After Gregory

by Austin Wright

  Yet thinking while driving into the city, if the apartment was booby trapped. As he turned into his elegant street, drove into the private garage, walked flinching on the sidewalk, greeted the old doorman his friend, stepped flinching into the elevator, unlocked flinching the possibly wired door, stepped in with hunched shoulders, looked cautiously around in his own flat, your Stephen Trace was bolstering himself with Hamlet thoughts: if it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. You chose not to go out again that day. When it got dark you pulled the blinds. You kept the volume of the television low.

  Now you think of it, perhaps there were three levels of rationality. Between the calm plans at the top and the visions of crazy fright at the bottom, was another motive for what you were going to do, mysterious, rational and irrational, which you remember knowing without knowing you knew, never quite clear but reasonable in its own way.

  You packed as if planning a trip. You were planning a trip, but may not have realized it until you found yourself packing. This was the trip you would take after seeing Mr. Fitch. You would drive to other cities, live in hotels, and talk to real estate agents. You started to pack your suitcase, but something said a suitcase would be inappropriate. You packed your backpack instead. Perhaps you didn’t know why a suitcase would be inappropriate, for you were stuck a while trying to decide between suitcase and backpack. Whatever reasons you had either way were overridden by feelings of inappropriateness based on thoughts you couldn’t remember, which you would have to recover if you were to judge the question properly. When the backpack won, you weren’t sure why, but in the morning since you had packed it, you dressed for it—heavy sweater, mountaineering jacket, jeans—without reviewing the reasons, since you had already made the decision and didn’t want to go through it again.

  You looked in your wallet and counted your cash, about two hundred dollars. With Stephen Trace’s credit cards, you wouldn’t have needed more cash, yet you intended to go to the Rome Building anyway, to see Mr. Peck about something or other. Unless you were confusing him with Mr. Fitch. You may have been supposing, at the level of fears, that Luigi Pardon would freeze your assets before you could stop him, and therefore you should get cash while you could. Whatever it was, you suddenly decided not to see either Mr. Peck or Mr. Fitch, the given reason being that you weren’t properly dressed. A backpack was inappropriate for the Rome Building. You had also shaved off Trace’s beard in the night and might not be recognized.

  Why you decided not to take the car is harder to reconstruct. It was suspicion of the garage attendant, his paranoid links to Luigi Pardon. No, you’re forgetting the logical step in between which gave it sense. You didn’t take the car because you were going to the Rome Building to see Mr. Fitch or Mr. Peck, and it was more convenient to take a taxi than to park your car in midtown Manhattan. That was why you didn’t take the car, a reason disconnected from the fact you had just decided not to see Mr. Fitch or Mr. Peck, there being no need until you got back.

  You were going in search of something, that much was clear. Presumably a new place to live—as we have seen—unless it was something else, information you could bring back to Mr. Fitch or Mr. Peck or some appropriate person.

  In any case, you couldn’t sit around forever postponing your departure. It took a gut of courage to go out finally with the backpack and the keys in your pocket.

  If there had been a man in the corridor watching, he was gone now. The doorman said, Going on a trace, Mr. Trip? The man on the bench was reading Hustler Magazine. You walked fast to the corner. No one shot you in the back. You went past the parking garage, not looking at Pardon’s accomplice. Around the corner and down into the subway. You waited up against the wall for the train. The tracks below the platform like a river, you had a certain fear of falling in. The train came soon.

  In retrospect it looks like you simply scrammed out of there. You left Stephen Trace behind. Also his house and his apartment along with furniture, silverware, clothes. Left to rats and vultures. Also money, securities, certificates, if anyone who wanted possession could forge his signature. People too, with names like Jollop and Heckel, if not Trace and Delaware who had abandoned him, without even a note this time to throw them off the track. Scrammed out of there, heading West.

  But that ignores the fact you had a purpose and did not think, at least at the start, you weren’t coming back. You took the subway because you felt it inconvenient and awkward just then to encounter the Mafia attendant—and perhaps backed by a secondary reason, such as that it would be more modest for you to accomplish your mission on foot, without the ostentatious protection of an expensive car. Next, you took the bus because it was easier and less ostentatious than going all the way out to LaGuardia for a flight.

  You remember that. You remember also later, head leaning, jiggling, against the pale green window of the bus as a dawn light began to distinguish brown fields, rolling slopes, dark shadowy barns, roaring along the turnpike, everything dim and obscure through the dirty glass. You saw the green light in the sky. Soon they would wonder what happened to Stephen Trace—you wondered how long it would take them to notice. They would poke into his apartment and house, getting permission if needed, or not getting permission, looking for a way to get around having him declared legally dead or a way to have him so declared. You remember thinking about that, though you had no intention then, as far as you knew, not to return as planned. Thinking, just because Jack Rome died is no reason for Stephen Trace to die too.

  Prester Truitt. Gulley Hamilton.

  Saying, My name is Stephen Trace, millionaire. I’m not running away. I’ll be back. Just a little trip to settle my stomach. Saying this to combat the feeling of ugly familiarity in the world you had forgotten. No one, looking at this man in his expensive jeans, with his well-stocked pack, could guess the variety in his diversified life. Arnold Pettigross.

  Lack of sleep. Birthpangs with stress. You remember getting off the bus at noon in a small town, avoiding the bus’s destination. Impulse, no good reason. Arthur Gratis. Questions faded under heavy eyelids in the mid afternoon sun, as you sat on a bench at a truck stop.

  The following incident is worth mentioning. You stood by the highway with your pack on your back. A car stopped with three young men. Brakes squealing, they grinned, you didn’t like their looks. You tried to wave them on: Thanks anyway.

  What’s the matter, don’t you want a ride? So you changed your mind, you got into the car, sat in the back seat, next to a guy with blond hair, the other two in front. You noticed the adams apple of the guy next to you. They drove fast.

  Don’t you like our car? It’s a fine car.

  I like your pack. Let me see it.

  You held the pack in your lap. What’s the matter, don’t you trust us? You handed the pack over to the guy in front. He opened it and went through it, while the blond guy in back leaned over to watch. Hey you, cut that out.

  Look at these clothes. Wish I had shoes like that.

  What? Give them to me. They’re mine, I need them. You don’t need them.

  Say mister, what’s your name?

  Mitchell Grape.

  Mitchell Grape, ha ha. How much money you got? Not much. Let’s see your idea of not much.

  I don’t have much. You said that. You showed your wallet with a hundred and fifty dollars left. The man with the adams apple took the hundred and fifty. Hey I need that, it’s all I’ve got.

  Give him a percentage. The guy with the adams apple gave you back a twenty. Thanks. Now we’ll let you out here.

  The car stopped. Can I have my pack please?

  The man in front held the pack out the window. Come round and get it. You hesitated, not wanting to step out of the car without it. The man behind nudged you, and you stepped out. You went to the front window, and the motor roared. The car leapt ahead and sped down the road. You saw the man in front waving your pack at you through the front window as they went. You tried to
remember the license plate.

  PART FOUR

  Brown and Beyond

  THIRTY FIVE

  On fine days from your basement room you saw across the rooftops and over the Sound (a different Sound) the mountains to the west, snowy and hazy in the clouds. Container ships moved toward the sea. Big green ferries slid into the harbor, to the docks colorful with glass and shops and flags, walkways and entertainments and places to sit. Your cab climbed the city hills, the steep residential streets, with sudden views, the sudden blue of the Sound or lake, sudden snow extricating from the sunny clouds on distant slopes. You knew your way, the necessary turns, the streets that will take you through. Each day you sewed the city together again, from the flaglined wharves to the city center, the space tower, zoo and rose garden, the hills, houses, and hotels.

  From the bed you looked out at the distance of the night. You shared the apartment with Bonnie Brown, who refused to believe your life. She called you Mitch.

  There was a name, won with some difficulty, on your cab driver’s license, as also on the certificate posted for the passengers with your picture. The same name was on your mailbox and voter’s registration card and in the telephone book. As for Bonnie living with you in the furnished flat, she had a nice round face and short black hair and sharp black eyes. You met her when she asked you as a taxi driver to carry some boxes into her apartment. She was a solicitor for the World Organization of Good People, a small charitable outfit that contracted with other agencies to collect money in the neighborhoods for good causes. She went out afternoons and evenings persuading people in houses to give.

  She didn’t believe your life, though she expected you to believe hers, her lovers and former husband. About Jay, with whom she had recently broken, who had been her whole world. You met her parents, looked at her albums, discussed her grandparents. But though you tried to be as candid as she, she thought everything you told her was a joke.

  The first night in her apartment, after the passionate part, you told about the river and hitchhiking without a name. Lying on her stomach without clothes, sucking on a piece of candy, she grinned and said, Come on now, tell me the truth.

  It is the truth.

  She moved into your apartment anyway. It may be the mistake of my life, she said. You’re probably a con man, but you only seem to be you. It will save rent. She was a little chubby, warm and sturdy and somewhat brisk. She went around the apartment with nothing under her bathrobe and got a bang out of sex without lingering over it.

  No longer as afraid of your former lives as you used to be, you said all she need do is call the Uptown High School in Cincinnati and ask about Peter Gregory. She looked at you with her realistic eyes. So I’ll find out Peter Gregory drowned in the river, she said. It won’t prove a thing.

  When you told her about Jack Rome and about Stephen Trace’s house on the water, she laughed outright. That’s too much. You expect me to believe he gave you thirty million bucks, and you lost it?

  You didn’t lose it. As far as you knew you still had it.

  Wow. Why are you driving a cab, for heaven’s sakes?

  As far as you knew (explaining this, you yourself were shocked, as if you had been asleep while the house burned down), you still had title to Stephen Trace’s wealth and were free to reclaim it any time.

  Well goodness gracious, she said, throwing her arms around you. We sure could use a few million around here.

  So why don’t you believe me?

  It doesn’t fit, Mitch, it’s not you. The you in your story is bold, romantic, antisocial, selfish. The you I know is ordinary, cautious, decent, human. Why would someone like you jump into the river? And why would you abandon all that money without a fight?

  You jumped because you were ashamed, and you ran because you were scared. You saw the shadow on her good natured face, wondering what kind of crazy she was stuck with. She objected to your women. People like Sharon Trace don’t exist. Women like Jane Delaware don’t jump into bed with timorous men like you. If they do exist, she disapproves.

  You exist, you said.

  Of course I exist, I should say I exist, indeed I do.

  The obvious way to prove yourself would be to get Mr. Peck to send you a check, but you postponed that. (That’s because you were still afraid, rightly, of being pursued.) To make Gregory’s jump more plausible, you told her about the Sebastian accident. But she looked so hard and doubtful that you couldn’t develop it. You couldn’t tell her how it felt or what harried you, because her stare made you too conscious of your words trying to tell.

  She said, You’re too wrapped up in yourself. You live in yourself like a cage, a captured bird, you drive around in your taxi and think about yourself. You need to get out and do something constructive. Live for others. Face up to the miseries of the world. Hold up your head and say, I’m doing my bit.

  She read you things from the newspapers in the evening to convince you of the miseries of the world. There was always something. War in Yugoslavia, war crimes, atrocities. Gang wars in Los Angeles. How hard for a black boy growing up in the city to make it to adulthood. Homeless people under the bridge, with signs, I’ll Work for Food, people who used to be like you or me. To please her you joined the World Organization of Good People. Go out and persuade. Touch people’s consciences. You went soliciting for starving people in Africa. You did this on weekends and when you weren’t driving a cab.

  You had pictures of starving black children, lying on the sand with mantis legs. A haggard woman, wrapping a dead child in a white cloth. To the other woman who stood listening inside her screen door, you said, It’s happening this chronological minute in this contiguous world. Real people are burying each other because they don’t have enough to eat.

  Don’t preach to me, the woman said. I have to pick and choose, I can’t give to everything. She asked what you were doing for the drugged youth in this country. Can you believe, while you’re trying to squeeze money out of me, in our own downtown ten blocks from here, doomed young men and women are lying in the park in a stupor?

  A man said, Your cause is good and so is mine. Too many people, he said. Waste and poison everywhere. The rain forests are dying that take the carbon dioxide out of the air and restore the sweet oxygen by which we live. Our stinky machine breath infects the upper atmosphere. It used to be a lovely world. Let me take your name, a small check will do.

  You went out with Bonnie in her car to assigned neighborhoods. Park the car and take the street, she on one side, you the other. With documents to show, horror pictures, your clipboard for signing membership forms. You rang the doorbell, and when the woman came, you spoke politely, identified the Organization and gave your spiel. Yes ma’am you live a modest living, we all do, which makes it hard to realize how rich we are compared to the rest of the world. We look over the world like a skyscraper not seeing the people in the streets. We feel guilty, yes ma’am, that’s what I want to talk about. You don’t need give much, but if you do, you’ll feel a lot better, you will.

  Bonnie used the same line on you. Don’t you feel better? she said. Certainly better than in your imaginary mansion on Long Island Sound.

  It wasn’t imaginary.

  All the better better.

  Unfortunately, you had trouble imagining what you were trying to make other people imagine. You tried to feel the outrage you wanted them to feel. The pictures were too familiar, the words too routine. While you were trying to convince the woman at the screen door of the reality of starving people, you saw the reality of the screen door, the peeling paint on the door frame, the woman listening inside a little scared, on the edge of dangerous anger, a tense and touchy moment while you tried to talk fast enough to prevent her from slamming the door in your face and giving you another existential shock.

  You were waiting in your taxicab by the hotel, and this large man with a beard got in, going to the airport. He reminded you of somebody, but you didn’t get a good look, the big body, light brown beard, small shaded
eyes. David Trace? You tried to get a better look at the gate while he counted his change. He glanced at you and then you were sure, yet he gave no sign, which made you doubt. The mysterious magic of recognition, so intuitive and sure, faltered into reason and inquest.

  But then this man, after giving you your tip (which was large) tossed his newspaper onto the seat beside you. “Read this,” he said and hurried off through the door.

  Why should you? It was open to an inside page of a New York paper, where you saw:

  ROME ASSOCIATE SLAIN IN STREET

  A man identified as Stephen Trace, 36, of Whitfield, Conn., was shot to death early this morning as he was leaving the Giovanni Siciliani Restaurant on 14th Street.

  Stop there, read no more until you find the strangeness of this news. Who was Stephen Trace? When you remembered, you read the rest:

  According to police the killing appears to have been a gangland execution. The victim had residences in Manhattan and Whitfield. He was reportedly a friend of the late Jack Rome and was said to have left behind a considerable estate.

  According to police spokesperson Amanda Maynard, Trace left the restaurant about 12:30. Shots were heard in the street a few moments later, and his body was found on the sidewalk. Police believe he was shot from a passing car. No witnesses have come forward.

  The body was identified tentatively on the basis of documents found on it. Identification was confirmed at the morgue by Mrs. Luigi Pardon, who had been previously married to Mr. Trace, and by Jane Delaware, widow of Mr. Rome. Little is known at this time about his life, though records show he was born in Brooklyn, and according to his wife he earned a degree at Harvard University.