The City When It Rains

by Thomas H. Cook

  Edgar nodded wearily. “I wish I could have been more help.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s you I worry about,” Edgar said.

  “I’ll find a way,” Corman assured him.

  Edgar pulled himself to his feet. “As always,” he said. “Whatever I can do, I’ll do.”

  Corman offered him a consoling smile. “I know.”

  They walked outside and stood for a moment in the doorway.

  “At least let me give you a ride home,” Edgar said after a moment.

  “All right, thanks.”

  The ride was very short, and at the end of it Edgar suddenly draped his arm around Corman’s shoulders. “Thanks for listening to my bullshit, anyway,” he said. “I mean, about Patty.”

  Corman nodded.

  Edgar’s face softened suddenly. “I really feel like I have a brother, someone at my side, you know? I hope you can feel that way, too.”

  Corman smiled thinly then realized that he had never in his life felt more entirely alone. “Absolutely,” he said.

  As he stepped off the elevator, Corman noticed Mr. Ingersoll standing at his door, quietly reading a piece of paper someone had taped to it.

  “Oh, sorry,” Ingersoll said quickly, when he caught Corman in his eye. “I wasn’t meaning to …”

  “What is it?”

  “Looks like an eviction notice,” Ingersoll said. “From Trang. The asshole.”

  Corman began to read the notice.

  “Slope-headed bastard,” Ingersoll hissed. “Ever notice his teeth? Like they’ve been filed down or something.” He shook his head. “Slope-headed bastard. Some right he’s got. How long’s he in this country? Two years? Three? Five at the most? What right’s he got to …”

  “It says I have ten days,” Corman said.

  Ingersoll looked at him sadly. “To show cause, right? To show cause why they shouldn’t kick you out?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ingersoll stared at the notice sourly. “Back when, in the old days, the Depression, they used to try to kick people out, put their furniture on the streets. But it wasn’t that easy. They had hell to pay then. You took your life in your hands, you fucked with people’s homes.”

  “Times have changed,” Corman said. He pulled the notice from the door and waved it in the air. “Do you have any idea when they put this up?”

  “I saw the little slope-headed bastard prowling around,” Ingersoll said. “Maybe around eight, something like that.”

  “Around eight,” Corman repeated to himself, hoping Lucy hadn’t seen it.

  “Some right, he’s got,” Ingersoll said irritably. “Did he build the bridges, that little gook? The buildings? The goddamn skyscrapers? Did he build them?” He waved his hand. “He was wading through a rice paddy when we built this city.” His lips curled downward bitterly. “New York, New York,” he sang coldly. “What a wonderful town.”

  Lucy and Victor were sitting in front of the television, polishing off a bowl of popcorn, when Corman walked in.

  “Uncle Victor said I could have butter,” Lucy told him.

  “Gives it flavor,” Victor said. He looked at Corman pointedly, all but plastered the eviction notice to his face. “I hope everything is all right,” he said.

  “Everything’s fine,” Corman said crisply. He could feel the paper beneath his arm, hanging there, a strange crinkly growth. He quickly stepped over behind the sofa and touched Lucy’s hair. “What are you watching?”

  “Some movie about a stolen bird,” Lucy said. She looked over at him. “We had Japanese food.”

  Victor laughed. “She’s a real sushi expert now.”

  “Then we saw a show,” Lucy said.

  “Which one?” Corman asked.

  “Cats. It was pretty good. But there wasn’t much of a story.”

  Victor grinned happily. “Lively, though.” His eyes swept back toward the television.

  Corman glanced at the screen. It was a colorized version of TheMaltese Falcon. Humphrey Bogart was talking out of the side of his mouth to a bemused and unflappable Sydney Greenstreet. Both of them looked as if their faces were covered with pink icing.

  “It’s about your bedtime, isn’t it?” Corman said to Lucy.

  “It’s almost over,” Lucy protested. “Can I just see the end?”

  “Okay,” Corman said. He looked at Victor and forced a smile.“You want to stay and see the end, too?”

  “Sure, why not?” Victor said. He put his arm around Lucy’s shoulder and squeezed. “Should I see the end of it with you?”

  “If you want to,” Lucy said with a shrug, her eyes fixed on the screen again.

  “Maybe I will, too,” Corman said wearily. He pulled a chair over from the dining table, sat down, and watched the movie as if he were actually interested in it. For a time, he was able to follow the action, but his mind began to drift, and soon everything seemed strangely funny, Trang’s teeth, Edgar’s affair, the endlessly falling rain, absolutely everything, as if it were all one big joke that thundered through space, raising the rooftops. Then suddenly, he thought of Sarah Rosen, saw her face amid the throng, staring vacantly and chewing her lip as the punchline finally came home.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  HE WOKE UP sweating, damp sheets knotted around his waist, his hands cold, clammy and trembling slightly, as if he had spent the night cold turkey. He stood up and walked to the bathroom, avoiding his own face in the mirror as he washed himself and brushed his teeth.

  When he’d finished, he awakened Lucy but hardly spoke to her as she ate her breakfast at the small folding card table that served as the apartment’s dining room.

  On the street, he maintained the same silence, marching her to school at a rapid pace, an irritable guard escorting a prisoner.

  She gave him a quick kiss at the school gate, then hurried away.

  It was still early, so he walked to Eighth Avenue, ordered a coffee at a small diner there, lit a cigarette and reconsidered what Scarelli had told him several days before: his only hope was a mystery.

  It was raining steadily again when he finally finished the last of his coffee and walked outside. The traffic on the avenue was barely moving, the cars inching forward heavily, as if continually blown back by the gusting winds. To get out of it, he retreated under a wildly flapping canopy and waited for the squall to pass, his eyes sweeping up the street while he calculated what he could save, along with what, in order to do that, he would have to lose. Everything passed through his mind, some things quickly, others suspended for a great while, Lucy more than any other, but after her, Sarah Rosen and the mystery. He saw her suddenly from a different angle, one that hadn’t been captured in any of his photographs, and in which it was hard for him to figure out his own exact position. It was as if he were lying near her on the wet pavement, her face lifted toward him, poised on its shattered chin. The dead eyes stared directly into his, the torn hand growing large in the foreground as it reached across the slick paving stones to where his own eyes seemed to look back at her—staring, he realized with a sudden chill, from behind the rain-streaked, sightless pupils of the doll.

  It was nearly ten o’clock when he got off the Number 1 at the 116th Street stop, then pressed through the crowds of students who were hurrying down Columbia Walk toward their classes. He stopped at the entrance to Low Library without really knowing why, then glanced down the stairs and across the esplanade that swept toward Butler Library. The rain had left small puddles in the brown grass, and as his eyes moved from one to another in that quick, darting motion Lucy had noticed and called “connecting the dots,” he thought of the old days again, when he and Julian had vied for Lexie like two contending swains. They seemed like pages from a book he’d liked once, but no more, had no desire to read again.

  He turned quickly, walked inside, then down a corridor to a room marked RECORDS. “I’m trying to get a little information,” he said to the woman he found behind a large wo
oden counter.

  She looked up from a stack of computer sheets. She wore glasses with pink tinted lenses, a style he’d even noticed on a few shooters in recent weeks.

  “About a former student,” he added. “She graduated in 1988.”

  “What do you need to know?”

  “Her major. Maybe get a look at her transcript. Anything might help.”

  “Some things require written requests,” the woman told him.

  “Just give me the stuff that doesn’t.”

  The woman snapped the sharpened pencil from her ear. “What’s the name?”

  “Rosen. Sarah Judith Rosen.”

  The woman wrote it down, disappeared into another room, and reappeared with a sheet of yellow legal-sized paper.

  “That’s all I can give without some other kind of authorization,” she said. “It’s not very much.”

  Corman took the paper. “Thanks,” he said as he began to read it.

  It told him even less than he’d expected, certainly not enough to put a charge in Willie Scarelli. Rosen had graduated in 1988, as he already knew. Aside from that, the paper gave him only one additional fact. She’d majored in English Literature.

  Corman looked up once he’d finished. “One more thing,” he said. “Do you know where I might find a professor in the Philosophy Department. His name is Peter Oppenheim.”

  She reached for a directory, flipped through the pages and glanced back up at him. “Jay Hall, 308,” she said.

  Oppenheim was a short, somewhat stocky man, balding as he neared forty, and he looked at Corman as if he were a workman who’d been summoned to repair something in the office, recaulk the windows, shore up the sagging floor.

  “Yes?” he said when he glimpsed Corman standing at the door.

  “I’m looking for Professor Oppenheim.”

  “I’m Professor Oppenheim.”

  Corman took a short, tentative step into the office and adopted the diffident, somewhat formal tone he remembered from graduate school. “I was wondering if I could have a word with you.”

  “About what?”

  “Sarah Rosen.”

  Oppenheim’s face betrayed nothing. “Are you with the police?”

  “No,” Corman answered immediately, then realized how odd the question was. “Have you talked to them?”

  “No,” Oppenheim said. “But I know what happened to Sarah, and I thought there might be questions about her death.”

  “From the police?”

  “The authorities,” Oppenheim said. “Whomever they might be.” He turned from his desk, as if to get a better view of Corman’s face. “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Corman. I’m a photographer.”

  “What did you have to do with Sarah?”

  “I was there after she … I’m a free-lance … I took some pictures.”

  “Pictures?”

  “I didn’t sell them,” Corman said. He took another small step into the office, noting the photograph of Einstein above Oppenheim’s desk. He remembered the ones he’d tacked to the wall of his own office—Shakespeare, Dante, other leading lights—and wondered whose face he’d hang now if he still had an office of his own. Lazar, perhaps. Lucy, without doubt.

  “Would you mind talking about her?” he asked tentatively.

  Oppenheim considered it a moment. “Have you talked to her father?”

  “No.”

  “He knows her best,” Oppenheim said a little stiffly.

  “I plan to see him when I can,” Corman said casually, as if it were just a matter of making an appointment. “But for now, I’d like to …”

  “Strange as it may seem,” Oppenheim said curtly, “I barely knew her.” He shrugged. “We were only married a few months. It was hardly a marriage at all.” He looked at Corman quizzically. “Has she been buried yet?”

  “Her father didn’t tell you?”

  Oppenheim shook his head, smiled bitterly. “Her father never told me anything.”

  “There was a service yesterday,” Corman said. “On the East Side.”

  Oppenheim nodded. “Did anyone show up?”

  “Dr. Rosen,” Corman said then added dryly, “Me.”

  “That’s what I would have expected,” Oppenheim said. “Knowing Dr. Rosen.” He indicated the chair in front of his desk. “Well, sit down,” he said. “I suppose I can give you a few minutes.”

  Corman took his seat, then listened as Oppenheim began immediately, without waiting for a question.

  “Sarah and I didn’t really choose each other,” he said. “That was Dr. Rosen’s choice. I didn’t realize that at the time. I’m not sure Sarah did, either. But, in any event, he introduced us when Sarah was a junior here at Columbia. He wanted her married before graduation. He told me as much several weeks later, when Sarah and I became engaged.”

  “Told you when to marry her?” Corman asked.

  “Well, let’s just say he made his preference quite clear,” Oppenheim said. “And I went along with it. So did Sarah.” He looked at Corman knowingly. “I hadn’t had a lot of experience, if you know what I mean. The marriage sounded good to me. Sarah was rather mysterious, difficult to know. Perhaps I found that somewhat alluring.” He sighed softly. “And she was young, and you know how it is, sometimes a man my age … he …”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Only a few months,” Oppenheim said. “After we lost the baby, she fell apart.”

  “She lost a baby?” Corman asked.

  “Well, not exactly lost,” Oppenheim said tensely. “Aborted.”

  “When was that?”

  “About the middle of her senior year.”

  “What happened?”

  “She was pregnant,” Oppenheim said, “and her doctor advised her that there was some risk involved, and after that, she decided that she’d rather not take that risk.”

  “He advised an abortion?”

  “A therapeutic abortion, yes,” Oppenheim said. “It was for her own safety. You can ask the doctor, if you like. Dr. Walter Owen, East Seventy-Sixth Street.”

  “What happened after the abortion?” Corman asked. “You said she fell apart.”

  “It was her last semester,” Oppenheim replied. “She had only a few courses to complete the degree, but I wasn’t sure she was going to make it. It was as if pieces of her mind were falling away. I’d come home and find her by the window, always by the window, looking out, like a cat.” He shrugged. “I tried to talk to her, but she didn’t really seem to be there.” He shook his head. “I knew she was in trouble, but I didn’t know how bad it was until Dr. Maitland called.”

  “Maitland?” Corman asked. “From the English Department?”

  “That’s right,” Oppenheim said. “You know him?”

  Corman nodded.

  “Well, Sarah had written a final examination for him,” Oppenheim said, “and he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. He said it was very strange, and that he didn’t know what to do about it.”

  “About what?”

  “About Sarah’s grade, her graduation. He didn’t want to stand in her way, cause her more strain. We met, all of us, Maitland, Dr. Rosen and myself. It was all very cordial. In the end Maitland agreed to accept the paper, and that was the end of it.”

  “And so she graduated?”

  “Yes,” Oppenheim said. “She was quite mad by then. You could tell that by what she’d written on the examination.” He looked at Corman pointedly. “Not of this world, I’ll tell you that, not of this world at all.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “No,” Oppenheim said. “Perhaps Dr. Maitland does. Would you like for me to check?”

  Corman shook his head. “No, that’s all right,” he said. “I’ll do it myself.”

  During the next few minutes Oppenheim moved on through his brief experience with Sarah Rosen, her deterioration and disappearance, and Dr. Rosen’s odd refusal to look for her, while Corman listened feverishly, prowling through Oppenheim’s wor
ds like a cat through the night, scratching for the mystery he could drop on Scarelli’s table like a dead mouse from a vulture’s beak.

  When he rose to leave, Oppenheim shook his hand and looked at him worriedly. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Corman drew his hand away, realizing that he’d begun to sweat again, as if boiling slowly just beneath the skin.

  “Perhaps you’re coming down with something,” Oppenheim added.

  Corman shook his head then darted away, glancing back down the corridor furtively, as if Oppenheim had discovered his nasty little secret, caught him sneaking out of some house of ill repute.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  CORMAN EASED HIMSELF down in the chair opposite Julian’s desk and waited while Julian finished up a phone call with one of his writers.

  “At the most four cities,” Julian said. “New York, of course. Boston, Washington. That’s … yes … yes. No, nothing on the West Coast. It’s between Baltimore and Philly. We may sneak Atlanta in, but nothing on the West Coast.” He listened for a moment, glancing at Corman. “I understand, Bryan. Yes. I understand.” A short, mocking laugh broke from him. “Promises were made? Really, Bryan, isn’t that from Death of a Salesman? Are you playing Willy Loman now?” He looked at Corman and winked. “What? What? Bryan. Bryan, listen. Bryan, when was the last time you couldn’t have Chateaubriand whenever you wanted it? In all honesty, Bryan, when was the last time?” He waited for an answer, then drew the phone from his ear, looked at it unbelievingly for a moment, then shifted his eyes over to Corman. “He hung up.”

  Corman said nothing.

  Julian shook his head and returned the phone to its cradle. “Everybody feels badly used,” he said. “That’s the poison in the air.” He glanced at the phone again, then returned to Corman. “Well, I hope you’re in better spirits than he was this morning.”

  Corman handed Julian a plain manila envelope. “Some pictures,” he said.

  “Great.” Julian took the pictures out and began to flip through them. He looked up when he’d finished. “What about text? What have you found out about the woman?”