Personal Demons

by Christopher Fowler

'You know Miss Amity?'

  'Oh sure. She used to teach tap over at this crummy little studio on West 46th. I wanted to be a dancer, but I really wasn't good enough.'

  'Was she a dancer, then?'

  'Once, long ago, out in Hollywood. Chorus stuff. Way before she took her accountancy exams and married that maniac, that crazy pianist.'

  'She was married to a pianist?'

  'Her second husband. The first one shot himself, but then I guess he had a good reason. Not that the pianist turned out any better. That was all before my time. Mary was sub-leasingthe studio from this guy who turned out to be some kind of gangster. He ran a luggage shop near the Marriot that was a front for a gambling syndicate, one of these places that sold suitcases, statues of Jesus and flick-knives, and had old Turkish guys in the back playing cards. He had to get out of town quick, and robbed the studio while everyone was in the tap class. Cleaned the place out of wallets, purses, jewelry, took all Mary's savings from the apartment. But he didn't get out in time, and they cut one of his feet off. The right, I think. Sure slowed him down. Mary says it made him a better person. She's always in trouble, one of those people, y'know? You wanna make sure you don't get caught up. It has a way of enveloping everyone. It's because she has this instinct, she knows stuff about people and sometimes they don't like it. You ready for a coffee?'

  On the way home I met another half dozen people who were acquainted with Bolivar and Mary Amity. A Greek couple in a dry cleaners. Two old ladies in ratty fur coats who finished each other's sentences. A thin horse-faced man in a floor-length plastic slicker. A cop. I would have expected this sort of thing in an English country village, but it did not seem possible that one woman could be so well known in such a cosmopolitan neighbourhood. From each of them I gleaned another curious piece of information about my hostess, but they confused my picture of her instead of clarifying it. The cop mentioned her recent divorce from 'that writer, the guy who caused all that trouble at Rockaway Beach'. Was this the pianist, or someone else? The couple in the dry cleaners professed themselves glad that Mary had gotten her eyesight back. The horse-faced man asked me if she still had 'the singing hen'.

  I returned to the apartment half-expecting to find another stranger sitting in the lounge, but for once it was empty, and I could concentrate on going through the figures I needed to prepare for work the following morning. Or I would have been able to, had the armadillo not clawed them all to pieces and pissed on them. It took me the rest of the day to put everything right, during which time I fielded over a dozen phonecalls from borderline-crazies asking for Mary. Apparently she ran some kind of astrology hotline on her other number Sunday evenings. I don't know the details but I think there was some kind of gambling element involved because one guy asked if he could put thirty dollars on Saturn. Deciding to set her voicemail in future, I finally got to bed just before one, having first locked the rewritten papers safely inside my briefcase.

  Sleep did not come easily. My head was full of questions. Why had Mary's first husband killed himself? Why was the second one a maniac? Why was Dean in jail? Why couldn't I just ignore all this stuff and quietly get on with my own life?

  On Monday, Bolivar had to stay behind in the apartment while I went to work, but Raoul and Carlos arrived just as I was leaving.

  'Yo! The Chuckster!' bellowed Carlos. 'The new tub is arriving today. Gonna be some banging.'

  'That's fine,' I said, relieved. 'Do your worst. I won't be here.' I stopped in the doorway. 'As a matter of interest, how do you know Miss Amity?'

  She had helped the pair out of some difficulty when they were little more than schoolkids, in trouble with the law. Carlos now worked for a security firm and Raoul was a hot-diver. That is, he explained, he was paid to jump into radioactive water at power plants, in order to fix things. 'It hasn't done a hell of a lot for my sperm-count and my pants glow in the dark,' he laughed, 'but the money's good.'

  The great thing about the location of Mary's apartment was its proximity to the bank. I could be there in a few minutes, not that I particularly wanted to. It wasn't a very interesting job. That evening I was back by five-thirty, and returned to find the front door standing wide open. Carlos was on the floor doing something intricate with spanners. His portable cassette recorder was playing a mutilated tape of mariachi music.

  'You know the front door's been left wide open?'

  'Raoul, I asked you to shut it, man.'

  'Where's the dog?' I asked.

  'You didn't take him to work with you?'

  They looked from one to the other, then back at me.

  I asked the neighbours. I walked the streets. I reported the loss to the police. Bolivar was nowhere to be found. He could have left the apartment at any time during the day. By ten o'clock I was in a state of panic, but there was nothing to do except return home and see if he had managed to find his way back.

  There was no sign of him. I fed the armadillo, which by this time was making the kitchen smell strange, and went to bed, if not to sleep.

  When I awoke the following morning to find yet another stranger in the apartment, I was glad to have someone to talk to. He was a very large black man named Gregor, and was washing his underpants in the kitchen sink.

  'You have something wrong with your water.'

  'What are you doing?' I asked.

  'Your basement washer-dryer is being overhauled and I couldn't get in the bathroom, there's pipes an' shit everywhere,' he explained.

  'I mean, what are you doing here in this apartment?' I noticed an aggressive tone in my voice that I could have sworn wasn't normally there.

  'See, Mary lets me use her utility room because mine is full of hookers.' He wrung out an enormous pair of Calvin Klein Y -fronts and draped them over a radiator. 'They work the street a block down from here, right outside my building, and we have a deal with them to be off the sidewalk by seven in the morning, when our kids start getting up, but in return they get to wash all their stuff in the utility room, and I don't want to be sharing a drum with all their split-crotch shit. So Mary gave me her – '

  ' -apartment keys. I understand. I'm Charles. You want some coffee?'

  'Sure thing, Charlie,' he said gratefully. 'I hope I'm not putting you to trouble or nothing.'

  'Oh, it's no trouble,' I said wearily, reaching for the coffee pot.

  I could hardly concentrate on work that day, I was so worried. There had been no word about Bolivar, and I wondered how long a dog could survive by itself on the streets of Manhattan. He was wearing a collar, but to my knowledge there was no address on it. I called the police again, but finding a lost dog came a pretty long way down their list of things to do today. I resolved to leave work early and continue trawling the streets. Naturally, by five o'clock it was raining so hard that you couldn't see more than the blurred red tail-lights of the nearest retreating cab.

  By eight o'clock, soaked through and in despair, I ended up back at the apartment. I had just managed to get the door open when the telephone rang.

  'Oh, I'm so glad you're there,' said Mary. 'I tried you at work but they said you'd gone for the evening. I spoke to a nice young lady named Barbara. Such a nice voice. She broke up with her boyfriend, did you know?'

  'No, I didn't know that.'

  'You should talk to her. A good soul, but lonely. When she's not with someone she puts on weight. You can tell just by listening.'

  'Yes, she's very nice,' I agreed, pulling off my wet raincoat. 'I was just taking the dog for a walk.'

  'In this terrible weather? Oh, you didn't have to do that. Put him on, will you? Let me hear him.'

  I desperately looked around. 'He can't come to the phone right now. He's eating.'

  'He'll come when he hears my voice. Bolivar!' She began shouting his name over and over. I hoped she was in a private room. With no other choice available, I was forced to impersonate the bull terrier. I interspersed ragged breathy gasps with some swallows of saliva.

  'Good boy! Good boy! Put Charl
es back on now.'

  I wiped my mouth. 'Hello, Miss Amity.'

  'Oh call me Mary, everyone does. I just wanted to thank you for being so kind to me, Charles. Lying here in hospital you start worrying about all sorts of things, and it's such a comfort knowing that someone responsible is taking care of my precious baby.'

  Fifteen minutes later I was in Ron's Lucky Silver Dollar Bar & Grill, chugging back beers and telling the barman my problem. I had to tell someone.

  'I've let the poor woman down, Bill. She allowed me to stay in her home, not because she needed someone to look after the place but because this guy I know told her I needed somewhere to stay for a week. She trusted me out of the goodness of her heart. I see that now. But I let her down. I lost her prized possession, her best friend! How could I do that? How could I be so irresponsible?'

  'Strictly speaking it wasn't your fault,' said Bill, flicking something out of a beermug. 'The builders, they should have kept the front door shut.'

  'You don't understand. It's a matter of good faith.'

  At the other end of the bar, one of the patrons switched on the wall TV. Lady and the Tramp was showing. The film had just reached the part where the unclaimed dog in the pound was walking the last mile to the gas chamber. All the other dogs were howling as it went to its lonely death.

  'Hey, turn that thing off!' shouted Bill. 'Jeez, sorry about that, Chuck.'

  'How am I going to tell her, Bill? I mean, Dean would able to break it to her gently, but he had to go to jail.'

  'I know about that.'

  'You do?'

  'Sure. He comes in here with Mary.'

  'Why is he going to jail?'

  'He used to do a little – freelancing – for Mary.' He seemed reluctant to broach the subject.

  'Oh? Was he handling her accounting work?' I knew she'd sat accountancy exams, and Dean was a teller, after all. The thought crossed my mind that they had been caught working some kind of financial scam together, and that Mary was not in hospital at all but with him in jail.

  'No,' replied Bill, 'dancing.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'She has this entertainment company that supplies dancers to office parties, you know the kind of thing, sexy girls coming out of cakes, stuff like that. Meter maids, nurses who strip, all above-board and legit. And she has some guys who take their clothes off. Well, Dean owed some money and needed to get cash fast. She persuaded Dean to earn it by doing this act where he was dressed as a cop, and he'd turn up in some chick's office and tell them they were under arrest, and they'd ask why, and he'd say for breaking men's hearts, and then he'd whip out his tape deck and play Stop! In The Name Of Love! and strip down to a sequined jockstrap.'

  'So why was he arrested?' I asked.

  'He was coming out of the Flatiron Building after a birthday appointment and saw somebody being mugged. Well, he was still in uniform, and saw this guy off, but get this, the victim reported him for not being a real cop. And it turned out this wasn't the first time he'd used his outfit in public. They found him guilty of impersonating a police officer. That's taken very seriously around here.' He saw my mug was empty. 'Let me fill that for ya?'

  I sat in the apartment, staring at the spot where Bolivar had spent his evenings happily assaulting the armadillo. When he wagged his tail, his entire body flexed back and forth like a single muscle, a grin on legs. I missed him.

  Mary owned the fattest telephone book I had ever seen, but as I only knew the first names of her friends I couldn't find any of them listed within its pages. Raoul and Carlos had finished the bathroom and gone, leaving a bunch of red roses behind in the sink, and the armadillo, which seemed to have discovered a prisoner-of-war method of getting out of its box and back in before I got home, had eaten the piece of paper bearing the number of Carlos's mobile phone. I was trying to figure out my next move when the telephone rang.

  This time it was Donald. Apparently, Mary had rung him and asked him to call me. I hadn't liked his attitude the other morning, but now he seemed a lot friendlier. Still, it seemed odd that he should call. I decided to break the news to him about losing Bolivar. He told me that the first thing I needed to do was duplicate a stack of posters and staple them on telephone poles around the neighbourhood.

  'You think it's wise putting Miss Amity's number on them?'

  'You worry too much, anyone ever point that out to you? Listen, it's easy, I'll help if you want.'

  My first instinct, the one that came all too naturally, was to say no. Nobody in our family ever accepted help of any kind. Then I thought, this is crazy, and accepted his offer. That evening we put up nearly a hundred posters. The rain didn't stop for a second, but it was fun walking around the backstreets, past the glowing restaurant windows, talking to someone so alien that everything we spoke of began from opposite points of view. We didn't find Bolivar but at least I had done something positive, and that felt good.

  The next day was Wednesday. Mary was due out of hospital on Friday. She called again that evening, and this time I managed to avoid bringing the dog to the telephone for a conversation. She wanted to know about my parents, and I had to admit I found it easier talking to someone I had never met.

  'Families. They mean well but they're blind,' she said.

  'I miss my dad.'

  'Of course you do. I come from a very big family. My father planned to bring us here for many years, but by the time we finally reached New York there were only a few of us left. So I made the city my family. It was the most logical thing to do. A little assimilation is good for you. How's my doggie?'

  'Uh, he's fine. He's in the kitchen, eating.'

  'Then I won't disturb him. And I won't keep you from your evening. Nurse Ratchett is about to come around with my knockout pills. I hide them down the side of the bed. It drives her nuts. What birth sign are you?'

  'Pisces.'

  'Ah.' I could hear her smile. 'That would explain it.'

  The rain had stopped. The street glittered and beckoned. As a European I find it impossible to watch American network TV because of the commercials, so after a quarter-hour of fidgety channel-hopping I headed back outside. I tried to imagine where Bolivar might have gone, but the dog knew so many stores and bars in the neighbourhood I had no idea where to start. He had a better social life than me. Deliberately ignoring my boss's advice – 'If you have to walk in New York, pick a destination and home in on it like a Cruise missile' – I wandered aimlessly for half an hour, then headed back to the apartment.

  On the front steps I collided with Melissa, who was coming out of the building.

  'I left you a Dutch Apple cake. I baked too much for myself. You need more flesh. Oh, and I topped up the armadillo's box with some cabbage leaves and a mouse. Manny can get them for you, from his coffee shop.'

  I was touched. 'Thanks, Melissa, that's really sweet of you. Do you want to come up for a drin- coffee?'

  She waved the offer away. 'No, I can't stop. Besides, you already have a visitor.'

  'Who?' I'd been hoping for a quiet night.

  'I didn't catch his name but he looks like one of Mary's emotional cripples. She does this course, this therapy-thing. Did you know she's a qualified therapist? By the way, this came off.' She put the top of the bathroom's hot-water tap in my hand.

  'No, I didn't,' I replied, pocketing the faucet. 'If someone told me she was a freelance lion-tamer, it wouldn't surprise me.' Wondering who or what I was in for now, I ventured upstairs.

  'Bad luck doesn't make you a loser. Do I look like a loser to you? No, you give me respect, 'cause what you see is a chick-magnet, a pretty sharp guy. Not a loser.' He wore Ray-bans on top of his head, silver-backed Cuban heels and a blue tropical shirt covered in marlins. Slick-black hair, a hula-girl tattoo on his forearm, jiggling above a diamante watch 'with a rock so big it could choke a fucking horse' (his words). He was settled in the armchair I had come to think of as Carlos's chair, nursing a large whisky. He seemed edgy and anxious to get something off his chest,
and I wasn't about to argue. For all I knew he was carrying a gun. He looked the type, only more weaselly, like if he shot someone it would be because the safety catch had accidentally come off.

  'Yeah. So. I got this debt around my neck from some stuff I'd picked up in the Keys. Not drugs, man, everyone thinks drugs in Florida but this was a shipment of French silverware, like cutlery and salt cellars and stuff, I figured from some Louisiana family. And I can't get rid of it because, get this, it's too valuable. I called Mary and at first she told me to return it, like I could just waltz back and cancel the deal.'

  I could sense it was going to be a long night, and that I wouldn't like whatever it was this guy was working toward, so I poured myself a whisky. I never used to drink.

  'She already knew what I was holding 'cause she'd seen it on the news – the national news – on account of the silverware once belonged to some French bigwig or something. Now a guy in Harlem called Dolphin Eddie is offering me a cash deal so low it's a fucking offence to nature, but I figure okay, I won't make a profit but it'll wipe the slate on my debts.' He held up his glass. 'Can I get another one of these?'

  'Look here, Mr-'

  'Randy. Randy Amity. This is my mother's apartment. I'm her only kid. I guess you think that's weird, considering how many times she's been married, but something went wrong with her tubes after she had me. You're Chuck, right?'

  Now I saw the family resemblance. God, she must have been disappointed.

  'Anyways, I'm leaving the stuff here.'

  'Here?' I exploded. 'Are you crazy? Where is it?'

  'Relax.' Randy sat forward and drained his drink. 'It's safely stashed away.'

  'What if your mother finds out? Good Lord, she could get hurt.'

  'I don't think so. It was her idea. I was just gonna stop by, stash the silverware for a couple of nights and take a bath, but the hotwater faucet is missing.'

  'Can I at least see this – merchandise?'

  'Sure.' He reached beneath the armchair and pulled up a large inlaid gold and blue leather case. Inside the silk-sewn lid was a brass panel faced in dense scrollwork. I tipped the case to the light and read the owner's name. Donatien-Alphonse-François, Comte de -