CHAPTER FIVE
The Car
Up. Still that car commotion, but now just a half block off and smaller. I start for it but get just one step.
“Dennis?”
“Yes, uh, excuse me?”
“Dennis? It is Dennis. Dennis, it’s Harold. How are you?”
“I’m sorry, you have to have the wrong number. Person.”
“Dennis, stop it, I said it’s Harold. Tell me. It’s been—but it actually hasn’t been that long. By the tone of my voice, I’m saying.” Grabs my hand and shakes it. “How the hell are you? Your hand’s cold. Really, I want to know.”
“Listen, it’s possible I might look like this guy—”
“Look like him? What a laugh. You’re more than the spitting image of him. You’ve never in fact looked more like yourself. You look wonderful. But Dennis, you want to forget, go on, forget, forget. I won’t mind. In the past—well I’d be the last to admit you occasionally treated me like that and did I mind? Did I ever say it at least? At least, that much? All right, I minded a little—said it and minded—complained a little you could say—kvetched, but that’s about all I did. You might say I did more, but let’s have a drink and talk about it.”
“Honestly.”
“Honestly what? Or talk about anything but that if that’s what you want. All that’s elapsed. For instance, how you could look even better after so many years. Because when really was the last time? My memory, not good then, is now a has-been.”
“My name…You see, when you said Dennis, because my name’s—”
He laughs, grabs my arm and starts walking me to the street. “Cab,” he shouts. “Taxi.” One stops. I slip my arm out of his. A very beautiful young woman and a man are walking toward us, woman saying “New-Age entrepreneurs. You know who they are?” They’re about even with us. The man stops, shakes his head, takes her hand and kisses it.
“Thirty seconds,” Harold says to the driver. He holds up a finger, crosses it with another. “Sí—you got it—Dennis, you ready?”
“They’re going to turn-around America’s economics and social, political and moral consciousness, or in all the hip states if we’re ever so lucky. New Mexico—”
“If you say so,” he says, putting her hand to his cheek and shutting his eyes.
“If I? It’s not I, and besides, how am I supposed to have an intelligent discourse with all this kissy hand action. Because—” but she suddenly notices us before I can look away and stares briefly at me and then at Harold at length as if she knows him.
“Look, my name’s Daniel,” I say to Harold, glancing over his shoulder at the woman, as he’d seen me staring at her and stepped between us. She turns to the man.
“Anything interesting?” he asks her.
“You know that woman?” I ask Harold.
“Just something,” she says.
“What woman?”
“If you guys don’t—” the cabby says.
“It was the way you were looking at them,” the man says.
“That absolutely beautiful one who just passed with the man,” as they’d resumed walking, his head on top of her shoulder. He turns to them and then back to me.
“He’s quite handsome—maybe more stunning then she. Those incredible lashes. He could easily become an actor.”
“She was staring at you as if she knew you. I’ve seen her someplace. Commercials. Maybe a subway station ad. I don’t have a TV, but I’ve watched them. Or the movies or stage.”
“Could be, Dennis, but she’s certainly not from the stage. I know the stage and she’s not on it. I make a point of seeing all the showcases and plays. As for subways—never touch the stuff.”
“Anyway”—the woman repeatedly looking back as she walked—“my name’s Daniel. Daniel, Dennis—see?”
“Free?” a man says and gets in the cab and it drives away.
“So it’s Daniel now, Dennis. So it always was and will be. So you say you’re not Dennis, Daniel. So you were never Dennis we’ll even say. You want to say that, we will. So, as a matter of fact, there never really was any Dennis. Not in the history of American and English stage design or of mankind. It’s a name I made up out of dewdrops. So what to all that I also say. Cab,” he shouts. “Taxi.” One stops. “Now let’s have that drink. I love the unflappable way your eyes take in everything and your mind makes split-second discriminations about people and things. And you didn’t take a swing at me. Now that more than anything, because what does it say? You didn’t call me this and then that when I’d say by most people’s precepts and norms you could have gotten away with it. You didn’t mime to that divine pair ‘He your friend, for I sure don’t know him.’ You didn’t say to me ‘You’re nutsy, Buster, take a powder.’ Not a raised voice or fist and I more than most you’ll meet appreciate that.”
Cabby rolls down his window and is about to say something.
“One second, friend,” Harold says. To me: “You didn’t and you’re not and the rest of those things. You’re also sympatico.”
“Sure I am.”
“Come now, you have to admit that. You also have a nice face. Not model-beautiful like that dreamy man’s before, and a nice gleam to your eyes. I bet you were a beautiful baby. So let’s get into the cab and go to a real nice pub. Sardi’s, even. I love that joint. That it still exists for one thing: everything authentic today folds. Oh, overrated caricatures on the walls to spoil your appetite, but it’s the perpetual stimulating overheard talk, and because of its dress code, all those gorgeous clothes. I can get us a quiet table where nobody can see us or a noisy one where everybody can and join in if you wish. So it’s what pleases you, Dennis, you. I only want to please you tonight, so is it quiet or noise?”
“No tables. I don’t want to go with you.”
“Please, don’t all of a sudden get rude.”
“Scuse me, scuse me,” the cabby says.
“I’m not. But if I can’t convince you any other way?”
“All the very best drinks you want on me then—food too. Anything you want. You call it. Money, even.”
“No really, thanks.”
“I wasn’t serious about the money, of course. Took a chance saying it, but I was only seeing how you’d behave. You came off with flying colors, as I knew you would. My instincts about you were right from the start. One thing though. Yes, I think I can say it. I’m serious about wanting you to come with me and I know, beyond that hard facade, who you truly are.”
“I can’t stand here longer,” the cabby says.
“I’m sure you do, but thanks, no.”
“Ah darn. Your one fault was you were always too immovable. So I’ll be on my way.” He walks to the cab. “On my way, I won’t say goodnight, Dennis.”
I nod.
“Ah darn.” Gets in cab, is looking at me through the rear window as the cab takes off. It stops at the corner for the light. He sticks his head out the window opposite the smashed car. “I can still get out, Dennis—What’s this, your devilish business? Or you can still join me. Or the 21. First floor by the door. Elegant Nick to admit us and from then on even if you go there alone, to greet you by your family name, whatever yours is. You haven’t lived till you’ve tasted their bourguignon. They know me there as well, and it’s where I’ve changed course to. I’m a director.”
I shake my head.
“Whuh? Can’t hear ya. Harold. Harold Drissac and the Barclay Hotel. I’ll be there till check-out time Sunday morn. Phone.”
I wave, he waves, cab goes. I walk back half a block—that’ll be enough time for anyone around the smashed car to forget me—look at the traffic, buildings across the street, sky, put my collar up and walk slowly to the car. Must have been smashed by the bus or smashed into the front of the bus, as the front of the bus farther up the street’s also smashed but not as hard. When I saw the bus from the distance I thought it was just doubleparked.
“For the last time—step back?” a policeman says. The three of us step back. �
�All the way to the sidewalk again?” Sidewalk. Phone on the corner rings. He’s standing beside the booth and answers it. “Wohlen…Hey, hi, how’s it going, last person I expected was…Sure, what?…Ha, no, I…I gave the number for here…Now that’s a good question. After talking to you for ten seconds when it seems like ten years since we—okay, okay. Let’s see. You could hear it’s a street, but exactly where? Fourteenth and Sixth, northwest corner, last—now this is going to be harder. Minus thirty-four from one—six, twenty—we’ll forget the seconds. Seven times sixty plus that twenty-six. Three hundred—No. The last almost seven and a half hours of my midnight to eight shift. That’s putting it exactly enough. My two-way’s not operating, which I’m now glad of because you called…How? Tell me.”
I move up to the car. Two men I stepped back with before, one who’s very tall with a gray ponytail, moved up before me, so if the policeman says anything again it’ll be directed to us all. But stop. Really, what are you looking for? Just like that, why else? Not your everyday happening—not enough? Got this curiosity for the morbid, and not sudden but always. I’m a born snoop and repressed meddler, that’s all. Fires, brawls, car crashes, nonstop sirens and alarms, I usually stop or go out to look, even put on my shoes and turn off what’s cooking if I have to, but rarely this close. Want to see what might’ve happened to the passengers, but why? Blood, flesh, hair, torn cloth. For a moment I want to see what it’s like inside one of these so soon after the crash and before it’s towed off. So this is how it is, in other words. Shit? If so, then even that. I don’t know and maybe I’ve gone overboard. Urine, shit, vomit, guts, I want one to all of those? If that’s what’s there, and it’s not what I want per se, then I suppose so. To show I’m not too squeamish to look right at it for once and take a whiff, which maybe will change me somehow. The attitude: what’s to be afraid if it’s life. So that, I suppose—no, horsecrap. Know my own mind?—you bet. Oh, I don’t know if it’s all horsecrap, but I am curious to see what happened here and I might find. For instance didn’t I one night—when my dad was very sick—incontinent too—could hold in his urine but not his shit—and I was taking care of him with my mom—stick my finger in what I just wiped from him and put it to my nose and take that whiff—there, that wasn’t so bad, maybe it’ll make it easier cleaning him the next times, and it did. “Quite the crackup,” ponytailed man says, three of us inches away from the car and looking inside.
“Sure is,” I say.
“If the driver and his front-seat companion, if there was one, got out alive, I’d be surprised.”
“Maybe. Because I’ve witnessed something like this and the driver, though very banged up at the time, survived and probably at the most ended up with a scar or limp, but not bad.”
“Of course anything can happen to man, anything,” shorter man says. “You can get hit with a feather and die. Or else, as in the last war—number Two—a bullet shot into my helmet and all around the back inside and came out the hole it entered but without leaving anything but a ringing sound.”
“To you?” ponytailed man says.
“Pardon. Did I say to me? To one of my buddies. After the war—in factual accounts—I read of just as strange things that happened: bullets in your canteens or boots but all around and out. Bullets stopped by your dogtag and dropping down your shirt and burning off your chest hairs. Bullets up your gun barrel where nobody got hurt, but also where plenty got hurt with bullets up the barrel and lost a hand or eye or died. I didn’t mean me before with that helmet. Just that as an outfit like ours was you think it’s you because you’re so much one knit bunch. I remember the soldier’s name, even. Politskiun—Don. Every five years on the dot I get a chain letter from him saying break it and not only won’t I win fifty-thousand dollars this Monday but I’ll probably die.”
“Please, fellas,” the policeman says from the booth. “Hold it, hon. Please, fellas. The sergeant’s car comes along, I’m in big trouble. So now I’m telling—okay?”
Fall and Rise Page 14