The Man in the Window (Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries)

by Jon Cohen

  Arnie felt the tears rise. He had not cried since LuLu left him. He was lost and abandoned, doomed to wander the streets in the changing seasons, known to no one. He might make it until winter, living out of trash cans, and then one night he’d freeze to death, the ice forming first on the tip of his hook. Dead in winter like poor old Krupso. Arnie began to wander, keeping mostly to the sidewalk, but sometimes veering across front yards, sometimes into the street. He looked into the windows of the houses as he passed, but he saw few lights on now. And what would I do, knock on the door and say, Hi, I’m Arnie, I can’t remember where I live, can’t remember my phone number or my last name, won’t you please take me in? I won’t be any trouble. I hardly eat a thing—hell, at my age I hardly breathe.

  Since his mind was in such disarray, Arnie assumed his eyes were going on him too. He paused before a blue frame and brick house and stared at a light blinking on and off in the large window on the left side of the front door. Cataracts, he thought. Or is it glaucoma where you see flashing lights? He turned and looked at the streetlights; they were shining steadily. When he turned back to the house, the blinking light had switched to the right side of the door. Not a good sign. And the light didn’t seem to be coming from a particular source, like a table lamp or something, but from the window glass itself. Arnie closed his eyes for a long moment. My name is Arnie, he thought to himself. I’m Arnie, Arnie, Arnie, he chanted, using his name as a life preserver upon which he hoped to cling. Don’t lose that, hold on. When he opened his eyes again, he knew he was lost. The light, steady now, had moved from the windows to the front door, now open. A man was standing in the doorway, backlit, so that Arnie couldn’t see his face. What he did see were the tips of a great pair of wings, protruding from either side and behind the man starting at about hip level. Arnie stood motionless in the street. He would have stood there all night and into the next day if the angel (because that’s what he had to be) had not lifted his arm and beckoned. Arnie was certain of one thing: When an angel beckons, you go to the angel. As Arnie moved up the front walk, the angel stepped back into the house, out of view. Arnie followed him into the lighted doorway, which dimmed to darkness as Arnie passed through. He was so intent on the angel, he didn’t notice that Duke had returned and was at his side as he entered the house.

  Arnie walked slowly up the long front hallway, which was faintly illuminated in bluish-white light from the streetlight that stood directly in front of the house. He didn’t move a muscle. Deep in the center of his chest, his heart danced crazily. When Duke shifted beside him, his knees buckled slightly, and then he recognized his companion.

  “Duke,” he whispered. “I’ve really fucked up.”

  Duke nodded affirmatively.

  Arnie understood, with a sudden rocketing clarity, his absurd and dangerous predicament. The fog that had set him drifting along the streets of Waverly and into this house had lifted. You old fool. You crazy one-armed no-brain bastard. Ghosts! Angels! Get yourself out of this house before you get your tail shot off. He grabbed Duke by his neck fur and headed for the door. The floorboards creaked and Duke squirmed. Arnie bumped into a telephone table and set a flower vase wobbling. He watched the vase totter. If it goes over the edge, I’m dead. I can’t grab it fast enough with my hook, and if I let go of Duke, who is itching to run amok, I’m just as dead. Or I can run for it, let the vase hit the floor, let Duke loose, and run. All of these thoughts flashed through Arnie’s mind. But the vase did not fall, and he didn’t have to release Duke, and it really looked as if he was going to make it out of the house without getting caught. All he had to do was walk a few more steps. Only a few steps, seconds away, hell, spitting distance—so that when the angel reappeared in the corner of his vision, Arnie almost smiled. Well, he thought, here we go. I’m in it now.

  The angel stood in a dark room just off the entrance hall. The blue-white light from the streetlight dimly outlined his form. Arnie still couldn’t make out his face. When Duke stiffened and growled at the figure in the dark room, Arnie was almost relieved. The angel was real.

  The angel spoke in a muffled voice. “We don’t have much. There’s a little money in the drawer of the table by the door.”

  Arnie thought, We? He squinted into the dark for more angels. And then he thought, What do angels need money for?

  When Arnie didn’t move, the angel took a step or two forward, and it looked to Arnie like the angel was wielding something in his hand. A baseball bat? In the dimness Arnie could see now that the angel’s face was covered, and that he wore a hat. It suddenly occurred to Arnie that he might not be looking at the angel at all, but at somebody else who had broken into the house. Yeah, where’d his wings go?

  It just came out of him. “You’re not the angel,” Arnie said.

  That stopped the approaching figure. “The angel,” he whispered.

  “This is an attack dog,” Arnie said. “Put down your bat.” Duke, ever helpful, had stopped growling and now wagged his tail. Arnie poked him with his foot.

  A woman’s voice called down from the top of the stairs. “Who is it, Louis? Who’s down there?” A light came on.

  Arnie froze.

  Louis called from the dining room where he stood watching Arnie. “It’s a burglar, Gracie. And his dog.”

  There was a pause, then Gracie said, “I’ll call the police. Louis, don’t do anything—he might have a gun.”

  Arnie immediately held out his hand to show it was empty.

  But Louis was eyeing Arnie’s hook. “I think he’s got a knife.”

  A frightened “Oh” from upstairs.

  “No, no,” Arnie said quickly. “I only got one hand. See, it’s my hook. You know, artificial hand.” Arnie stepped forward. “Look, hey. Don’t call the police,” he said to Louis, who still stood in the shadows. Then he said in a louder voice, aiming it up the stairwell, “Hey lady. Please don’t call the police.”

  There was a long silence. Arnie looked back and forth, into the darkened room, then at the stairs, waiting for his fate to be decided by these hidden people. It never occurred to him to decide his own fate and run out the front door. He needed to know, as much as these people did, just what he was doing there.

  “Hey bud, really,” Arnie said. “You can put down your bat. I’m not going to do anything.”

  Louis looked at his arm, then at Arnie. “Not a bat. My arm’s in a cast.” He raised it slightly.

  “Louis?” Gracie called.

  “It’s all right, Gracie,” Louis called back.

  “Is he gone?”

  “Come see,” said Louis.

  “He’s still there, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. But it’s okay, Gracie.”

  Arnie had forgotten about Duke, who had made his ambling way into the room where Louis stood. Duke the attack dog sniffed Louis’s foot, then licked his hand when Louis knelt and held it out to him. “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I, doggie?” Louis said. Then he lifted his eyes to Arnie. “And I’ve seen you before too.”

  Arnie shrugged and looked blank. Another light went on above his head, turned on, he presumed, by the woman, Gracie, starting down the stairs. The light revealed more of the man, Louis, and Arnie saw now that he wore a Pirates cap and a purple scarf pulled above his nose.

  Gracie came around the stair landing and into partial view, then stopped. “Louis, I’m just in my robe. I’m barely presentable.”

  Louis said, “I’m in my pajamas.”

  “The new ones, or that old ratty pair I just mended?”

  “The old ones.”

  “Oh Louis.” Then, “Is he still there?”

  “Come on down, Gracie.”

  Gracie descended, her slippered feet soundless on the stairs. When she reached the last step she stopped again, looked quickly at Arnie, then above his head to Louis in the next room. Duke barked a welcome. Gracie spoke to Arnie, still not quite looking at him, as if she hoped that by not giving him her full acknowledgment he might disappear. “You g
o burglaring with a dog?”

  “My partner,” was Arnie’s ready response. He’d turned the thing over in his mind and decided that he would rather these people believe he was a burglar than a senile old fool who’d wandered into the wrong house. At least there was a veneer of dignity to burglary.

  “Your partner,” Gracie repeated carefully. “I see.”

  Arnie went on, trying to inject some plausibility into it. “Well, it’s hard for me sometimes,” he raised his hook and Gracie’s eyes widened, “so he kind of helps me carry things. You know, like silver candlesticks and such.”

  “Oh yes,” said Gracie. “I guess that would be helpful.” She added, “We don’t have any silver candlesticks.”

  “Well, um, I wasn’t really here to steal anything this time. I was more like casing the joint. It’s important to prepare.” He took a breath. “Preparation is the key to success.”

  “Except in this case,” Louis said.

  “Yeah, well, right. Except in this case. I didn’t do so good here.”

  Gracie pressed her fingers to her chin and studied Arnie more closely. “I think I’ve seen you before.”

  “I’ve seen him, too,” said Louis.

  “Probably in the post office. You know, mug shots.” Arnie grimaced. He knew things weren’t going too well.

  Gracie didn’t hear him. She looked back and forth, between his face and the dog’s. It was coming to her, and it was coming to Arnie too. Last summer—the woman in the funeral procession whose car broke down. He remembered now, her smile. And he remembered the concealed figure who’d sat silently beside her.

  “Wednesday,” she said suddenly.

  “What?” said Arnie.

  Louis nodded in agreement. Unlike Gracie, Louis knew he’d seen Arnie, and Arnie’s dog, twice. The first time almost a year ago on the way home from Atlas’s funeral, and the second time, just as Gracie said, on Wednesday.

  “The man chasing the dog,” Gracie said, pointing. “That dog.”

  Duke barked, cheerfully admitting his culpability.

  Arnie hung his head. So he’d been seen. He’d been hoping that shameful episode had taken place unnoticed. But of course, how could it have, Duke charging through those people like that and him not far behind, waving his stump and howling like a madman. And now here he was going out of his way to shame himself before this woman again.

  Louis stroked Duke, and the dog shuddered blissfully at his touch. I’ve been out in the daylight world twice in sixteen years, Louis thought, and I’ve seen this man both times. He looked at Arnie’s hook. Do the wounded of Waverly naturally seek one another out? Louis wondered who else would join them should he brave the daylight again. But the man now turned away from Louis, whom he’d been facing, and lifted his eyes to Gracie. Louis, who knew how to look carefully at a thing, saw something at the edge of those eyes, something directed at Gracie and not at him at all. Louis realized then that each time the man had appeared Gracie had been there, just as she was here now. Was the connection, then, between the man and Gracie? Louis heard the man’s words again, You’re not the angel, and drew the dog close to him as he stepped back into the shadows.

  Arnie answered Gracie’s charges. “Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid that was me on Wednesday. Duke, my dog, gets a little out of control sometimes. Goes squirrel crazy.”

  “Well,” said Gracie in a soft voice, “it was a crazy day for a number of us. Believe me, though, when I say I was grateful for your sudden and opportune appearance.”

  From the shadows of the dining room, Louis said, “His second opportune appearance, Gracie. Remember when Jim Rose’s limousine broke down? This was the gentleman who fixed the car, who rescued us from the heat and Jim Rose’s mechanical ineptitude.”

  Gracie stared at Arnie, a smile starting at the corners of her mouth. “Why, it was you, wasn’t it? Then, and Wednesday.”

  “I guess it was, ma’am. But really it was no—”

  “You’re a mighty peculiar burglar.”

  “Well in a way, ma’am, you see…”

  “Is it your practice to rob the people you have helped a few days before?”

  “I didn’t know I had helped. I thought—”

  “Preying on widows and children?”

  Children. Louis liked that one. He made a laughing sound behind his scarf. The poor man winced as if Gracie were having a go at him with a rolling pin. If she got too worked up, she might turn into a bull again, like she had on Wednesday. Louis looked at her slippered feet to see if she’d begun to paw the floorboards. No, she was steady, and in her eyes there was a certain mischief. Gracie was enjoying her intruder a good deal more than he was enjoying her.

  She said to Louis, “Do you think he’s connected to that rash of break-ins that occurred two or three years ago, you remember, over on Michigan Avenue?”

  Arnie squirmed.

  “It was hardly a rash, Gracie. It was just Ruth Benson, who reported one break-in, which wasn’t a break-in at all, the Waverly Weekly said, but her husband up on a ladder working on a second-floor storm window.”

  “Still,” said Gracie, securing her bed jacket which had winked open, turning away from Arnie as she did so, “it appeared to Ruth as if she had a burglar, which counts as something.”

  “Well it counted as something to Mr. Benson, I’m sure, when the police came and hauled him off that ladder.”

  Arnie cocked his head trying to catch all their words. Much of it bounced off his bad ear before his good ear had a chance to make sense of it. He was sure he’d heard the word police again, though.

  “Look,” he cut in. “I really should be going now.” He began to back toward the door. “Come on, Duke, we’ve inconvenienced these folks enough.”

  “Wait.” Gracie put her hand out. “You can’t just go.”

  “Please,” said Arnie. “There’s no need to call the police.”

  “You’re not really a burglar.”

  Arnie shook his head and sighed. “Lady, listen. I got this hook here, I got a bum ear, my left knee is stiffer than a dry cornstalk, I’m saddled with a dog who goes off half-cocked with a minimum of provocation, and to tell you the truth, I’m not the brightest guy in the world. I’m not saying I’m a dimwit, but I ain’t always on the ball, and to be a burglar, it seems to me, you got to be on the ball. So, no, I’m not really a burglar. And if you’re wondering how I ended up inside your house, the fact is I’m something scarier than a burglar. At least it’s scarier to me: I’m old. Old is what made me walk in here. Old and senile. So if you want to be calling somebody, don’t call the police. Call the nursing home squad, because I’ve about had it with myself. I’m ready. Take me away.” Arnie’s arms dropped to his side and he lowered his head.

  Gracie walked over to him and took hold of his arm. “Now don’t talk that way, Mr.…?”

  “Arnie,” said Arnie in a barely audible voice. He looked where she held his arm. It was his right one, the one with the hook, and he’d never known anyone to voluntarily take hold of it before.

  “Well, Arnie, I’m not going to let you talk that way. When you call yourself old, you’re including me too. And I’m not ready for a nursing home. You’re not dead, are you? They only put dead folks in the nursing home. Those places are nothing more than cemeteries where they got beds instead of graves. You ready to lie down yet?”

  “I feel like it tonight,” said Arnie slowly.

  “If you’re ready to lie down, then I don’t know who it was I saw running by me on Wednesday afternoon. Arnie, if you’d’ve had wings you’d have flown. It was one of the most impressive displays of fitness I’ve ever seen, young or old.”

  “I don’t know,” Arnie said. “I can’t keep things straight like I used to. That’s how come I’m here. I was just wandering around, and I wandered right into a strange house. Hell, excuse me, but hell, if I’d have walked into somebody else’s house, I might’ve got my tail shot off.”

  “Louis,” she said, still gripping Arnie’s arm,
“tell him. Tell him what I did this morning.”

  “She sprinkled instant coffee on her scrambled eggs,” said Louis.

  “Thought that jar of coffee was a pepper mill. Have you ever mistaken a jar of coffee for a pepper mill?” she said to Arnie. “I bet not. So don’t be surprised if tomorrow night I wander into your house by mistake.”

  Arnie tried to smile at Gracie. “Really, thank you. You’re being very kind, especially since I’m practically a burglar and all.”

  Gracie cut in, her voice stern. “I’m not being kind, I’m watching out for myself. I’m as old as you are, so what goes for you goes for me. And I’m not sure forgetfulness is our problem. It’s remembering. We have too much to remember. It gets in our way, distracts us, makes us believe we’re there when we’re really here. For the last year, I’ve come down to breakfast every morning, fully expecting my husband to be at the kitchen table eating his cereal and reading the paper. I give a little jump when he’s not there. Next thing I know, I have a plate of scrambled eggs before me and I’m sprinkling instant coffee on them. Whole minutes pass as I wander back and forth in time.”

  “That’s just what I was doing,” said Arnie. “Thinking about LuLu. She’s gone, too. But I’m still talking to her, you know what I mean?”

  Gracie gazed vaguely at him, traveling again in time. Then her eyes cleared to the present. “I know,” she said. “I know what you mean.”

  A minute passed, then Louis spoke up from the dining room. “How about we go into the kitchen for cocoa? Anybody in the mood for cocoa?”

  Duke barked, in the mood for anything. Gracie started for the kitchen, arm in arm with Arnie. “Sure,” she said. “But I’m not making it. Lord knows what I might end up putting into it. Right, Arnie?” She gave him a little look.

  Arnie just smiled and walked beside her, overcome by the novelty of human contact and feeling safely grounded in the present.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LESS THAN twelve hours later, Iris, like Arnie before her, found herself standing before the blue and white frame house that belonged to Gracie and Louis Malone. Iris didn’t know that Arnie had preceded her with a chance visit of his own. She did know he’d come in mighty late last night from walking Duke, and that when he got up this morning, he was in an alarmingly chipper mood but wouldn’t tell her why.