“When I left you about three months ago,” he said, “I wished that I could see you again. Now I wish that I may never see you again on earth. The complications seem altogether too deadly.”
He opened the door then and went out, and she turned and crossed the room to a table on which there was a glass ash tray and a package of paper matches. She set fire to Enos Simon’s note with one of the matches and watched it burn to black ash in the glass tray. It was, in a way, like burning Enos himself. Like burning his body. As Aaron had burned to begin it, so Enos to end it.
Why did Daniels say that? she thought. Damn him to hell, why did he say it? Certainly it is altogether absurd to think that I am, without wanting or trying to be, a kind of carrier of misfortune and death.
She looked at her watch and read the time.
In an hour and a half, she thought, it will be time for Tyler.
THE END
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Park Avenue Tramp
CHAPTER 1
She had been somewhere with someone, but she couldn’t quite remember the place or the person. As a matter of fact she had a feeling that she had been a number of places with a number of persons, but she couldn’t quite remember that for certain either. Anyhow, wherever she had been and with whomever, it was now certain that she was alone and walking down a narrow street that was dark and dirty and probably not a street that a woman should walk down alone at this hour, which was either very late or very early, depending on which way it happened to be from midnight, but none of this seemed particularly important. What seemed important was to find a place to sit down and have a drink and think calmly about where she had been and where she probably ought to go. Where she had been was surely not far, after all, for she was walking in sandals that were practically nothing but very high heels, and it would be a simple matter, if she could sit down and have a drink and think calmly, to work back to it in her mind.
A place where you could sit down and have a drink and think calmly was a bar, and a bar always had the added advantage of having a bartender, and bartenders were almost always informed, intelligent persons who were just exactly the persons to ask for advice or information on such matters as where you’d been and come from and ought to go. She had had a great deal of experience with bartenders, and on the whole, with very few exceptions, she had found them much superior to psychiatrists, and much less expensive. Perhaps that wasn’t fair, however, for she hadn’t actually been to a psychiatrist that she could remember at the moment, although it was entirely possible that a person who had forgotten where she had been could also forget having gone to a psychiatrist some time or other. But it didn’t make any difference, really, whether she had personally been to a psychiatrist or not, for she was sure that she must have friends who had gone and told her about it, just for the experience if nothing else, and this was also something that she would probably remember after a while, if only she could find a bar with a bartender. And there between two shops, if she was not mistaken, one was.
Yes. Yes, it was. It was certainly a bar. It wasn’t very big or very bright, although there was a small neon identification that she couldn’t quite make out for some odd reason, and it didn’t seem to be a bar that was trying to impose itself on anyone, but just a bar that was only trying in a quiet way to get along and earn a living. She liked that about it. Already she was feeling very compatible with this particular bar. It was extremely refreshing after so many places that were always trying to be impressive, and her compatibility achieved a quality of tenderness that prompted her to stroke its brick face gently with one hand and make a soft crooning sound in her throat that was like a little impromptu lullaby. Opening the door, she went inside and got onto a stool and started to tell the bartender what she wanted, but she couldn’t think what she wanted was, which ought to be whatever she had been having, and she felt rather embarrassed about it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’ve forgotten what I’ve been drinking. Isn’t that silly?”
“Lots of people forget,” the bartender said.
“It’s nice of you to say that,” she said. “It’s very comforting.”
“That’s all right, lady,” he said. “It’s my pleasure.”
She looked at him gravely and decided that he was undoubtedly a superior bartender, which would make him very superior indeed. It might seem unlikely on first thought that a superior bartender would be working in a little unassuming bar that was only trying to get along, but on second thought it didn’t seem unlikely at all, for it was often the little unassuming places that had genuine quality and character and were perfectly what they were supposed to be, which was rare, and it was exactly such a place in which a superior bartender would want to work, even at some material sacrifice. She felt a great deal of respect for this honest and dedicated bartender. She was certain that she could rely on him implicitly.
“Perhaps you can help me,” she said. “In your opinion, what have I been drinking?”
“You look like a Martini to me,” he said.
“Really? A Martini?”
“That’s right. The second you came in I said to myself that you were a Martini.”
“Is that possible? To look at a person and tell that she’s a Martini or a Manhattan or something or other?”
“Just with the specialists. Some people are slobs who’ll drink anything. You can’t tell with them.”
“Can you tell just by looking whether a person’s a specialist or not?”
“Oh, sure. Sure. Almost always.”
“That’s remarkable. How can you tell?”
“A specialist’s got distinction. Something about him. Once you learn to recognize it, you can’t miss.” “Never?”
“Well, almost never. If you can’t tell by looking, you can tell by smelling.” “Oh, now That’s too much.”
“It’s a fact. I can tell you’re a Martini just by looking, but if I were blind I could tell by smelling.”
“How does a Martini smell?” “Like a Martini,” he said.
She laughed with pleasure at this clever and delightful bartender. Pushing at her pale blonde hair, which had a low part and a tendency to fall forward over her eye on the heavy side, she watched him mix her Martini and tried to guess how old he was. She had made quite a study of the ages of bartenders, and she had discovered that the mean age of all the bartenders she had studied was about forty, but the median age was quite a bit lower, and she thought that the age of this one was about the median, but she couldn’t be sure. That was another thing she had discovered. It was almost impossible to tell the age of a bartender by looking, contrary to what was possible to bartenders with regard to specialists, and she had a theory that this was because they were compelled by their profession to assume certain expressions and attitudes that neutralized the effects of falling hair and dental plates and things of that sort.
She wondered if bartenders away from their bars did the same kinds of things that lawyers and doctors and stock brokers and executives and men in general were inclined to do. She wondered if they were vulnerable to the compelling drives and appetites and incredible caprices that were always complicating things and making them difficult and getting one into trouble that was sometimes serious. She wondered, for instance, if they made love. It was only natural to assume that they did, but somehow what was natural seemed in this instance unnatural. Bartenders were so invariably detached and almost clinical, although attentive and compassionate, that it was as impossible to imagine their being glandular as it was to guess accurately their ages. This one, for example, this clever and delightful bartender who was probably below the mean and about the median and really much better-looking than quite a few men she had made love with willingly—did he ever take off his starched white jacket and do interesting and exciting physical things? She thought it would he amusing to find out, but it was only something that she thought incidentally, and not something that she thought deliberately, or with intent
ion.
“One Martini,” the bartender said. “Very dry.”
“How did you know very dry?” she said. “I distinctly remember not saying anything about very dry. It’s one of the few things I remember.” “You look very dry,” he said. “Do I smell very dry also?” “Naturally You naturally smell like you look.”
“Tell me something honestly. What is the very dry Martini look and smell like?” “Very good. Lots of class.”
“Thank you. You’re sweet and comforting. I’ve never been seen and smelled by a sweeter or more comforting bartender.”
“Besides that, I’m helpful.”
“Yes, you are. You were helpful in telling me what I’ve been drinking, and it would be even more helpful if you’d tell me where I’ve been.” “Don’t you know?” “I don’t seem to.”
“Did you walk here from wherever it was?”
“Yes. I don’t remember walking all the way, but suddenly I knew I was walking and remember walking from were I knew.” “Well, chances are it’s close. It isn’t likely you walked very far.” “I know. I thought of that myself.”
She said this proudly, as if it were a considerable accomplishment, and he looked at her closely across the bar with a kind of skeptical wariness. “Do you do this often?” he said.
“Forget where I’ve been and how I got where I am? I wouldn’t say often. Once in a while is more like it. What happens is that I go somewhere with someone and get to drinking quite a bit, and then I apparently just walk off by myself and later have to remember where I was. It’s nothing to be disturbed about. I’ll just sit here and drink my Martini and think about it calmly, and pretty soon it’ll come to me.”
“While you’re thinking, try to think where you live in case it becomes necessary to see that you get home. Will you do that?”
“I don’t have to think about that, because I already know. I live in an apartment house on Park Avenue. I remember that clearly. Would you be interested in the address exactly?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry. You’ve been so comforting and helpful that I thought you might come and see me there and mix very dry Martinis for us.”
“I never go see people who live on Park Avenue. Thanks just the same.”
“Why don’t you ever go see people who live on Park Avenue? What’s wrong with us?'
“Nothing’s wrong with you. You’re out of my class, that’s all.”
“Oh, nonsense. Do you know what Park Avenue is? It’s a super-slum. I read that about it in a book, but I don’t remember what book it was or who wrote it.”
“There seems to be a lot you don’t remember, and what I don’t understand about it is how you remember leaving where you live and know where you are but don’t remember where you were in the meanwhile.”
“That’s just the way it is. The beginning’s all right, and the end’s usually all right, but now and then there’s something in the middle that gets lost.”
“All right. You sit here and try to remember the middle, and if there’s any way I can help, like fixing another Martini or something, you let me know.”
He moved away and got very busy catching up with what he’d neglected while talking with her, and she took a drink of her Martini and spun herself slowly half around on her stool and looked at the room and what was going on in it. The room was quite narrow and rather long, dimly lit by lamps in brackets on opposite walls, and it was littered with small tables and chairs and people of various sizes. About half the people were men, and the other half were women, and this was an ideal arrangement. The men were dressed every which way in almost anything, and so were the women, and the clearest difference between them was that the women had tried a little harder to make it look like a night out.
Some of the women were older than others, and some were prettier, and this was, she thought, a condition that prevailed practically everywhere you went, even on Park Avenue, and she conceded gladly that the only immediately apparent distinction of any significance between these women and her, as a representative of Park Avenue, was that none of them was wearing, like her, a gown that cost $750 and sandals that cost $50 and panties that cost about $25, as nearly as she could remember. The last item was not an immediately apparent distinction, of course, but it was at least a fair assumption.
Actually, she didn’t think of this difference of expense as proving any difference of quality, one way or the other. As a matter of fact, she hardly ever thought of money, except amusing ways to spend it or how terrible it would be not to have it, and now, after thinking briefly of clothes and the cost of them, she abandoned this line of thought as being a bore and of less significance than it had at first seemed to be. Down the room, she noticed, was a small cleared space that must have been intended for dancing, which signified music, but she could not remember having heard any music of any kind since her arrival from wherever she’d been. Beyond the cleared space, however, was a little platform, an elevation of about a foot, and on the platform was a piano and a snare drum on a stand. Nothing else, unless you counted the piano bench and a single chair. Except the bench and the chair, just the piano and the drum. She thought they looked deserted and sad and strangely static on the small platform, like a still life painted a hundred years ago by an unhappy artist with too little to eat, and she wanted suddenly to put her head on her arms on the bar and cry.
It wouldn’t do, however. It would only make her look like a hag and would accomplish nothing. What she had to do was have another drink of Martini and try calmly to think of where she’d come from. She revolved slowly on the stool and drank from her glass and began to think. To begin with, she started from where she now was and attempted to go back carefully from there, but the moment she reached the place on the narrow street where she’d become aware of herself and part of her surroundings, the street ended, the buildings dissolved, and she herself became a kind of black hiatus between then and there and another place at an earlier time. It was very discouraging and rather exhausting, but she tried patiently several times before she conceded that it was simply no use. She didn’t really care where she’d been, so far as that went, but it was possible that there were obligations or effects associated with it that she ought to know about and so she reversed her procedure and began trying to reach her present time from the other end, the beginning.
She had left her Park Avenue apartment a little after five and had gone to another Park Avenue apartment where there was a cocktail party. This apartment was the apartment of Samantha Cox, who believed that having lots of money did not excuse one from doing something substantial and making a personal contribution to Life with a capital L. Samantha’s contribution was taking lessons in acting and doing small parts in television shows, nothing yet by Paddy Chayefsky, and how substantial this was as a contribution to Life was something that could be argued. She had met a lot of people at Samantha’s party, and had drunk quite a few Martinis, and after a while several of the people, including her, had decided that it would be a good idea to go somewhere and eat, and someone had said he was feeling a violent urge for some of the marvelous Italian food they served at a place on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, and that’s where they’d gone.
She hadn’t eaten much of the Italian food, however marvelous, but she had, as she recalled, drunk two or three more Martinis, and afterward they had gone to another place where she had drunk two or three more than that, and still afterward to still another place where there had been a comedian who told dirty jokes that weren’t very funny and several very tall girls in G-strings. She must have switched parties at this place, for she distinctly remembered for the first time riding in the front seat of a white Mark II, and this must mean that she had met and gone away with Milton Crawford, for Milton was the only man she could think of among her fairly close associates who drove a white Mark II.
Yes, it had been Milton. She was certain now. Going from the place they had met to the next place, he had kept patting her thigh, and she had let him, not
considering it very important, and at the next place, which was noisy and uninhibited and very crowded, he had asked her if she would stay with him in his apartment, and she had said that she didn’t really feel much like it but might feel more like it later. She didn’t like Milton very much, although she didn’t make a cardinal issue of it, and it was more difficult to feel like it with him than with some others. Anyhow, after making it indefinite about staying with him, she had excused herself and gone to the ladies’ room, and it had been very hot in there and a long way from clean, and she remembered thinking that she wouldn’t use the toilet even if she were saturated with penicillin, and this thought had made her feel even less like staying for what would be left of the night with Milton. She had gone out of the room and out of the larger room with all the noise and people and had stood outside leaning against the building and had taken several deep breaths of air.
There. There, there, there. That was when and where she’d become a dark hiatus. The precise place and time. There was no telling how long exactly the hiatus had lasted, but probably not very long, and it would be an absolute waste of time and effort to try to remember what had been done in it, for she knew from experience that it was no use. Besides, at that moment, the drum and the piano began to talk to each other, and she quit remembering and began listening. She listened for a while without turning, and she thought that it was good dialogue, very clever. Whoever was making the drum talk was doing it lightly with a brush, and whoever was making the piano talk was doing it also lightly with a brush of fingers, and the effect was a delicacy, an intimacy, like lovers whispering. Pretty soon, in the first pause in the dialogue, she revolved half around on the stool and looked over tables and chairs and heads to the platform beyond the small area for dancing.
The young man who was brushing the drum had a round, absorbed face and round, bewitched eyes and little brown curls coiled so tightly all over his head that she was immediately inclined to discount them as being very unlikely.
Wake Up With a Stranger Page 19