“Yeah, great. At the diner?”
“Yeah, noon.”
“All right.”
“All right.”
Jason hung up the phone and looked around. It was a good day to try and get something done. Maybe really reorganize his stuff. He had an elaborate system for classifying his music collection—categorized by genre, with intricately nested sub-genres, organized first by recording date and only then alphabetically by principal artist, but for a while he’d just been dumping in the newly acquired stuff with the old and not putting things back in the right places. There were also more instruments lying around than he really needed. He never played bass, but had somehow managed to acquire two, which largely served as landing spots for discarded shirts. This could take a while. Not the kind of project that you could embark on without a good shower first.
He took a long hot shower, at least twice as long as usual. He remembered two more things that were great about New York, both water-related. First, the tap water was outstanding; best tap water in the world they said—in its purest form, sampled from an open fire hydrant. This was one of the reasons, appreciated by very few, why the City’s bagels and pizza were so good, and so impossible to reproduce elsewhere. Second, even pretty lame apartment buildings had great water pressure. It was hard to imagine they had better water pressure in the White House. He stuck his face right into the blast and shook his head back and forth. Seventy-five years ago most people didn’t even have running water, and now most guys off the street could shower like the President. Maybe better.
Jason got out and was drying off, still riffing on the whole New York water thing, when he thought he heard the doorbell. Phone calls, doorbells, could a telegram be far behind? Dropping his towel to the floor he reached for his robe—a ridiculous garment, thin, faded, and fraying, it didn’t even make it all the way down to his knees. But he lived alone, and didn’t really need a robe. He couldn’t remember where it was from or the last time he’d put it on; it just kind of lived there on the back of his bathroom door. But it turned out the doorbell was in fact ringing, and the robe was better than wrapping a towel around his waist, especially because he didn’t have the greatest towels, either.
He came out of the bathroom and made a spot check in the bedroom mirror off to his left to assure that some minimum level of presentability had been achieved. “I think it’s open,” he called out towards the door.
The door swung open, and Carol Chase walked in. Jason once had a dream that started like this, and he was a little light-headed from the steam, so he did a quick test to make sure he was awake. It probably wasn’t necessary, since he wouldn’t be caught dead or dreaming in that robe; it would have been a fine, precariously-knotted towel. But it was reassuring just to know for sure anyway. Carol was wearing a white button-down shirt, with a couple of buttons open, and a short, tight light-blue skirt that wasn’t inappropriately short, but still got your attention.
“Jason? Sorry to barge in. Nice robe. You know the downstairs buzzer is broken?”
“Yeah. I don’t know if it’s ever worked.”
“You always leave your front door open?”
“Yeah, no, I mean, if you unlock it to leave you have to lock it from the outside with the key. Or you can lock it from the inside, but if you.… Anyway, point is it won’t lock on its own.”
“I see.” She assessed the robe a second time, then looked over Jason’s shoulder.
“So, uh, what brings you here?”
“I had to be in Queens today, so I decided to look you up.”
It was plausible, but unlikely. “Yeah, almost everyone has an Aunt who lives around here,” he said, inviting her to elaborate on her story.
She didn’t respond, but sort of drifted towards the kitchen, checking out the apartment. It occurred to Jason that the appliances were probably as old as the building. A more pressing concern was his acute awareness of the fact that while she was fully dressed, he could feel the thinness of the robe against his body. He thought about excusing himself to get dressed, but decided that it was his apartment and she was going to have to take him the way she found him.
“You once asked me what I did with my free time,” Carol said, walking toward him. She was striking, and Jason reconsidered getting dressed. She walked right past him and went into the living room, and with her back to him he took the opportunity to adjust and refasten his belt, trying to at least get a little double-breasted action in the front.
“Yeah,” he responded. “You didn’t seem to have any.”
Carol wandered around the living room and traced her fingers across a stack of books before bending over, as if to look through one of the milk cartons filled with records. It was a brilliant performance. Her shirt opened a bit, and she made no effort to catch it with her hand as she flipped through the albums to sample the collection. He’d noticed that the shirt was just thick enough to conceal whether or not she had anything on underneath it, and it took a tremendous amount of will power not to take advantage of the occasion to confirm the situation one way or the other.
“I didn’t,” she answered, standing back up. “But I might, you know?”
“How do you figure?”
“Are you going to take the traffic job?”
“Probably not.” Definitely not, but he wanted to see where she was going.
“You should. It would change a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“Like your whole life. You wouldn’t believe what they pay on-air talent.”
“Probably not.” He was in full rope-a-dope mode.
“And you’re a natural,” she added. It sounded sincere, and he kicked himself for caring. “Did you see our interview?”
“No.”
“It came out great.” Her eyes were always a little brighter when she talked about TV. “You looked really good. And I thought we had a real connection. Most of the time I don’t get that much eye contact.”
For some reason Jason felt a wave of guilt about the whole eye contact thing. “Yeah, well, eye contact isn’t—”
“It’s everything,” she interrupted forcefully. “Your education, your instincts—all the things you’ve ever done. What people are…it comes across on TV.”
“You must have a really good set.” He said it with a straight face, and when the words left his mouth he was pretty sure he was talking about her TV.
Carol smiled, and resumed her survey of the living room. “Just think about it.” Her back was to him, and now it was time to be impressed with the skirt. No elaborate bending this time, which now felt like a privilege withheld, but impressive nevertheless. “You have no idea what it’s like.”
“Being on TV?” He asked pointedly
She turned on her heel. “Being a star.”
Man, she was good. She nailed that line, and she moved around his apartment like she’d choreographed it in advance.
“I’ve met a couple. Singers mostly.”
“You could be one too,” she said provocatively.
He was taking too many hits, and it was time to find out where she was trying to lead him. “Why the sudden interest?” he asked. “I’ve been around for a while.”
“Yeah, like every other loser in the station.”
He shot her a look, and she took a few steps in his direction.
“But now it seems you’re not quite what you appear to be. First the helicopter hero thing, then that interview, which, I already told you, was terrific—and those stories Adam told—not that many of my drivers have been to Harvard, even for a visit.” She gestured at some of the instruments littering the room. “And you really are a musician.”
“You doubted me?”
“You wouldn’t believe the stories I get. When a man is talking to me, he’s usually lying. Or staring at my chest. Or both.” Jason shifted his gaze upwards as subtly as he could. “I’ve been hit on by at least half the men at the station. The married guys even more than the single ones.”
&nbs
p; “Huh. I would have guessed the other way around.”
“Married men think they don’t have anything to lose,” she said with a casual dismissiveness, the way you sweep a cat off the furniture to sit down.
“What do you mean?”
“Men aren’t that complicated, Jason, most men anyway.” She added the qualifier late, and it wasn’t convincing. “They’re all sex and ego—the only variation from one to the other is the relative portions of each. You shoot down a single guy, he’s naked, nowhere to hide. Humiliated. Married guys, they can tell themselves that they were just flirting. Or even that if they weren’t married, it would have been different. They have no fear of failure holding them back.”
She turned again and flipped through more albums. Jason knew that she was toying with him, and he was dancing around the mousetrap. But it was entertaining, and he wanted to see how far she’d take it. And there was a small part of him that wanted to buy her story. She didn’t know anything about him till a few days ago, really. And what she found out didn’t look so bad on paper.
“Who are these guys?”
“Old bluesmen mostly. That’s Skip James, the original recordings from nineteen thirty-one. He didn’t record again till nineteen sixty-four, three weeks after they found him in a Mississippi hospital bed.” She didn’t seem to get it, so Jason steered her towards more familiar territory. They were standing pretty close together. “The newer stuff is over here.”
“Oh, hey. Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run. I’ve heard of this. I think Shaker did a story on him. I don’t usually pay attention when he’s on,” she said giving Jason a knowing look, “but he said this guy is gonna be big.” She stepped back and studied a collection of framed pictures and posters mounted on the wall. A few gaps, like missing teeth, suggested that some had been removed over the years. “Who’s that?” she asked, pointing at one of the photos.
“That’s Willie Dixon. He did time for refusing to serve in the Army.”
“Who didn’t?”
“No, this was different,” Jason explained. “World War II—it was a much bigger deal not to serve. He was arrested on stage in nineteen forty-one. On stage—can you imagine? He said he and his people were treated like subjects, not citizens, and he would not serve. He was in jail for a year.”
“Prison, huh. You think he could have cut a deal.” Leaning back on a table covered with stacks of tapes, she scanned the wall a little skeptically. She seemed not to recognize Walt Frazier.
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t come easily to some people.” He decided they would be better off not talking about music. “Listen, would you like anything?”
“Coffee would be great.” She picked up Jason’s cup, which was still half full. “Yours?”
He nodded, and she walked toward him with it. The gentle disturbance of her separation from the table sent a few of the precariously perched tapes tumbling, and the noise momentarily directed their attention. Turning back around, Carol bumped against a chair, which caused some coffee to spill on her shirt.
“Shit!” The exclamation was jarring, and it didn’t sound quite like her, but it made sense that soiled clothing was a major crisis given her lifestyle.
“You okay?” He was a little rattled. “Can I.…” Actually, Jason had no idea what he might offer.
“It’s all right,” she said, calming down. “Why don’t you get the coffee and I’ll put some water on it. The bathroom is this way?” She walked down the hallway.
“No, that’s the bedroom.” But she was already gone, and didn’t come immediately back. “Carol? Carol?”
She finally came out, seeming distracted, looking down and pulling at her shirt. “That’s the bedroom,” he explained, pointing. “That’s the bathroom.”
Jason went into the kitchen and started working on the coffee. The action messed up his robe again, and he abandoned any efforts at style to focus on getting the belt good and tight. He even thought about double-knotting it.
Filling two cups of coffee, he headed back out to the living room. With one cup in each hand, he noticed the hot liquid swaying dangerously as he walked. Eager to avoid another incident, he held them away from his body and walked with care.
“Jason?” It sounded like she had been calling him, but he hadn’t heard her in the kitchen. She leaned out of the bathroom. She was topless, and held her forearms bunched up in front of her chest, but the sides of her breasts and the cleavage between them were abundant and very visible, and she looked for all the world like an Angie Dickinson poster. “Jason, this shirt is a total loss.” Her arms moved ever so slightly when she talked. It was a great effect and he wondered if she’d ever practiced in front of a mirror, or whether it just came naturally. He couldn’t decide which would have been more dangerous. “Do you have a shirt I can wear?” She asked sweetly.
“Uh, well…sure.” He let the answer drag out, and didn’t make an immediate move toward the bedroom to get her one. He had abandoned his no-staring policy.
Suddenly the front door swung open. It was Alison, carrying a big brown basket.
“Jason?” she called out, “are you up? I decided to treat myself to a little lunch break. We can have our picnic today instead of.…”
She looked up and saw them. Everybody was motionless for a moment—if Carol’s arms moved slightly, they went down, not up. After three seconds that felt like thirty, Alison set down the basket, turned on her heel, and pushed the front door a bit wider out of her way. It swung shut with a decisive thud. Jason looked at Carol, then down at the hot cups of coffee that were still steaming in his hands. He set them down on the table, scalding his left index finger in the process, and headed for the door.
She’d already made it to the elevator. The outer door was slowly closing, and he raced over to try and catch it. “Alison? Alison? Wait a minute!”
He got to the elevator just as the little white ball of light from the window of the car disappeared on its way down. He turned and ran back and spun around to the stairs, but his robe had come completely undone and running down the stairs didn’t seem like a viable option. He grabbed enough material in front to bunch it closed with his fist and reentered the apartment. He took Carol by surprise—she had dropped her arms, and he saw the muscles in her shoulders tighten for a split second, as if she had thought about pulling her hands back up but then decided there was more dignity in staying the way she was.
He rushed past her down the hallway toward his bedroom without breaking stride, but he did manage to commit everything he could to memory. He threw off the robe. He couldn’t find his underwear. Where were they? Probably the bathroom, from the shower. No time for that, he spun around and grabbed his pants from the floor. He could see Carol down the hallway, hands half on her hips, watching him. There they were, naked and alone in his apartment. Mission accomplished, he said to himself sarcastically, pulling on his pants and grabbing a shirt. In two more seconds he had committed forty-eight more frames to memory.
He ran back down the hallway, yanking on his shirt. “I’ll be right back!” he said over his shoulder to Carol, and for some reason he could hear Dylan singing “We watched with one last look,” from Chimes of Freedom.
He bounded barefoot down the stairs, taking them four at a time, and then charged out into the street. She was already almost a block away, and he ran after her. She was walking at an even pace, and betrayed no emotions when he caught up. But she didn’t stop walking, and he got in front of her and walked backwards.
“Just wait a second, will you? Can’t you just wait one second?”
“Why?” she said calmly.
“We have to talk. I mean, it’s not what you think—”
“How do you know what I think?”
“Well, it’s just…I know what I would…you know, it’s just not what it looks like.” He wished he had better material than that, but he was walking backwards, winded from running, and the hard, uneven concrete of the sidewalk was starting to really hurt his feet.
&n
bsp; “Does that matter?”
“Of course it matters!” Jason said desperately.
“I’ve been in a lot of apartments, Jason. I know what happens in them.”
“But this wasn’t—”
“Listen,” she interrupted, her pace slowing slightly, “you don’t owe me anything.”
“How can you say that?”
She stopped walking, and met his eyes with a look that betrayed nothing. “What would you have me say?”
What would he have her say? Jason reached out toward her, but she stepped back and left his arm hanging.
“Look,” she said, her voice finally breaking from a mechanical monotone, “why don’t you go back to your apartment. You’ve got some things to take care of; I have a paper to write.”
“What about tonight?”
“I’ve got two classes on Monday, and a conference on Tuesday. I’m way too busy to—”
“But…you can’t just—”
“I’ll call you,” she said, making it clear that he was not to call her. “Later in the week, after I’ve taken care of the things I need to do for work. We’ll talk.”
24
That night, Adam and Jason went to the Irish Cottage to commiserate. Things were even worse than they seemed. When Jason had returned to his apartment after chasing down Alison, not only was Carol gone, but Bill’s envelope was gone as well. It couldn’t have been picked up by accident either, since he was sure that he’d left it underneath the Times. Adam was also in pretty bad shape. He thought he’d been onto something with his police theory, but his sources had run dry. It was killing him, since even though he’d never admitted it to anyone, he’d been on too many stories where he was just following a hunch but was never sure for certain that it was for real. Now he knew something huge was right there in front of him, but he couldn’t quite make it out, and every time he got closer it just slipped farther out of reach.
They put away a lot of beer while Jason brought Adam up to speed. He gave an abridged version of the Alison story—she cooked, they did it, he was great—but gave him the whole Carol caper blow-by-blow.
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