End of Story

by Peter Abrahams

  “He didn’t even have a grasp of the basic facts,” Ivy said.

  “Immaterial,” said Landau. “What other grounds do you have?”

  “I was hoping you’d come up with something.”

  “My time is expensive,” Landau said, “although there will be no charge for this interview, as I mentioned, in gratitude for your earlier cooperation.”

  “Maybe Mrs. Balaban will help,” Ivy said.

  “Because of Harrow’s purportedly kind treatment of Felix at Dannemora?” said Landau.

  “Exactly.”

  “Was that your idea or his?” said Landau.

  “Mine,” said Ivy. “I haven’t discussed any of this with him.”

  Landau’s eyebrows—white, neatly trimmed and shaped—rose. “Harrow doesn’t know of your attempt to reopen his case?”

  “No.

  “And never proposed a theory about who the masked robber might be—some old enemy, perhaps?”

  “I told you—we never discussed this.”

  “Do you have any such theory of your own?”

  “No.”

  Landau was silent. All the lights on his phone were blinking. A foghorn hooted in the distance.

  “What is your interest in this?” he said.

  “My interest in an innocent man rotting in jail?” Ivy said.

  “They’re not in short supply,” Landau said. “Why this particular man?”

  What the hell was she doing? That question again, struggling to be born, quickly smothered. “It’s a series of accidents,” Ivy said.

  “How so?” said Landau. That soft, musical voice made going on, expanding your answers, very easy, must have trapped a lot of people. But then there was the disharmony of his surprising eyes: not antagonistic—nothing personal—just not friendly. He’d probably given Barbra Streisand the same look.

  “Harrow came to the writing class,” Ivy said, “encouraged, I guess, by Felix. A lot of the writing I’ve seen at Dannemora is pretty good, but Harrow is on another level.”

  “Do you mean a professional level?”

  “I’m not really qualified to judge that, but yes,” Ivy said. “He may have a huge talent.” The assistant’s pen made its quiet scratching sound, like some tiny digging creature. “In my opinion,” Ivy added. “It got me wondering.”

  “Wondering what?”

  About him. The true answer, but that might be open to misleading interpretation. “It’s hard to put into words,” she said.

  “But wouldn’t that be your strength?” said Landau.

  That stung, despite his gentle voice.

  “The jury, Mr. Landau, is still out on that,” Ivy said. His eyes changed slightly; maybe not less unfriendly, but now more attentive, as though something interesting was going on at last. “But how’s this?” Ivy said. “I wanted to see where that ability was coming from.”

  “To match the writing to the man?” said Landau.

  “Yes.”

  “Perfectly understandable,” Landau said. “How did you go about it?”

  “First I looked at Harrow’s jacket,” Ivy said. “That’s the—”

  He held up his hand, familiar with the term.

  “Then I poked around places upstate where he’d lived and where the crime took place. It never occurred to me that he might be innocent. That’s the accidental part.”

  “What was the attitude of the people up there?”

  “In what way?”

  “Were they cooperative?”

  “Yes.”

  “They responded to this scenario—matching the writing to the man?”

  “Not exactly,” Ivy said. “Somewhere along the way, this idea of maybe turning the whole story into a novel came up. I went with that.”

  Landau smiled; a smile of genuine amusement, although Ivy wasn’t clear on what was funny. And—another surprise: the smile spread to his eyes, no longer quite so unfriendly.

  “So your whole involvement with the writing program—how shall I put it—remained in the background?”

  “It would have been confusing.”

  “Indeed,” said Landau. He glanced at his phone. “I’ll look into this, Ms. Seidel.”

  “You will? So you agree?”

  “About what?”

  “The tapes.”

  “I’ll return them when we have copies,” Landau said.

  “But you agree about what they show?”

  “You’ll be hearing from me,” he said.

  “The discrepancy, I mean, between—”

  “Soon,” he said, and reached for his phone.

  “Thanks, Mr. Landau,” Ivy said, rising. “Thanks a lot. As for payment—”

  He held up his hand again. The assistant came to the end of a sentence, made a period.

  Ivy pulled a double shift. Highlights: One, the new cook lasted twenty minutes. Two, an inspector—tipped off by a vengeful Chen-Li, according to Bruce—discovered rat droppings under the Friolater, and demanded expensive changes. Three, Bruce decided it was a conspiracy and began an investigation in search of the traitor. Four, he settled on a suspect.

  “I am not knowing this word traitor,” said Dragan.

  “The rat fink who planted the rat shit,” Bruce said. “Account for your whereabouts between four and six this morning.”

  “The accountant?” Dragan said. “Mr. Spiegel?” His English was failing him fast.

  “Leave Spiegel out of this, buddy boy,” Bruce said, backing Dragan against the jukebox. “He’s a red herring.”

  “Herring?” said Dragan, who looked like he might start crying. “But is not even on the menu. How could these rats—”

  Five, Ivy stepped in.

  She went home after two, climbed the stairs to her apartment, flopped on her bed. The message light was blinking. She hit the button. Danny.

  “Hi. How does weekend in Bermuda sound? Give me a call.” Pause. “Anytime.”

  Weekend in Bermuda. Ivy closed her eyes. Pink sands, mopeds, civility. Sounded good, although maybe not for a whole weekend. She fell asleep in a minute or two—fully clothed, teeth unbrushed, not like her at all—with gentle surf sounds rising in her mind.

  The phone rang. Ivy fumbled around for it, a dream involving octopi breaking up in her mind and fading fast.

  Danny? What was her answer going to be? The caller ID read: unknown name unknown number. Not Danny. Dragan? Had Bruce done something really horrible, like calling the INS? Ivy picked up.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “I liked your story.”

  Not Dragan, but Harrow. Ivy sat right up, awakening fast in her dark little room.

  “Are you calling collect?” she said; an unmediated thought that came blurting out.

  “That wouldn’t be polite,” he said.

  “It’s just that I thought…” Better left unmentioned.

  He waited. Ivy heard no sounds on his end. He’d be in his cell now, another man sleeping right above or below, in Felix’s old bed.

  “I’d have accepted the charges,” Ivy said.

  “Very generous,” Harrow said. “But we’re off-peak right now. This is free.” His voice was low and quiet, but not like he was trying to keep from being heard, more just the way you talk on the phone late at night.

  “Which bunk are you on?” Ivy said.

  “Bottom.”

  “Is that the preferred one?”

  “I’ll take a poll in the morning,” Harrow said.

  Ivy laughed.

  “I assume you’re not in a bunk-bed situation,” Harrow said.

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s your bed like?”

  “Just a bed,” Ivy said.

  “What size?”

  “Double.”

  “That’s smaller than queen, right?”

  “Yes,” Ivy said. “It goes double, queen, king.”

  “Like the three bears,” Harrow said.

  Ivy laughed again. “I saw a bear—a real bear—the other day,” she said.
“Not far from you, in the woods.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “Not for the right reason, not at first,” Ivy said. “It was eating a deer. I thought it was two men.”

  “One cannibalizing the other?” Harrow said.

  “Yes.”

  Silence: but of the kind that came with one of those very good phone connections; a silence that shrank the separating distance down to zero, and put the other person right there.

  “‘Caveman’ could use something like that,” Harrow said.

  Sitting up, and now—despite her long day and how late it was—wide-awake, heart beating fast and light, like it was feeding on helium. “Maybe in the scene where Vladek winds up in the alley,” Ivy said.

  “Works for me,” said Harrow.

  Ivy had a pad and pencil on the bedside table. She switched on the lamp, scrawled: bear deer—alley.

  “Writing it down?” Harrow said.

  “I forget things that come to me in the night,” Ivy said. “Thoughts,” she added.

  “Don’t worry,” Harrow said. “I’ll remember. And after that he could call his mom.”

  A great idea: Ivy wrote that down, too. She turned off the light. “Can I ask you a question?” she said.

  “That’s your conversational style, far as I can make out.”

  “It is?” Ivy said. And then she was laughing again; both of them, actually, Harrow very softly.

  “But I’m guessing writers have to be curious,” he said. “So ask.”

  “Okay,” Ivy said. “What went on in your mind just before you came up with that idea for the bear?”

  “Nothing,” Harrow said.

  “No thoughts at all?” Ivy said. “No images or memories?”

  “Nope.”

  “Not even a fragment?”

  “Now you’re badgering the witness,” Harrow said.

  When Ivy was really enjoying herself—this went way back—she liked to sit Indian-style, wriggling into a comfortable position. She was sitting like that now.

  “It’s just such a good idea,” she said. “How it works with the whole Neanderthal theme.”

  “You’re going to try it?”

  “First thing in the morning,” Ivy said.

  “It’s almost morning now,” said Harrow.

  “Oh no,” Ivy said. “Morning’s still a long way off.”

  “Let me know how it turns out,” Harrow said.

  “Sure,” Ivy said. “Can…can I call you?”

  Harrow laughed, that soft little laugh. Unlike so many other laughs that were out there, this one had no meanness in it; at least that was how Ivy heard it. “Next class will be fine,” he said.

  “You’re giving me a deadline?” Ivy said.

  “Why not?” Harrow said. “It must be nice.”

  “What?”

  “Having deadlines.”

  Another silence. From somewhere in the background on his end came a faint metallic clang.

  “You didn’t finish telling me about your bed,” Harrow said.

  “A double,” Ivy said. “Like I said.”

  “Describe it.”

  “It’s a bit embarrassing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve had this bed since I was little. The headboard’s painted with toys—tricycle, dollhouse, red wagon, that kind of thing.”

  “You’ve got a headboard?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “How about your room?” he said.

  “Describe it, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well,” she said. “It’s very small.” She paused. At that moment, Ivy knew they were having the same thought: Couldn’t be smaller than his.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “I have a table that I use for a desk and for eating, plus there’s a little counter with an icebox underneath and an oven beside it.”

  “What’s on the walls?” Harrow said.

  Ivy found herself on her feet, touring her own place. “Over here I framed a piece of stained glass from a garage sale. On this wall are some photos I took of commercial fishermen in New Bedford. And here’s a charcoal sketch of me that a friend did.”

  “A boyfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he there right now?”

  “He’s in the past,” Ivy said.

  Silence.

  “Are you alone?”

  “Of course.”

  Harrow took a deep breath, like he was relaxing. “What are you wearing in the picture?”

  “It’s from the neck up,” Ivy said.

  A little silence. “What’s out the window?” he said.

  “Not much,” said Ivy. “But there’s an incredible view from the roof.”

  “How do you get up there?” Harrow said.

  She went through the whole thing—standing on the table, trapdoor, folding ladder.

  “Feel like doing it now?” Harrow said.

  Ivy climbed up to the roof.

  “What do you see?” he said.

  “Manhattan.”

  “Go on.”

  The truth was that the haze had been thickening the whole day and now things were foggy, those vertical light grids dim, all the towers vague shadows that might not even have been there. Almost nothing to see, plus the air felt raw and unpleasant. But Ivy didn’t want to relay that, so she described the view as she’d last seen it from here, that warm September night before Joel left for L.A., the night she first thought of “Caveman.”

  “The skyline’s all lit up,” she said. “Huge and vulnerable at the same time, like it’s not really solid, if that makes sense.”

  Silence.

  “I hear a foghorn,” Harrow said. “Is it foggy?”

  “A little.”

  After that, neither of them spoke for a while. To her right, Ivy could see something happening on the Brooklyn Bridge, blue police lights flashing.

  “Why did you plead guilty?” she said.

  “How do you know a thing like that?” Harrow said.

  “I read your jacket.”

  The phone connection changed: all at once Harrow sounded farther away. “Uh-uh,” he said. “Wouldn’t be in the jacket, not the plea.”

  “I also did a little poking around,” Ivy said.

  “Where?”

  “Up north. The casino and West Raquette.”

  “Why?”

  “Hard to explain,” Ivy said. “That story of the ice storm got me thinking.”

  “How?”

  “I wondered if Ferdie was a real character, for example,” Ivy said. “Turns out he is.”

  Pause. “You talked to Ferdie Gagnon?”

  “I did.”

  “Then you know it was all on tape,” Harrow said, his voice fading a little more. “I had no choice.”

  “But I’ve seen other tape,” Ivy said, “tape of you playing football.”

  “Football?”

  “For West Raquette High on Thanksgiving Day.”

  “So?”

  “Those aren’t the same two people running.”

  Silence.

  “They’re not, are they?” Ivy said.

  “Got to go,” said Harrow, his voice now faint, no louder than the siren sounds drifting all the way from the bridge.

  “But you weren’t even there,” Ivy said. “I just don’t understand.”

  More silence.

  “Are you still protecting Betty Ann?”

  Click.

  Nineteen

  Ivy awoke feeling refreshed, more refreshed than after any sleep she could remember in a long time. She stretched luxuriously—still in her clothes? uh-oh—and glanced at the bedside clock, expecting some number like eleven or even later.

  Seven-nineteen. Seven-nineteen? She actually checked the little red P.M. light. Off. Seven-nineteen A.M. Ivy had read of hyperachievers who needed only three or four hours’ sleep to go out there and throttle the competition; now, for one morning at least, she also knew how they felt: great.

  Ivy go
t up, quick and eager like a kid, went into the bathroom, checked herself in the mirror. Hadn’t looked this good in months. What was going on? She brushed her teeth; out of nowhere, her mind un-spooled a vignette of Harrow washing himself in the shower behind her, whistling away.

  Ivy got in the shower, alone, of course, although his imaginary presence lingered for a while. The water, hot for once and much more forceful than usual, drummed on her head, and aroused that tiny part of the brain—maybe really tiny in her case, which was her biggest fear—where inspiration happened, where the talent lay, the gift. In seconds, the whole Vladek encounter with the bear that might not be a bear and the deer that might not be a deer shaped itself, and what was more, bent the story in other unexpected places. Because, yes! The whole point of the story—at last she understood it!—was this Neanderthaly alien turning out to be the most civilized man of all.

  The next thing Ivy knew, she was at the table, laptop open, damp hair wrapped in a towel, bare feet curled on the cold floor. She wrote up the changes. It was that easy, her mind in total control of the material, her fingers making small adjustments on the keyboard, the way a bricklayer tap-taps the last few bricks in place.

  She called The New Yorker main number, asked for Whit, got put right through.

  “Ivy?” He sounded wary.

  “Don’t worry,” Ivy said. “I have no problem with the rejection.”

  “I like the story,” Whit said. “But the demands on our space are—”

  “It’s all right,” Ivy said. “The story wasn’t good enough. The thing is—following someone’s suggestion, actually—I’ve made some changes that really imp—that I’d like you to look at. I know this is kind of crazy, but—”

  “It’s a crazy business,” Whit said. “Or should be. Send it over.”

  “Really?” Whit was turning out to be a surprise, maybe one of those people whose best side showed at work; and worst side came out in bars—like so many she’d seen.

  “But you’ll have to be patient,” he said. “I’m swamped right now.”

  “Take all the time in the world,” said Ivy, a crazy remark, but now she’d learned it was a crazy business—at least in ideal form—so maybe she belonged.

  Ivy ran a brush through her hair, packed the new “Caveman” in an envelope, went downstairs. The fog had cleared: a cold day, cold as winter, with still air and a bright silver sky. All very energizing, and she was jazzed to begin with.