Three A.M.

by Steven John

  She leaned back between the bars, her eyes again narrowed and lips pressed together. She stared right into my eyes. Then she lifted her head very slightly and turned it left, her eyes looking in the same direction. As if at my apartment. She turned back to me and almost imperceptibly shook her head once from left to right, and then was still.

  I was stunned. Frozen. I dropped my cigarette and looked up through the fog at the windows of my home. I could barely make them out. Unconsciously, I turned around and took one faltering step. I looked back at the old woman. Her face stayed placid, but her eyes widened ever so slightly and she nodded. I was still for a moment, numb, and then I nodded back and started walking away. I took a few slow steps, and when I looked back at the window, she was gone. Just me and the haze and the pale yellow light receding as I walked ever faster away.

  * * *

  I kicked the outer door to Heller’s building open, walked inside, and roughly shut it behind me. “Be here, man! Be here,” I muttered over and over as I jogged up the steps to his apartment. I raised a fist to hammer at the door but instead knocked more lightly, three times, with my knuckles. I waited. Footsteps.

  “What—who’s there?”

  “It’s Tom. Tom Vale.”

  I heard him begin to fidget with the locks, and then the door swung open. I stepped in. He didn’t look so bad. Blue jeans and a ratty brown sweater and no shoes or socks, but he looked better than last time. And I couldn’t quite tell, but I thought the look on his face showed happiness to see me.

  “Jesus, man. What the fuck happened to you?”

  “What?”

  He pointed to my face.

  “Oh … yeah. It’s kind of a long story. But it involves a girl’s knee right at the end of it. I haven’t even looked in a mirror yet, actually.”

  “You sure you want to?”

  I nodded.

  “Help yourself.” He gestured vaguely over his shoulder. “I’ll pour some booze, and you can shake me down for cash. Which I don’t have, by the way.”

  I had stepped into the bathroom. “Debt’s off, kid. Fuck it,” I called over my shoulder as I flipped on the light switch. Harsh halogen light washed my skin a pale greenish white. The single bulb hummed above me. My eye looked like absolute shit. Black, gray, and blue around the socket and already inflated with blood and whatever other humors had seeped in. The right side of my face down to below my cheekbone was purple, blue, and red. I moved my jaw from side to side, and it ached. I did it more. Couldn’t help it for a second.

  Then I realized Heller was standing in the doorway. He held two glasses in his hands. Real glasses, not a mug or plastic cup or anything. He looked relieved, confused, and contrite all at once.

  “The debt’s off?” he asked, barely above a whisper.

  “Yeah. I don’t want to take your money, Heller. Keep it. Buy tapes and lots of liquor, and I’ll stop by and drink it without feeling too guilty.”

  He smiled a bit and nodded, stepping back from the doorway and walking into his living room. I pulled a soiled rag from off a nail in the wall and soaked it in cool water. Pain ripped through my skull each time I dabbed at my eye or cheek, but I had to clean any lesions. Partially satisfied, I resoaked the rag and pressed it to my face, walking out of the bathroom. Heller was on his knees by the tape player, sorting through some tapes. He looked up, and then down at a glass on the table. He pushed it toward me. Ice cubes clicked in the amber liquid.

  “What’s this?” I asked as I picked it up and held it to my nose.

  “Bourbon,” he said, returning to his stack of cassettes. I inhaled deeply. Been a while since I had bourbon—the first sip was a warm, welcome change from the usual. I sat down on the couch.

  “So who’s this girl that clocked you?”

  “It’s a fucking mess, kid. I honestly don’t want to say anything about her. For your sake. I don’t know, maybe I’m all wrong about things, maybe I’m in way over my head. Could be nothing. I don’t know, but frankly—” I took a long sip and trailed off. He looked up. “—I didn’t feel safe going into my own home this afternoon, Heller. I came here. Where the hell else have I got to go in this fucking city? I won’t stay long. I just need to wait it out a bit.”

  “No problem. I’d just be sitting here listening to music and drinking anyway. Maybe from a mug.”

  I gave a small laugh. He began to put a tape in the player. “Are you in the mood to listen?” he asked, pausing with the cassette raised in his hand.

  “Sure. Why not.”

  He pressed the tape in and hit play. The warm crackle of an overplayed album filled the room.

  “What are we listening to?”

  “Beethoven. The Ninth.”

  Then the music started. Christ, I recognized it. “I know this music,” I whispered. He looked up at me, smiled, and raised his glass slightly. He took a sip and looked back down. The song drifted from the single speaker across the years, through the mist and sickness, and I closed my eyes. They were already filling with tears. Welling from my one good eye and trickling painfully from the damaged other, teardrops streaked down my face and I let them.

  My father used to play this record. I remembered every rising swell, every melancholy fall, the sweeping strings and thundering bass. Pure wonder crackling through; Heller must have listened to this tape a thousand times.

  It went on. Oh Jesus Christ was it ever beautiful.

  The first movement ended and in the crackling pause, I opened my eyes and looked at Heller. He was staring right at me. He didn’t look away when our eyes met. He didn’t blink. Then the next song started and finally he looked off, toward his window. “I’ll bet you know this one too. All of it, I bet.”

  He was right. And it was amazing to hear. How many years had I deprived myself of this simple pleasure? Simple? Maybe not. Memories—mostly visions—swam behind my eyes as each note played. Little glimpses of times gone by and suppressed. Green grass and smiling faces and auburn sunsets and naked pink flesh and snow falling on leafless trees and my hands gripping steering wheels and movie posters and city skylines at night and all of it. There, but hidden and now creeping back to the surface. It was amazing. It was too much.

  “Turn it off, okay?” I kept my eyes closed tightly, but I heard him shuffling and then, abruptly, the room was silent.

  I said nothing for a long time. Heller didn’t stir. Once I knew they were dry, I opened my eyes and blinked.

  “That was good to hear. I … thanks for playing that.”

  “Anytime.”

  “I think I could take even more of it next time too. I think maybe I’ve been a goddamn idiot for the past decade and a half, shunning music.”

  “It helps me hold on. Maybe it helps you let go. I don’t know. I just like listening to it. It confuses me—fascinates me that people ever bothered to make such beautiful things.”

  I drained my liquor and he rose and walked to the kitchen. Wordlessly he refilled my glass and then his own.

  “You read much?”

  “Never. Not unless it’s for work. Even then pretty much no. Never. You?”

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I read a lot. All the time. I guess maybe if I remembered more from before it got like this, I wouldn’t. I think I wouldn’t be able to take it knowing full well how fucked we’d all gotten. Knowing full well what was taken away. I guess for me when I go through books written before, it’s like reading something about another world, huh? A book of fantasy.”

  “What—” I took in a breath. “—what’s your first name, Heller?”

  He raised his head sharply, then slowly turned it to look at me. His face went from mildly insulted to quietly amused.

  “You really never asked me that, did you? You don’t know. It’s Tom, Tom. I’m Thomas Heller.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “No shit.” I said quietly, “Sorry I never asked before, Tom. Kind of fucked up, I guess.”

  “Yeah, well—just stick with Heller. It’ll be strange for me if
you change it up now.”

  I nodded. He swirled the whiskey in his glass and looked out the window. It was black gray now. Night had fallen. I lit a cigarette and took a long, deep drag. The smoke tickled the back of my throat, and I held it in for a second and then exhaled through my nose. Past the thin trail of blue smoke, I saw Heller’s pale face framed by the slate sky beyond the glass. Thomas Heller. Just a kid and, I realized with gratitude and sadness, the only person left I could call a friend. Gratitude because he’d put up with my asshole self for what—nearly two years? Sadness for him, not for me. This was the best he’d ever know. An old drunken jerkoff like me and music made long before his birth.

  “I’d better get going.” I said, rising.

  “Is it safe for you to go home? I won’t pry—it’s not my business … not my problem, but you can stay here for all I care.”

  “I appreciate that. But if I’ve got trouble to deal with, it might as well be now while it’s fresh. Thanks for the rag and the booze,” I said, placing the damp cloth and glass on the dark wood of his scratched, stained old coffee table. It must have been a beautiful piece once.

  “I hate to ask, but … could you bring my Chopin back sometime? Soon? I’ve been missing it. And it’s only been a day or two. Pathetic, huh?”

  “No … that makes sense to me. I’ll bring it tomorrow night, in fact.”

  He nodded, and we said nothing else as I let myself out and started down the stairs.

  The fog was thick and cold. My skin grew damp and my hair wet after just a few minutes of walking down his street. One two three steps and an orb post … one two three steps and another. They led me along until I turned down an alley and made my way out onto windblown Eighth Ave.

  * * *

  I had to see Eddie. Aside from Tom Heller, he was the only one not mixed up in the parts of my life that were falling apart. I was sure he was clean. I was sure he was just as embroiled in it as me, and maybe talking to Eddie some would make a few things click together. For both of us.

  My right eye was still badly swollen, but I could see well enough, and it hurt only if I touched it or when I bent over and blood rushed to my head. Not pretty, though.

  I went to my office and lost several of my little points passing people in the halls. They gawked at my battered face and it pissed me off. It bothered me because one, hey, go fuck yourself, but two, because if anyone was asking questions, it would be a lot easier to remember some guy with a bruised-up face than it would some guy in his forties wearing a brown jacket.

  I got into my office and shut the door behind me. After sitting quietly for a minute to make sure I’d be left alone, I pulled out my old phone. I plugged it in and dialed Eddie. He answered on the second ring.

  “Eddie, it’s Tom Vale.”

  “Thomas! Where are you? Can you—? I’m leaving here soon. Can you come by?” He was talking fast, his voice tempered by stress and fear.

  “Sure, I suppose. Any people there with you, though?”

  “What? None. No one; I’m alone.”

  Sounded true. I told him I’d be there in half an hour and left immediately, planning to show up in ten minutes. I went downstairs and hustled through the bright gray haze as fast as I could without breaking into a run. In the back of my mind, I knew I could have some serious trouble in the next few minutes. But without answers, I could get caught with my pants around my ankles. It was worth the risk.

  When I got to his building, I paused long enough for one deep breath and went in. The doors were never locked during business hours, which was good—if Eddie was lying to me and wasn’t alone, at least I could make my entrance unannounced. He had been telling the truth, though. It was just him. And really just him: the place was empty. File cabinets with their drawers removed, bare shelves, empty closets; it was just Eddie sitting on a wooden chair in a big, vacant room that had once held his life’s work.

  “Tom! Oh God, I’m glad to see you!” And he looked it. Relief washed across his face. It almost made me sick how happy he seemed. But then: “What happened to your face!”

  “Nothing. Well, something, but tell me about you first.”

  He shook his head and studied my bruised cheek like some grandmother, clucking his tongue softly. Then, straightening up and turning to face the empty warehouse, he said with bright sarcasm, “Well, the police are back! They came by late last night. Poked around for a while, took pictures, and then left. Then the phone rang this morning—and it was so strange because for a few weeks now, you’ve been really the only one who calls—and they asked me if they could come by and take some evidence … evidence, they called it. Ha! I said they were a month late for that, but sure, come on by, and not thirty minutes later, six or seven of them showed up.” He walked around the large room, pointing here and there as he spoke. “They had these big plastic … bins, I guess you’d say, with wheels on them, and they gathered everything that was left. All of it. Said they needed it all and would get it all back to me but that if the case were to be open, they had to have it. What could I say? I hope you don’t feel like I went behind your back, Thomas,” he said, turning to look at me and sounding so damn sincere.

  “Of course not. What were you supposed to do, anyway? They don’t like to hear no these days.”

  “When did they ever?” He shook his head. “You know what kills me, though? If it were the old days, I would just call up the insurance company and say, ‘Hi! This is Edward Vessel and I’ve been robbed poor and then picked clean and what’s my policy cover?’ Now? I’m just … fucked, Tom.” He locked his fingers behind his head and twisted from side to side at the waist. “I just wanted to help people out and get by. Now everyone who put their trust in me is lost. Now I don’t have a pot to piss in.”

  I nodded even though he wasn’t looking at me. He was talking mostly to himself, anyway. I walked around a bit, pretending to study the place, but there was nothing to see: it was surgically cleaned out.

  Eddie wheeled suddenly to face me. “They asked a lot of questions about you too. They wanted to know all about you, Tom.”

  “Last night or today?”

  “Last night, mostly. In fact, only last night, come to think of it.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “What? Well, I just … told them about you. About how I met you through that woman—what was her name? Susan something…” Susan Brewer. Her husband had been cheating on her, and she’d hired me to prove it and then scare the shit out of him. Which I did in an alley one night. She and her deadbeat man stored their family albums with Eddie. Or they had, at least. He took a few steps toward me, stroking his chin absentmindedly. “Susan Whatever, and how after the cops gave up on me the first time, I remembered you and called you and all. I told it just like it happened.”

  “Did you tell them you came to my house?”

  “I … did. Yes, I told one of them that. One of them was asking all the questions.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Look like? I … He was pretty tall—taller than me, anyway … um … He had dark eyes. Penetrating eyes, you know? I could hardly look at him. His skin was pretty dark too. I don’t know what to tell you—he was just some guy. No uniform, though. He was just wearing a suit.”

  “Okay.” I nodded and walked over to a couple of chairs near the far wall. I sat in one and Eddie dutifully sat down in the other. I leaned forward and placed my elbows on my knees, intertwining my fingers. My head down, eyes on the floor, I said, “Ed, I’d like to see that note you have with my address written on it.”

  He opened his mouth to speak but said nothing, and then rose and walked toward the adjoining office. He cast a sidelong glance at me as he passed through the doorway, his brow knit with concern. I lightly punched one palm and then the other as sounds of his rummaging came from the next room.

  Then Eddie walked back in and toward me, his right hand held at chest level, a folded piece of paper in his fingers. He handed the note to me and I unfolded it and
read it again. My street, my building number, signed T. Vale. Was that my handwriting? For the life of me, I couldn’t tell. It looked right but felt wrong. Even in the depths of a binge—especially in the depths of a binge—why would I have given this to Eddie? Eyes still on the note, I asked, “When did I give this to you?”

  “You didn’t, exactly. It came in through the mail slot. You don’t—”

  I looked up at him, cut him off. “There are no numbers on my apartment door. How did you know which unit to find me in?”

  “You … Thomas, really! You telephoned me. Last door on the left, you said.”

  “I don’t remember calling you. I don’t…” I trailed off, my mind starting to race. Then I glanced back up at him. “Did I sound drunk?”

  “Not at all. I remember it well—so few people call me and it’s you half the time, anyway, like I said. The occasional angry customer, but so few people even have telephones anymore, they usually just show up.” He started in talking about them, but I persisted.

  “You remember it well? What did I say?”

  “You told me to come over in the morning, told me last door on the left.… That was all, really.”

  “Someone wanted you out of here. Needed to be sure you were gone for a while.”

  “You mean—?”

  “I didn’t call you, Eddie. I don’t even have a phone in my home, and I wouldn’t have been drunk in my office. Plus you say I sounded fine.”

  “You did.” He nodded firmly and sat back down beside me.

  “And it was definitely me? Or sounded like me, at least?”

  “I mean, my phone is old, sure, but yes—it sounded just like you.”

  I rose, pocketing the piece of paper. Pacing, I looked for any clues, anything left behind. The place was barren—they had been thorough, whoever they were. I was at a loss for the moment. But at least something had happened; there had been a big change in this Eddie situation, and with change comes either answers or trouble. Usually both. This time both for sure.