New York Echoes

by Warren Adler

  “Where?” James asked.

  “You’ll see,” the other man said.

  “Are you arresting me?” James said, dumbfounded. He had never been arrested in his life.

  “What does it look like, buddy?”

  The man muttered something into his walkie-talkie and maneuvered James into the car. A small group of people had gathered, watching the spectacle.

  “But why?” James protested as he sank into the back seat of the car.

  “Come on man. Don’t bullshit us. You know why.”

  James was confounded. He had begun to perspire through his clothes.

  “There must be some mistake.”

  “No mistake. We’ve had an eye on you for a long time.”

  “A long time?”

  He lapsed into silence, certain now that they had made a mistake. The car moved up the street then slowed briefly. He noted that the woman had stopped.

  “We got him,” the bald man said. The woman nodded.

  “I don’t understand,” James pleaded.

  “Stalking, mister. It’s a serious offense.”

  “Stalking?”

  The word seemed foreign, out of context.

  “I can explain,” he said.

  “You’ll have to,” the bald cop said.

  In the police station, he felt humiliated by the process of being arrested, offering to explain at every step. Finally, he was given the opportunity. He was brought into a room and introduced to a detective who sat opposite him at a table. A stenographer sat nearby taking notes on a machine.

  “You realize you can have counsel,” the detective said. He was a man with a dark complexion who showed little emotion.

  “For what?” James asked, still certain that this was simply a misunderstanding.

  “Well then,” the detective said. “We’re listening.”

  Trying to appear ingratiating, he told his story as best he could under the circumstances. Unfortunately the threatening nature of the atmosphere inhibited his intentions. He felt inept and embarrassed, and his narrative seemed disjointed. The detective listened impassively.

  “I wanted to be sure it was her,” he concluded. “I wanted to be sure.”

  The detective shrugged, lowered his eyes, and looked at his notes.

  “Mrs. Martin was panicked. We had to respond.”

  Martin! This was the first time he had heard her name. How wrong his assumptions were. He felt ridiculous.

  “Believe me,” James said, his tone pleading. “I’ve never been in this position. It was totally innocent, really. I’m so sorry. I had no idea that the woman knew she was being followed.” He corrected himself. “Not followed exactly. Observed. I wanted to be sure. I was just being overly cautious I guess. It was a long time ago. People change after fifty years.”

  “No shit,” detective said, cracking a thin smile. Was it a sign he should feel more at ease?

  “So you see I’m not what you would call a stalker,” James said, believing he was making his position clearer now. “I had no bad intentions.”

  “How could she have known that? Older people get scared.”

  “I understand. I guess you might say I was foolish.”

  “Very. We’ve talked to every one along the line, the waiter at the restaurant, the messenger, the doorman, others who witnessed your conduct. You were, clearly, stalking this woman.”

  “I told you,” he protested, unable to comprehend the thoroughness of their surveillance. He wanted to berate them for wasting time and money on such trivia, but he held his tongue. “My God. I thought she was someone I had known when I was a kid. That’s the long and short of it.”

  “No matter. You stalked her.”

  “I admit it. I followed her. I told you why. But I did not stalk.”

  The detective left him alone in the room. It was an awful time for him. Despite the absurdity of the situation, and the knowledge of his innocence, the accusation was very real and menacing.

  The time passed slowly. He tried the door to the room. It was locked. This is truly crazy, he thought. Surely, this could easily be untangled.

  He admitted to himself that his obsession had gone beyond reason. He had gotten caught up in a fantasy of his past, perhaps a by-product of grief and the silly idea that he was searching to recapture his youth. He saw his actions more clearly now. Of course, this woman was not Vera Vasis. He had invented her out of the strands of an old fantasy. From the woman’s perspective he supposed he could be defined as a stalker.

  The outcome did not look promising and he contemplated getting a lawyer to extract him from this mess.

  After about an hour, the door opened and the detectives who had brought him in appeared with the woman he was accused of stalking. She appeared wary at first, her glance washing over him in a penetrating stare. Their eyes locked.

  He had not, until then, confronted her eyes. It could be her, he told himself, but he was too frightened to acknowledge the suspicion. Better to keep his mouth shut.

  “Do you know him?” the detective asked the woman. “His name is Charles. James Charles.” It seemed clear that they had briefed her about his story.

  “I’m really James . . . James Papanopolis,” he whispered, “I changed it. Easier to pronounce.“ His voice sounded nervous and reedy. As he spoke, he remained locked into her stare sensing a vague sense of familiarity. Could it be her? Maybe? The passage of time distorted recognition.

  She shook her head.

  “I never saw him in my life.”

  “I was James Papanopolis,” he said, feeling foolish, clearing his throat.

  “Sorry,” the woman said.

  “I’m not a stalker,” James said, finding his voice’s strength again.

  “If not, it was a good imitation,” the detective said.

  “He stalked me. Day after day. It was awful.”

  “Please forgive me. It was wrong. I’m so sorry if I caused you any concern.

  “You scared the hell out of her,” the detective said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well then,” the detective asked, turning to the woman. “Do you wish to press charges?”

  The woman, still unsmiling, grew thoughtful for a moment. She stared at him again, but offered no emotional signals.

  “Absolutely,” she said at last, turning, proceeding toward the door.

  “It was an innocent thing,” James pleaded. “I meant no harm.”

  Without turning, the woman left the room and the detective held him back.

  “Sorry, Buddy.”

  The next few weeks were a nightmare of anxiety. He had to post bail, hire a lawyer, explain his motives. The lawyer warned him that he could serve time in prison, which shocked him.

  “For this?”

  “A possibility,” the lawyer told him. “Depends on the woman. She is very angry. Stalking is pretty scary.”

  “I thought I knew her.”

  “Let’s leave that alone. Makes it worse.”

  “I’m guess I’m an innocent victim of my own fantasies.”

  The lawyer nodded his agreement with that assessment.

  “We could always cop a plea, plead guilty, invoke the age thing. Make a deal.

  “The age thing?”

  “Age does something to the memory.”

  “Like this was because I’m senile. Is that the idea?”

  “It’s a good ploy.” the lawyer shrugged. “Might get you off with a suspended and community service.”

  “Plead guilty? For what? It’s out of the question.”

  “Your call.”

  He tried to explain the events to his children, but they seemed perplexed, and he could tell from their reaction that they really thought he was going senile.

  How could this happen? Never in his life had he been in trouble with the police. Never! It was a bad dream and darkly colored the renewal of his New York experience. He contemplated going back to Phoenix after this was over.

  Events dragged on. Court
dates were made and postponed. He lived his life in a kind of limbo. No longer did he search the faces of people for signs of his past friendships. No longer did he take advantage of any of New York’s amusements. He stopped talking to people, stopped reading the New York Times, stopped visiting his children. Instead, he brooded and stayed in his apartment all day. He missed Sally. There was no one to talk with, no one who understood, no one who would regard him sympathetically. He felt alone.

  Then one day, his lawyer called to tell him that a meeting had been arranged between the parties at the office of the assistant district attorney who was handling the case. When he asked for an explanation the lawyer told him that they might want to plea bargain. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it did sound hopeful, although he was determined not to plead guilty to a lie.

  When he met the assistant district attorney in his office with his lawyer present, he was surprised to see the woman.

  “Mrs. Martin has requested that she meet with Mr. Charles privately.”

  “Is she withdrawing her charges?”

  “The charges remain,” the assistant district attorney said. “The issue is whether she will testify.”

  “And without that there is no case,” his lawyer said, turning to Mrs. Martin. “Am I correct?”

  Mrs. Martin said nothing, not responding by gesture or expression. Suddenly the assistant district attorney stood up.

  “We will give you ten minutes Mrs. Martin. Defense counsel and I will be in the next room.”

  The woman nodded. The men left the room. James was puzzled by this turn of events. They sat in chairs a few feet from each other. When the lawyers had left, the woman turned to him and began to speak.

  “What you did was terrible, disgusting.”

  The woman’s expression became a snarl. Her anger was palpable. In her eyes, James saw unmistakable contempt.

  “I’m very sorry,” James said, stunned by the energy of her outburst. “I meant no harm. It has been a terrible ordeal.”

  “Good,” the woman said. “I hope it has been painful.”

  “Yes it has,” he said with a sigh. In his mind the punishment somehow did not fit his alleged crime. What had he done?

  “I thought of this many times,” she said.

  James remained silent. He was totally confused by her bellicose attitude.

  “I am her,” she whispered through tightly pursed lips.

  “Vera Vasis?”

  She nodded.

  “You were the hate of my life,” she said, sucking in a deep breath. “I could never get it out of my system.”

  He started to speak, but she held up her hand to stop him. He had many questions to ask.

  “Please. No explanations. No apologies. No words. We were trapped into silence. I spent a lifetime fantasizing revenge.”

  “I was a stupid jealous teenage boy . . .” he began.

  “I don’t want to hear your story and I won’t tell you mine.”

  “People forgive . . .” he began again.

  “Not me,” she said.

  He studied her face, looking for signs of the young girl he once loved. He knew now why he could never be certain. A lifetime of anger had distorted her aspect.

  “I wish I could have gone further than this,” she hissed. “It will have to do for the moment.”

  “For the moment?” he muttered.

  “I will take this to the grave,” she said, turning her head, as if to remove him from her sight.

  They waited in silence until the lawyers returned.

  The Seed That Grew

  by Warren Adler

  Late spring, cerulean blue sky, sun-dappled terrace of this pleasant Greenwich Village café and here he was, Harry Waldman, thinking strange thoughts about Milton Horowitz. He hadn’t thought about Milton Horowitz for easily forty-five years. He wasn’t even in his radar range. In fact, he thought he had forgotten him entirely, wiped his mind of all memory of this man who had for a brief time touched his life, profoundly. For how long? Two, maybe four years.

  Then, out of blue, he had gotten this e-mail. And then he knew the man had touched him for a lifetime.

  “My name is Shirley Tannebaum. I am the granddaughter of Milton Horowitz. He died twenty years ago when I was three. He was a writer and I am trying to find out more about him and his writings. You were one of the writers in an anthology of short stories published years ago that I discovered on a used book site on the internet. I am taking my masters in creative writing at New York University and would be happy to hear from you to discuss my grandfather. Thank you. Shirley.”

  His first thought, once Milton had been retrieved from the mud of memory, was astonishment that Milton had died. His second thought was surprise that instead of the warm nostalgia the name suggested, an odd anger had assailed him. It wasn’t at all like the kind of anger inspired by ugly disagreement, insult, or personal abuse and betrayal. Milton had always been kind, interested, respectful, and mentoring.

  Harry had met people before who seemed to be born to the cloth, surefire success stories. They were the stars of high school and college, the chosen ones, who lived in the glow of promise, as if they were anointed by destiny. He used to be in awe of these people. It was certainly jealousy. That didn’t explain the anger toward Milton.

  What afflicted him was another kind of anger, an anger generated by Milton’s failure to find his destiny, to realize the full flowering of his talent, to lose his way. It was like suddenly coming upon a tattered college yearbook and finding under Milton’s picture that most prophetic and dangerous line, “most likely to succeed.” How dare him not to have lived up that promise.

  Since that e-mail from Milton’s granddaughter, he had become obsessed by thoughts of Milton Horowitz. Why hadn’t Milton Horowitz realized his full potential? Milton was the best of all of those wannabe writers of his youth, the very best.

  He had met Milton when they were both taking creative writing courses at the New School in Manhattan. It was after the war, the big one, and the thirty-odd students were a grab bag of types of all ages, a number of them veterans, a couple of gray heads, about a third women and one black. He remembered the one black because he had a name that sounded Irish.

  Milton was the class hero, the golden boy of promise. He had already published a couple of short stories and poems in small literary magazines and was clearly marked, by everyone including the kind wonderful inspiring and encouraging Professor Fox, who taught the course, as someone with greatness engraved on his forehead.

  Creative writing courses in fiction were a kind of aberration, since about all that could ever be taught was craft. Talent was innate, a mysterious gift, perhaps a genetic hand-down from some unknown ancestor. No one knew. But craft, of course, could not be ignored and so everyone listened carefully to Professor Fox as he analyzed the offerings of his students and filled them with red-inked chicken marks of delight when he came across an image, a sentence, or a passage that conveyed some special way of presenting a work of the imagination.

  Everyone in the class shared the same dreams of fame and fortune. Why were they there? They lusted for the fame of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. Of John O’Hara and Thomas Wolfe, the heroes of the day. Some, of course, were merely experimenting with hopes and dreams. To some of the others, like him, they knew in their bones they were pursuing a calling, a compulsion for which there was no cure and would obsess them for the rest of their lives.

  At twenty he knew it was true and at seventy, his age now, he knew it was true. Nothing had intervened in those years, no traumas, failures, rejections, no slings and arrows pointed in his direction, drawing blood and breaking skin, had ever turned him away from that bedrock truth. Milton knew, not only that it was true for him, but he had an uncanny instinct for spotting others with the same affliction.

  Among this group of obsessed kinsman, Milton was clearly the cream of the crop. His writing was praised, lauded actually, when he stood up to read his material. The fact was t
hat he was an awesome reader, which gave his work added heft and impressed the hell out of all those wannabes. His future success was undeniable. He had the look, the demeanor, and attitude of a winner.

  And, of course, there was the talent, recognizable, natural, inherent. It seemed a consensus, and listening to him reading his work, one could not fail to join in the mutual appraisal. It was the prevailing view.

  The class met weekly, but Milton formed an inner circle of those he had chosen, anointed actually, to what he called a “true writers” group. He had recognized instinctively who possessed this fierce need to do it, to pursue it to the death. Any true artist would understand. For them writing works of the imagination was everything, the world, the only activity worth living for. Rarely was it articulated. Every one of the half dozen in Milton’s group, two women and four men, knew it in their gut.

  There were six of them. About a decade separated the youngest from the oldest. Harry was the youngest and, to be honest, thought he was outclassed and outgunned by the talent of the others. The group would meet on a different day weekly at the home of one of the six to showcase their efforts to each other.

  It was strictly a coffee-and-cookie event since everyone was pretty close to the edge financially. But to be chosen by Milton to join that charmed circle was, indeed, a feather in one’s cap. Admittedly, by being chosen, Harry Waldman thought he had arrived in nirvana, a first step on the road to literary recognition. Milton had laid his hand on him. He had been anointed.

  Of the various offerings read by members of the group, Harry’s memory had become collective. They were, he was certain, great, vivid, wonderful, inspiring, more than promising, the best of the best. By some strange chemistry of mutual admiration, there seemed to be no competitive back biting, only praise and astonishment, as if they were all rooting for each other. Milton, as always was the principal cheerleader.

  The school did arrange for the work of most of the class to be collected and published in a hardcover anthology, “Which Grain Will Grow,” the title taken from a couple of lines from Macbeth: “If you can look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then to me.” Milton’s story, naturally, was the first story in the book. Harry’s was somewhere in the middle.