Time Out of Mind

by John R. Maxim

  “Are you ready?” Corbin turned at the sound of Gwen's voice. She approached him, stuffing her notebook into the shopping bag and pulling out one of the books they'd purchased. She leafed through its index as they walked slowly toward Fifty-eighth Street. “Did anything happen while you were standing on the corner?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.” He decided not to mention that they'd gone to church together.

  ”I mean in your head. At the very least, your mind must have wandered back to that night in your dream.”

  “Well, sure,” he admitted, “but there's not a thing in this neighborhood that rings any kind of a bell.”

  “The Osborne certainly did.”

  “How could I know the Osborne and not know Carnegie Hall right across the same intersection? Or this building over here?” He pointed to the delicately carved edifice, almost the size of the Osborne, whose name he could now read over the main entrance. The building was the Aíwyn Court.

  “The Alwyn Court,” Gwen noted, flipping forward from the index. “The Alwyn Court, designed by ... so-and-so. Started 1907 and finished 1909. There's a lot of business here about how they made clay blocks from terra cotta molds and then plastered repetitions of the same designs all over the surface of that building. Rather looks like lace, doesn't it? It also looks as if they've sandblasted the soot off it recently. It must look just as it looked in 1909.”

  “I've never seen it. I'm sure.”

  “As for Carnegie Hall, it says here that that building was completed in 1891. There. It fits.”

  “What fits?”

  “The Osborne was first occupied in 1885 according to the superintendent inside. He says it's the oldest building in this area except for a few small commercial lofts. If your ghost knew the Osborne during the period from 1885 to 1891, and he hadn't seen it again until today, nothing else in the vicinity would have been familiar to him. Even Seventh Avenue is much wider now.”

  “Wait a minute.” Corbin stopped. “How do you make a street wider?”

  “By slicing off some sidewalk, naturally.”

  Corbin glanced around doubtfully. “They don't strike me as being narrower. They look as wide as they ought to be.”

  “Many of these buildings,” Gwen explained, “had stone steps or even little walled gardens extending onto the sidewalks. When the thoroughfares had to be widened, the city required that all the stoops and such had to be removed. The same thing was done in parts of London around the turn of the century.”

  Corbin frowned. The explanation made sense and yet it annoyed him. Images flashed through his mind of handsome facades by the thousands being defaced by crowbars and sledges. The images slowed and he began to pick out individual houses, residences, that seemed to have special meaning to him. Even a few names associated with these town houses flitted past but flew on before he could seize them. One name stayed. Tammany. The Tammany Hall Irish. Who no doubt threw themselves into the vandalizing of these homes with indecent glee. Think of it as a kindness, yer Lordship. Ye walk about with yer nose so high in the air, yer like to trip over the dom thing anyways.

  “Let's keep moving,” Corbin said.

  They did not wait for the light at Fifty-eighth Street before crossing Seventh Avenue. Corbin's toes had become numb inside his unlined shoes and the dropping afternoon sun was providing less warmth than before. The comfort of the Plaza Hotel, still two long blocks distant, was becoming a welcome prospect even though it meant an hour or two of uncomfortable scrutiny by Gwen's uncle Harry. Nor did Corbin pause on the Alwyn Court's corner where the man named George had died under drifts much softer than the mounds piled there now. But a few feet from the corner, Corbin sucked in a breath.

  “What is it, Jonathan?”

  “Nothing.”

  Nothing and everything. No building, no single man-made item that caught his eye was familiar. And yet he knew this street. It was narrow, much narrower than any other side street they'd seen that day. And it was deep in shadow, almost dark. Like the street in his dream it sloped downward, several degrees more sharply, he thought, than the incline of Fifty-seventh Street.

  “It is the same street, isn't it?” she asked.

  Corbin nodded. Ahead of him he could almost see her. It was here that she turned, afraid and angry, and saw him advancing upon her. It was here that she put her hand to her mouth, the mouth he must have slapped because it had a smear of blood on it, and then cried out vainly for help at a window sealed against the storm. She turned and ran from him. Tiny steps. Her hands held wide for balance. Corbin's umbrella flicked out and he followed.

  Gwen Leamas matched his steps. “You see her, don't you?”

  “Sort of,” he whispered.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You're remembering?”

  “Yes.”

  She held on to him in silence.

  Remembering. Yes. Impressions began to flood at him so quickly and so ill relatedly that he could scarcely seize upon a single one. There was a child. An infant. An infant he despised almost as much as the woman who ran from him. Whose child? His own? No. Not his. It was once but not now. Not ever again. The child was behind him someplace. In a crib made of woven reeds. In that building.

  “She was my—” He stopped himself.

  “Say it, Jonathan.”

  “His wife. I'm sure of it now. There was a baby,too. A son.”

  “What else?” she urged quietly.

  ”I think you might have been right about the Osborne. I think that's where they lived. The baby's asleep there in a little room with no windows. Like a dressing room. He's all alone. There was a nurse and a maid, but neither one showed up because of the storm.”

  “Jonathan.” Gwen took a breath. “Do you feel at all that you might have been that child?”

  “No,” he snapped.

  “Easy, Jonathan.” She put a hand on his arm. “It's a possible connection, that's all.”

  “I'm not the child. There's no connection between me and that infant.” There was still an edge to his voice.

  “But the woman is your wife.”

  “His wife. Yes.”

  “So she had the child by someone else.”

  Put yer back into it, lad. Jab with the left, then again, then dig hard into the ribs.

  Corbin raised both hands to his face and stared down and across the narrow street in the general direction of a nondescript hotel. “It's where she was going,” he said quietly. “He lived down there. In another apartment house. The Flats.”

  “The Flats?”

  “It's what the place was called. The Something Flats. Spanish Flats, I think, but there were other names, too. It's him. The same man.”

  “Which him? The man you beat up in the Hoffman House?”

  “Yes.” Corning? Carney? Car…”

  “You beat him because your wife bore his child?”

  “Yes.” Carling.

  “And it's also why you let her die.”

  “Carling. Ansel Carling. That was his name.”

  Gwen bit her lip. Her hands trembled with excitement. “She was running to him? Away from you?”

  “Twice the man I am. Twice and more, she said. But I took his measure, by God. And the whole of New York knows it now.”

  “Jonath—”

  “She said that his child will be twice the man as well. But we'll give the lie to that boast, you and I. It's blood that counts above all the rest. Proper blood. And a proper home. You shall have a home, Margaret. You shall have a grand new life and the son you give me will grow up brave and strong.”

  “Yes, my darling.” Gwen tried to keep her voice from breaking. “Our son will be all of that. Not like that other child.”

  You can teach him the piano”—Corbin's voice became tender, affectionate—‘‘and to converse in French. You can teach him grace and good manners and I will teach him to be manly.”

  Gwen's mind raced. “You can teach him the manly arts. Fistic
uffs. Boxing.” One of those had to be right.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Just as John Flood taught me. And I will show him how to play baseball. I'll teach him to cycle and swim and to drive a gig. If he wishes it, he'll go to Harvard. And one day, as I've promised, I will give him my name.”

  Your name. Say your name, she begged in her mind. But another question came first to her lips.

  “We are not to be married then?”

  He looked away. “Perhaps. One day that will be possible.”

  Gwen felt hurt, and more than a little irked for Margaret's sake. Did he love her or was he hiring a bRood mare? ”I should like that,” she told him.

  “No more than I,” he answered sadly. “But while my father is alive, and while my business binds me to this city, we must wait. Although you deny it now, I know that the ostracism we would suffer would bring you more pain than I can bring you joy.”

  Well, thought Gwen, at least he didn't spell it out that she'd been irretrievably sullied and could not possibly be considered as a wife. Still, she'd like to have felt that if Margaret was good enough to carry his child, as she was now obviously doing, she ought to be more important to him than the acceptance of his blue-nosed social set. Better change the subject.

  “This home I am to have. Where will it be, my darling?’'

  Corbin looked at her oddly. ”I have told you many times.”

  “Yes, but I am only a woman and so many things fly from my mind.”

  Another odd look. It was what Gwen's grandmother might have said but she was a twit. Margaret would not have been the fluttery type.

  “I'm teasing you, my darling. It's just that I so love hearing you speak of it.” From the top, Gwen thought, although she knew perfectly well where this house must be.

  Corbin smiled patiently, warmly. “The house is one of my prettiest properties outside New York. It was built by Tweed himself for use as a guest house, so be assured that nothing was spared. I've had a telephone installed, a new model, that will carry my voice a great distance as clearly as you hear it now. And I've spoken to Mr. Johnson about wiring for electric lights and he promised it will be done before summer is past. Have I told you about Mr. Johnson's blind horse?”

  “Oh, yes.” The house, Jonathan.

  “The house is also steam heated, the first like it in the town, and you shall have all the hot water you need at the turn of a valve. You need never carry wood nor buckets of water for your bath. You need never again go out of doors on a cold winter morning because a bathroom with all the necessities has been built within the house. I'm assured there will be no odor or peril to your health due to some plumbing contraption that flushes away the sewer gases and keeps them from returning.”

  “That does sound charming,” she said dryly.

  “In the carriage house, there's both a surrey and a sleigh and I have my eye on.a dun gelding only three years old ...” His smile dimmed a degree or two and he touched her cheek. “You will be happy there, Margaret.”

  “I know.”

  “You will have a gentle future and you will have no past except the one we choose for you. No one need ever know. You will be a proper young widow, a very lovely young widow, and I will be first your protector and then your gentleman caller.”

  A new past? Gwen thought. That means a new name. “Say my new name, Jonathan.” Oh, shit!

  Corbin's eyes glazed and batted rapidly. He backed away from her, his eyes now darting around him with the look of a man who suddenly realizes he is lost.

  “Jonathan.” Gwen dropped her shopping bag and seized his lapels. “Jonathan, what's her new name? What's your name?”

  “She didn't say ‘children.’ ”

  “What?” Oh, yes. The word the woman said as he pressed her into the snow. “‘Jonathan, say his name before you lose it.”

  “She said Tilden. His name is Tilden.”

  Seven

  Raymond Lesko had crossed to the north side of the narrow street. While Corbin and the Leamas woman were involved in a particularly intense discussion on the south side, he slid past them and went on down toward the corner at Sixth Avenue, where he blended into a small group awaiting taxis outside the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel. Lesko waited there, massaging the back of his neck. It was developing a crick from trying to watch both Corbin and the dazed old man who still plodded along behind them.

  The look of fear and shock he'd seen on the old man's face had, if anything, deepened since he'd left Barnes & Noble's. Haunted was how he looked, Lesko thought. Like a guy walking through a spook house, trying hard to believe there were no such things as ghosts, but afraid that any moment one would pop up and stop his heart. Lesko would have felt sorry for him if he hadn't instinctively disliked him. The black homburg had been tilted off center someplace along the way, probably one of the times he stopped to wipe the sweat off his face. Funny about a black homburg. Wear it straight and everybody with a flunky mentality either sucks up to you or steps out of your way. Wear it crooked and you look like a drunk.

  Back at Seventh Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, Lesko had stood in a foot of snow behind a padlocked newsstand, watching the reactions of both Corbin and the old man as they stood on different corners, each having been obviously and deeply affected by the sight of the old Osborne apartment building. With Corbin, Lesko thought, it was kind of a confusion. And a reluctance to get too close. With the black homburg, it was more like one big moan. Lesko thought he would have sagged to his knees if he hadn't had a corner of Carnegie Hall to hold on to. It was the Osborne that was doing it. Lesko was fairly sure of that, thanks to the English dame. He might not have made the connection if she hadn't parked Corbin out on Seventh Avenue, done a lot of gesturing toward the building, and then run into the lobby to check out—whatever. He could probably find out later from whoever works there. In the meantime, he realized, she continues to be the only one of the three of them with her head on straight.

  She also, he decided, now watching as they resumed their slow progress down Fifty-eighth Street, seems to be the one who's running this show. Whatever the hell is going on, and so far no one really seems to know, she's the only one besides me who's working at putting the pieces together. Uh-oh! Hold the phone. Now all of a sudden it's Corbin who's standing straight and it's the dame who suddenly looks shook up. It looks like—Wait a minute. Steady, Lesko..

  Raymond Lesko had been struck by a thought, an intuition, that the pragmatist in him tried at once to reject. What he felt was the odd notion that Jonathan Corbin was suddenly somebody else. He was standing straighter. Stiffer. Almost military. Except there wasn't any stiffness in his face or in the tone he must have been using. He looks happy, Lesko realized. And about ten years younger. Although there was nothing remotely threatening or fearful in Corbin’ s manner, Lesko felt an unaccountable chill and a sudden impulse to call it a day and retire to the bar of the Barbizon-Plaza. Whatever is in the air around here, he thought, it must be catching, because for absolutely no reason, he was afraid of Jonathan Corbin. Corbin had changed. And now he was changing again. Aging again. Lesko watched as Corbin seemed to soften and shrink into the man he was before, but more intense this time, less confused. His eyes were darting up and down, at everything and nothing, his lips moving in short, staccato bursts of sound, which Lesko couldn't hear.

  ‘Tilden?” Gwen Leamas tugged at his arm.

  Corbin shook his head, his expression telling her that Tilden was gone and that he could not call him back at will.

  “Jonathan, try.” She reached for his cheek and tried to turn his face toward her own. “The rest of his name. Try.”

  “The el station was here,” he said. They had almost reached Sixth Avenue. Corbin gestured with his head. “She wanted to run for the stairs over there. But they were covered with snow and there was no one to help her there anyway.” Corbin fell silent for a long moment. “There was something obscene about her looking for help in a New York elevated station. She didn't just hurt me, I mean Tilden, yo
u know. She and Carling hurt another very good man who was connected with these elevateds. I would tell her things and she would tell Carling and people would be ruined. It was why Carling was interested in her in the first place. Information. Ammunition. If she'd reached him that night, I think he probably would have turned her away.”

  “Who was the good man she hurt?”

  ”I don't know. He built things. A lot of things.”

  “Like this elevated line.” Gwen realized she was pointing to it as if it were there.

  “Maybe. That doesn't sound wrong.”

  “Could you have been involved with the city's train system too?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But you're not sure.”

  “It's all going away, Gwen. I knew so much a couple of minutes ago but it's all breaking up, like when you wake from a dream.”

  “Let's follow the woman this one last block, Jonathan. Perhaps more will come back.”