold, uncertain.
I hung up and leaned against the wall by the phone, swaying, both hands pressed against my temples. I wondered if I had gone completely mad. But that was a feeble excuse, too. I knew perfectly well I hadn’t. Nobody who is crazy thinks he is crazy. The complete raving loony thinks he is the only sane person in the world, surrounded by nut cases too stupid to understand him. I was beginning to be genuinely afraid.
“You all right?” the clerk at the counter asked. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”
I hurried from the store.
When I got back to Joe’s house, my gut-level instinct told me that the most sensible thing to do, the safest thing, the way to escape, was to just get into my car and drive home and tell myself lies over and over until I was convinced this had never happened.
But it had happened, and I knew it had, and something else inside me drove me to walk up to that door and ring the bell again. I rang it. Once more the dog enthusiastically announced my arrival.
The door opened, and there was Joe again, holding the dog by the collar. I stared, sure I was seeing things.
It wasn’t the same dog. It wasn’t Woof at all, but a large, purebred, yellow-and-white collie which also, somehow, seemed to know me.
“Why have you come back?”
I pushed my way past him, into the living room. He had his hands full trying to restrain the dog, which was still trying to lick my face, yelping excitedly all the while.
“Joe,” I said, turning to him. “I don’t know if I’ve done something wrong, but if I have, I’m sorry. Still, no matter what it was, you don’t have to treat me like I�
��m some bum in off the street. What the hell is going on?”
I felt the fear again, the cords of the elevator cable snapping one by one, faster now, the plunge beginning.
He was obviously afraid too.
“I don’t know how you know my name,” he said, “and maybe this is a mistake of some sort, but I still don’t know who you are, mister, or why you are here or what you want, but I want you out of my house right now!”
“Joe! It’s me, Alan Summers, your friend! What is this?”
“Joe? Who’s at the door?” a woman called from the next room. I knew the voice, of course. It belonged to Alice, Joe’s wife. I’d known her as long as I’d known Joe, eight or nine years. She was my one hope.
“Alice!” I yelled. “Alice, come here please.” She came, saw me, and stopped.
“Joe, who is this man? Some friend of yours?”
“I swear to God,” he said. “I’ve never seen him before in my life. Only he was here five minutes ago, trying to get in like he owned the place.”
She began to back away, one hand over her mouth, staring at me wide-eyed. “Do you want me to call the police?” she said.
“No,” I said softly. “You don’t have to do that. It’s all a mistake. I’ll go. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
A minute later I was on the sidewalk, making my way slowly back to the grocery store, running my hand along the wooden fence in the front of my friend’s yard. I wanted to go back to the store, to call him on the phone again and plead with him, but I couldn’t. I just stood there, cold and wet and afraid. I must have stood still for five or ten minutes. Then I was in my car, completely drenched, my teeth chattering, crying like a lost child.
* * * *
I got home very late that night. It must have been past two. I spent the hours just driving aimlessly, trying to think, to make sense out of what was happening to me. I kept coming back to the fact that the dog knew me, as if that meant something, as if that were the key, but it meant nothing and there was no key. And the dog had changed between one time and the next, which was completely impossible, of course, but no more impossible than the idea that some malign, cosmic equivalent of Nixon’s secretary Rosemary Woods had performed incredible contortions to erase part of my life, leaving these inexplicable eighteen-minute gaps. No, it wasn’t that.
I remember sitting at a stoplight on an empty, rain-slick street, gazing up at Billy Penn’s statue atop City Hall, wondering if it really was the same statue I’d always known, or one which was, somehow, different.
When I finally turned the bolt on the door and stood in my own living room, Martina called down from the top of the stairs. “Alan? Is that you?”
“I…think so.”
“Alan, are you all right? I got worried, so I called the Meeses, and Joe said you’d called once but never showed up. I didn’t know what to do next.”
“I don’t know what to do next either,” I said softly.
“What?”
I took off my raincoat and my regular coat, which was also wet, and looked around for a place to put them. There was none, so I hung them on the doorknob.
“Martina…Marty…please come down and talk to me. Just come down.” My voice broke. I was crying again.
She came down, in curlers and bathrobe and slippers, a concerned expression on her face. For an instant I felt the most hopeless, helpless terror I had ever known, as I was certain she didn’t recognize me and was about to run up the stairs and call the police. But she merely paused, two steps from the bottom, then continued cautiously, startled, bewildered, but not acting at all like a woman who confronts a total stranger in her house late at night.
“What’s wrong, Alan?”
“Something…very disturbing has happened. Just sit with me.”
We sat on the sofa in front of the fireplace, across from my so familiar armchair. The newspaper she’d brought me that evening was still there.
I told her what had happened that evening, all of it, as best I could.
“It’s like I’ve lost my grip,” I said, “like I’m drifting out of the lives of the people around me, just drifting away. I don’t know what I’ve done or what the reason is, but Joe and I, we were not in quite the same world anymore—”
I couldn’t say anything more. I sat still, interlocking my fingers, joining my hands together, then moving my hands until some of the fingers missed, and more did, until I was grasping my left thumb with my right pinkie. Then I spread my hands apart, palms up, and looked into Martina’s eyes.
“It’s all crazy,” I said. “It can’t happen, but it’s happening. I want you to tell me it’s not, but I know better. It would just be a lie.”
I embraced her then, my head upon her shoulder, and once more I wept like a child. She put her arms around me lightly.
“What I’m most afraid of is that somehow everything will change, and Gabby won’t know her father anymore …”
She sucked in breath suddenly, stiffened, and let go of me. I drew back, and as I looked into her face, I saw the change taking place, right there. The concern faded. The expression became totally different, a kind of shocked bewilderment, a sense of being imposed upon, something bordering on rage.
“How can you do this to me?” she said. “You promised me you would never mention that name again. Remember? Our daughter’s name is Julia. Gabrielle died when she was a baby. You know that.”
She rose from the sofa and turned her back on me, and I knew then, with the utmost certainty, that there was nothing more I could do. It had happened, completely and totally, whatever it was.
“Go to bed,” I said in desperation. “Go to sleep and in the morning everything will be fine. None of this will have happened.”
She backed away from me. I got up and shooed her up the stairs. “Go on,” I said. “I’ll be a little while yet.”
I waited until I heard her close our bedroom door behind her, and then I slowly made my way up the stairs.
I walked very quietly past our bedroom, down the hall to the end, and there, as carefully as I could, I opened another door and peered in.
Our daughter was asleep amid huge pillows, beneath an E. T. bedspread I could recognize even by the dim glare of her nightlight.
I slipped into the room, but I didn’t turn the overhead light on. I was afraid to, lest I see her too clearly, and she turn out to be too tall, or a blonde instead of a brunette, or merely a stranger to me. I groped around for one of her school copy books, tore out a page slowly, and crouched by the night light, writing a short note with a felt-tip pen:
DARLING, YOUR FATHER LOVES YOU VERY MUCH, BUT HE HAS TO GO AWAY. TRY TO REMEMBER HIM.
I picked up her alarm clock and placed the note under it. The clock said 2:45. It was no more than ten and a half hours since this had all begun, but the elevator cable had snapped now, and I had fallen very far, very fast. I was beyond trying to understand.
I stood for a few minutes, gazing at the sleeping girl, and then I left the room.
* * * *
I did not look in on Martina again. Instead, I went downstairs, got a dry coat out of the closet, and left the house. The rain had stopped by then, but the wind was bitterly cold.
I walked the streets for hours, taking note of all the familiar houses in the neighborhood until, after a while, they were no longer familiar. Once a police car cruised right by me, very slowly, but I stood motionless until it was gone. I had not been seen. How very appropriate, I thought to myself, that I was becoming invisible, too. It was, after all, the next logical step.
Dawn had just begun to break when I boarded a streetcar, and sat in a kind of stupor as it rushed into the tunnel at 40th Street. It was somehow comforting to be inside the tunnel, with the world shut out and concrete walls whizzing past, blurring into a featureless grey. I listened numbly as the stops were called out: 37th Street, Sansom, 35th, and Saint Mary’s Academy—it no longer mattered that there was no 35th Street stop on this line nor any place called Saint Mar
y’s Academy.
I got off at 30th Street, and walked slowly along the traffic island between the huge main post office and the equally monumental 30th Street train station. I thought of them as two vast tombs, containing the bones of all the kings of the Earth.
After a while, I stood on a bridge, staring down into the Schuylkill River, watching the colors and the waves, the light and shadow, and the occasional bits of debris. The pattern was always changing, never the same from one moment to the next, never, ever returning to what it once had been.
Another police car went by, ignoring me.
Some days passed. I had some money with me, so I ate in restaurants, among crowds of strangers, until my increasingly unkempt state made waiters shy away from me. I tried to keep clean, using the sinks in the men’s room at the train station. I lived in that station, like so many others, who were also lost, but for different reasons.
Once or twice I saw people I knew, co-workers from the office passing through on their daily commutes. The first time this happened, I hid myself. Afterwards, I always carried a newspaper to hide behind when the time came. I never dared to approach any of them, for fear of what they might say if I asked them if they had ever known someone named Alan Summers.
After a while I saw them no more, and all the people around me were strangers, the great masses of them flowing, changing, changing again, until I never saw the same face twice and all the faces blended into a sameness, like the blur of the rushing subway tunnel.
I slept on a bench once, and dreamt that I was the old man, standing in the rain outside my house, slowly dissolving in that rain like a candy man, a figure of hard sugar discarded in a gutter. And I dreamt that my daughter sat up suddenly in her darkened bedroom, and called out, “Daddy, are you there?” I tried to answer, but my voice was lost in the rain, in the rushing water, and I seemed to be falling away from the front of the house. Again my daughter called out, and again, and I could not reply, until the front of the house rippled and blurred, like something seen through rain streaming down an automobile windshield. Then there was only darkness, and a sense of drifting, and my daughter’s name, and her face, and all my memories of her began to slip away. I could not cling to them.
The Darrell Schweitzer Megapack Page 2
