Vigil for a Stranger

by Kitty Burns Florey

  I walked the criss-cross paths of the New Haven Green. Occasionally, there was a musician, a hot-dog stand, a balloon vendor. Teenagers carried huge blasting radios on their shoulders. There were construction noises from the old town hall and the library. Pigeons scattered when I approached them, then regrouped, their wings making papery sounds. People asked me for money—mostly young black men and old white women—and sometimes I gave them a quarter or two and sometimes I just shook my head. I walked briskly, thinking about what to cook for dinner, noticing the way the late afternoon sunlight turned the wet brown sidewalks to bronze. If I met someone I knew, I stopped to talk about the wonderful weather, the progress on town hall, the news. Sometimes I stopped to buy a magazine or some cookies. And then I would come to my narrow blue house, where the cats, just waking up, would hear my key in the lock and come to meet me, and James would come in soon after, and we would work in the kitchen, and have dinner, and talk or read or go to a movie or walk down to Christopher Martin’s for a beer, and I would fall asleep worn out.

  In this way I crossed off the days.

  Chapter Six

  My appointment with Orin Pierce was for four o’clock. His office turned out to be on the sixty-sixth floor of a new building in midtown Manhattan. It was ridiculously, tastefully palatial—hardly what I expected: antique tables, brass lamps, mellow old oil paintings. I was wearing an ancient black wool turtleneck with paint on the sleeve, and jeans tucked into my rubber lace-up boots. (Silvie had bought me the boots in Paris years ago. I had a letter from Denis: “Grand’-mère Silvie is bringing you home some boots. She knows you do not wear boots of animals, so these are strange boots of rubber, up to the knee, with laces.”) I gave my name, feeling like someone who had come to solicit contributions for a home for aging hippies.

  The elegant, unflappable receptionist said, “Mr. Pierce is expecting you, have a seat.” I sat for a few minutes in a tufted leather chair the color of fine sherry, ostensibly looking at a pile of real-estate prospectuses (deluxe high-rise apartments with identical skyline views like paintings on velvet) but really wishing I hadn’t come, and then I was shown into his office.

  He rose to greet me. “Ah! Ms. Laurent,” he said, and I was stunned into silence. My first thought was yes, followed immediately by no, and then I gave up and stood there confused, staring at him. He gave me no sign of recognition. I had never remembered to wonder how much I had changed in twenty years—not so much, I thought. Not so much as this man. Because if he was Pierce, he had changed from a lean young man with thick brown hair that fell in his eyes, to a heavyset, bearded, balding man with creases across his forehead. The kind of man who wore a three-piece suit, a watch chain stretched across his vest, rimless glasses which he was polishing with a silk paisley handkerchief.

  He put his glasses back on and shook my hand; his hand told me nothing: it was warm and dry, the handshake was firm. “How extremely nice to meet you,” he said.

  It was indeed if he were in disguise or in costume—playing a kindly visiting uncle in a Merchant-Ivory movie or the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. I couldn’t speak. After the first shock, I could barely look at him—the smile, the brown beard. I looked beyond him to the window and the view from the sixty-sixth floor: immense sky, a glance down to puddled rooftops, the river sparkling in the distance, and at eye level, coming our way, was a helicopter. All I could think was: after that plunge down the canyon, how can he bear this height? And realized the idiocy of that thought, the extent of my confusion. I immediately became dizzy, and had to hang on to the back of a chair.

  “Are you all right?”

  He stood beside me. I hung on. The helicopter began to descend. I watched the blur of its propeller until it slipped below us, out of sight. When I turned to meet his eyes, he was smiling. He said, “Here—sit down. The height often has that effect on people. Would you like a glass of water?”

  “Please.”

  He poured from a glass carafe into a tumbler shot with gold. “There are times when we’re actually above the clouds. Or sometimes it’s snowing up here, with sun and blue skies down below. It’s really amazing.” I drank, staring at him, wanting to run out the door, with the feeling that everything had gone wrong—though I couldn’t have said in what way I had expected it to go right. Was he supposed to cry, “Chris!” and sweep me up in a hug? Or be a seven-foot-tall stranger with coal-black hair, or be Pierce, definitely Pierce, but in the grip of amnesia, from which I would tenderly bring him back? Anything but this, all wrong—the alarming view, his impersonal kindness, his watch chain, his lightly-freckled bald head, his beard.

  He was sitting across his desk from me, still smiling, though somewhat anxiously. “It does get to people sometimes. Would you like me to draw the curtains?”

  “No, it’s nothing, I’m fine now,” I managed to say.

  “It doesn’t bother me at all,” he said. “But some people just don’t have a head for heights.”

  “Yes.”

  “They get sick, they get panicky.” He shrugged, and his smile turned reassuring. “There’s no hurry. Take your time.”

  I drained the glass, remembering the calm that filled me when I talked to Alison Kaye. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I opened my eyes. I didn’t look toward the window. I looked at Orin Pierce. I said, “Well,” and tried to smile back at him. “Tell me something about Manhattan real estate. I’m a real babe in the woods here, and I want to know what I’m getting into.”

  He immediately switched into a new gear. He told me about the frenzy of development in the city, about neighborhoods, about condominium fees and creative financing. I studied him, watching him talk—his mouth, his gestures, his eyes. I tried to figure out why my first reaction had been that this was Pierce, and why I had then decided it wasn’t.

  The no was easier: he was bearded, bald, aging. He was immaculately dressed—a bit of a dandy. He was also, in his way, handsomer than Pierce. His small hands looked manicured: could they have once held a guitar? a marijuana cigarette? a skull lifted from a biology lab? He was—I searched for a word—unctuous? Eager to please, at least.

  Pierce was sarcastic. Pierce was scruffy. He was skinny, full of nervous energy. He cared nothing for clothes. But looking at this man, I realized that he had reminded me, in that first second, of Pierce’s father, the history professor, whom I had met twice, and who had been bald in exactly the way this man was: bald as a monk, the tonsure bordered with thick brown hair as neatly trimmed as fringe on a curtain.

  But that wasn’t the only thing. There was something about him—indefinable, elusive, possibly deliberately held back, but definitely there—a hint of recklessness that recalled Pierce: a tone in his voice beneath the polite business talk, a look in his eyes, as if he had raced motorcycles in his youth, or been a big-time gambler. Or had, before he assumed this dual disguise of middle age and propriety, been Pierce. And looking at his dark blue eyes, I was able to remember that Pierce’s eyes were blue.

  He wound up his speech and looked at me expectantly. I had taken in almost nothing of what he said, and I wasn’t sure what to do. Why go on with it? Why give him the story I had prepared, a naïve request for four rooms in a small, old-fashioned, friendly building close to a park? Why tell him the price range I had carefully worked out on the train coming down?

  And yet I wasn’t sure, I wasn’t even remotely sure of anything. He and Pierce had blue eyes, he and Pierce’s father had bald heads, he had a look in his eye that I fancied reminded me of Pierce. The fact remained that he hadn’t recognized me. There hadn’t been the smallest sign, not one. True, Pierce was an actor. But he had acted onstage, not in his life—had he? Not with me. In that moment, when I tried to decide what to say, Charlie’s question hit me hard: if this was Pierce, why was he pretending to be a bald man in a three-piece suit who sold real estate? I wished Charlie were with me. I began to wonder if I could photograph him and send Charlie the result for his opinion.

  He said, “It
might help if you tell me exactly what you’re looking for.”

  I looked into his eyes and knew I had to answer truthfully. There was nothing else I could do. I said, “I’m looking for you.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  In that instant I was sure: the irony was there, the crooked smile, the head held to one side, the narrowed eyes. (Yes, blue. How could I have forgotten that dark sea-blue?) And then—he frowned, he leaned forward to pour me another glass of water—it was gone. But not quite.

  “Orin Pierce,” I said, and drank.

  “Do we know each other?”

  I stared at him helplessly. His bald head gleamed. His beard and moustache matched his hair exactly: three versions of the same thick brown hedge. Behind his glasses, there were crow’s feet around his eyes, pouches under them. Sadness filled my throat. “You don’t recognize me?”

  He gave a small laugh. “I wish I could say I did. I don’t know anyone named Louise Laurent.”

  “Christine Ward,” I said. “Pierce it’s me—Chris.” There was a flicker in his eyes—something. I leaned over and gripped his hand across the desk. “Pierce. Why are you doing this? It’s me.”

  He smiled—a smile I would remember afterward not as Pierce’s crooked, dubious one but as a smile full of pity. “My dear woman,” he said. “I don’t know you. I’ve never seen you before. I don’t understand this. There’s a mistake here somewhere.”

  The sadness overcame me. I began to cry.

  He was very nice. He lent me his silk handkerchief and then, more practically, found a box of Kleenex in a drawer of his desk. He got a bottle of Scotch from a cupboard and poured me a shot. He drew the curtains—“This view isn’t helping”—and patted my shoulder, saying, in a White Rabbit voice, “Oh dear, I wish I knew what this was all about.”

  I gave up. It was a grotesque coincidence, a cosmic joke. But it wasn’t being played by Pierce, or by this man. I didn’t know whom to blame it on except myself.

  We went out for a drink. I was his last appointment for the day, he said. He wanted to hear about this other Orin Pierce. He was intrigued. He was sorry I didn’t want to buy a piece of real estate, but he wanted to hear my story. There was a little bar around the corner, nice and quiet.

  “I’m not dressed,” I said. My clothes were bad enough; I imagined my face after my weeping fit.

  “You’re fine,” he said. “You look lovely, really you do.” He took off his glasses and smiled. “With or without my glasses.” He stored the glasses carefully in a case, which he put into his desk. (Pierce would never be so neurotic, he would have lost the glasses ages ago and done without them.) He straightened the papers on his desk. Then he paused, looking at me, and asked, “It wasn’t the view, then?”

  I looked toward the window. “Oh—no, I don’t think so.”

  “Then check it out,” he said. “It’s really magnificent.”

  He took my arm and steered me over, and New York lay below us again, sparkling. Orin Pierce and I stood by the window, looking down. As we watched, lights went on here and there. The late afternoon sky was brilliantly blue, rosy at the horizon with the beginning of sunset.

  “It’s very peaceful up here,” he said. “Another world. Like being in heaven. There’s the Queensboro Bridge. The roof of the IBM Building, a mere forty-two stories. And look at the flagpoles in Central Park.” He touched my arm, close enough to me that I could feel his breath on my cheek. “Like toothpicks,” he said.

  I moved away, my heart beating fast. The shining miniature city frightened me, for that brief moment, in some elemental, nightmarish way, but not because of the height: it was because of Orin Pierce standing so close to me.

  “I’m off for the day, Flo,” he said to the receptionist as we left. He shrugged into a camelhair topcoat. He had a red scarf like the one I gave James. “I’m going to play a little hooky.”

  Flo looked up from her computer and said, “You might want to know that Mr. Greenwood called.”

  “Nope. Not interested.” He winked at her, and she smiled back, demurely. “That’s what I pay you for, babe. To protect me from guys like Greenwood.”

  She watched, pretending not to, as he helped me into my old black pea jacket.

  “See you in the morning, Florence.”

  “See you in the morning, Mr. Pierce.”

  We walked around the corner to a bar called the Metro. He held my arm as we walked. “This place has saved my life a million times. There are days when I get out of work and I don’t know what in hell I’m doing in this world and an hour in the Metro straightens me out. Don’t ask me why I’m in this crazy business. It’s not because I love it, that’s for sure. Same thing goes for this city.”

  The Metro was nearly deserted. There was a sweep of mahogany bar with a brass rail, and high-backed booths under Tiffany lamps. I imagined him coming in here after work, drinking too much, then going home to watch television alone in a deluxe condominium like the ones in the Parker brochures. I thought of my postcard of “The Night Café” tacked over the sink, and it seemed improbable to me that Orin Pierce needed a refuge like this.

  We took a booth in a far corner, and he smiled at me. “So,” he said. “Was it true that you’re a painter?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re the widow of a Canadian named Laurent?”

  “No. He’s French, and we’re divorced.”

  “And you live in Connecticut?”

  “Yes.” I studied his face. “Pierce was from Connecticut.”

  He laughed. “It’s so weird that you call this guy Pierce. You say his name was Orin, like mine.”

  “He never liked it.”

  “It brings back my schooldays. Beer okay?” A waiter came, and he ordered Australian lager for both of us. “In my prep school, it was last names only. I went to prep school in Connecticut, as a matter of fact.”

  “Oh? Where?” I had that sudden dropping feeling in my stomach. I had one of my quick, desperate fantasies of amnesia, of myself putting together clues for him, piecing his life back together, helping him rise from the dead: I would be his cup of tea, his madeleine. I would free him from the prison of death.

  He hesitated a moment, then said, “I went to St. Paul’s.” Why had he hesitated? What did it mean? In my heart, I knew it meant nothing. But I thought: I can verify this, I can check their records. He said, “Did I just fail some sort of test?”

  “Pierce went to Hotchkiss.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, this is absurd!” I leaned my cheek against the side of the booth. What were we talking about? My head began to ache.

  He asked me, “This guy disappeared, or what?”

  I said, “Yes, in a way.” I felt like laughing, crying. I felt like getting out of there. I said, “This is so completely stupid. I should go.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Wait. I graduated in ’60.” I just shook my head. “Come on. What about your friend?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Pierce was ’61, I guess. Same as me.”

  “What about you? Where did you go to school?”

  “It hardly matters. Jamesville High School, Jamesville, New York.”

  “Nice country up there,” he said.

  Was this irony? Was this some kind of torture? I thought of Pierce and Robbie playing catch in the driveway. The three of us down at the pond skipping stones. Pierce steering the cartful of clean laundry from unit to unit. Pierce and Robbie touching up the WARD’S SUNSET MOTEL sign. Then the drunken drive to Maine.

  And Pierce: Pierce on the island with a gun in his hand.

  “You know Jamesville?” I asked him.

  “Driven through. I have friends in Rochester.” The waiter brought the beer. Orin Pierce poured for us both, and raised his glass. I remembered his breath on my cheek, the smell of his skin (did I remember that?) when he stood beside me at the window. He was just my height—Pierce’s height: tall for a woman, average in a man.

  “To this weird conver
sation,” he said, raising his beer glass. He drank, and smiled at me. I had a vague memory that Pierce’s teeth were yellowish, crooked on the bottom. This man’s teeth were white and even. Not that that meant anything. Dr. Mankoff once said of a patient, “We can’t do anything about her face, but the good news is that we can totally reconstruct her mouth.” New teeth, beard, moustache, bald head (shaved?), twenty pounds or so, twenty years …

  I wanted to ask: Have you ever been to Maine? Do you have an old photograph of yourself?

  He said, “We’re getting off the subject. This Pierce guy. You know, he and I could easily have known each other. I played ice hockey. We used to play Hotchkiss all the time. I knew a lot of guys over there.”

  “But no Orin Pierce.”

  He shook his head. “The only Orin Pierce I’ve ever known is myself.”

  “But Pierce must have seen you play, he must have been aware that you had the same name.”

  He said, “He may have known me, but I sure didn’t know him.” He took a sip of beer. “This is pretty strange, if you ask me. If this were a movie, your Orin Pierce would have killed me and assumed my identity.”

  I looked at him: eyes, beard, bald head gleaming. “What would be his motivation?”

  “If this were a movie?” He shrugged. “He’s done some dastardly deed, and he wants to hide. He was a Weatherman in the sixties, blew up labs where they made napalm, killed someone by accident. He’s a spy, a double agent, and someone’s on his trail. You know how it goes.” He took another sip of beer.

  “But why use his own name? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It might. Hey—this is a movie.” He grinned. “Don’t walk out in the middle. Stay and see the end. Though I must admit it’s an odd plot twist.” He stared into space, thinking. “It’s intriguing, though. Maybe he murdered someone. Or drove someone to his death.”

  Pierce with a gun in his hand, looking off into the amazing sunset.

  “Christine? I’m sorry. I was kidding, I got carried away. Jesus, this is real life—not a movie. I’m sorry, I know this is important to you—whatever it is. I don’t mean to make light of it. Are you all right?”