by Gene Wolfe
So that much of Lara remained with him. There was nothing else, not a scrap of clothing, not so much as a used lipstick or a comb. Had Lara smoked? No, it had been Fanny, she had smoked a lot, had been almost a chain smoker, he thought. The ashtrays in his apartment were empty, soiled only by dust.
He carried the dirty laundry to the basement and loaded it into one of the washers there, adding granulated detergent from a coin-operated machine. While the washer ran, he read a paper someone had left behind. Innocent people were dying in Africa. The comic page no longer carried Lolly; something new and ugly had been substituted.
The washing machine fell silent, displaying a sodden bundle of cloth. He stuck the bundle into a drier, set it on Delicate, and fed it quarters.
A syndicated columnist with a reputation for wit imagined her interview with the President following a nuclear holocaust. The crossword puzzle demanded seven letters meaning bear. The store was running a big sale on tape decks—his own department. Buy a tape deck at ten percent off, get your choice of any tape in the store for a dollar. He imagined they had been busy and wondered how they had made out without him. Discontinued home computers were on sale too, at forty percent of list.
He stuffed his dry laundry into a pillowcase and carried it back up to his apartment. One shirt and the socks were gone. He returned to the basement and checked both the machines; his shirt and socks were in neither. They had returned, he decided, in some way. North had bought that shirt and those socks in the hotel.
The sweater-vest was still hanging in the closet. So was the overcoat, crowded into the little alcove around the corner from the closet door. He could not find his hat. He had worn it in the car with Fanny, worn it to Mama Capini’s; he recalled hanging it on a peg. But he could not remember taking it from the peg when they left. Had he had it on when he ran into the furrier’s? He did not know, could not remember.
His watch said it was five o’clock. There was food in the apartment, but the things in the refrigerator had no doubt gone bad, sour milk, soft carrots. The margarine might be okay.
He decided he could not face the job of cleaning out the refrigerator (and the bread box, now that he came to think of it) that day. He would eat at Mama’s, and perhaps—
Perhaps something might happen.
His necktie was draped over the lampshade. He buttoned his collar and knotted the tie carefully; he made it a rule never to leave the apartment without a tie—there was always a chance he would run into one of the supervisors. He put on his jacket and his new topcoat.
When he had gone a block, he saw a man’s black sock in the gutter and stopped to pick it up. It was not one of his, but it reminded him that he had often seen clothing lost or abandoned, lying in the street. No doubt his shirt and his own socks were similarly lost and abandoned, lying in the snow of Lara’s city, the city that was so much like, and yet so much unlike, his own. The socks would be separated, he thought; they would be miles apart. No one would get any good from them, unless perhaps a child took one to make a puppet, and a tramp who did not care whether his socks matched chanced on the other. The shirt had been a good one, a real silk shirt. He hoped someone found it before it got run over, before it became a rag like the rags he had passed so often without thinking about where they might have come from.
One of Mama’s sons was at the cash register. He tried to decide whether it was Guido, the son he had talked with in the restroom; he could not be sure. All the sons had always looked much the same to him, glowering men with black mustaches that came and went like customers, full of meat sauce at one moment and gone the next.
“Sit anywhere ya want to,” the son called to him. “It’s pretty early yet.”
He took the table by the window where he had sat with Fanny for lunch. If he had indeed left his hat on a peg in Mama’s, it was gone now. He told the waitress, “I was in here around noon with a lady; she had a salad. I don’t know what it was, but it looked awfully good. Do you remember us?”
The waitress shook her head. “I don’t think I served you, sir.”
“She was—” he tried to remember how old Fanny had said she was. “—about twenty-three. Petite, curly black hair.”
“Probably Gina served you, sir. Gina looks a lot like me.”
“Then would you find her and bring her over here?”
“We got three salads, sir.” The waitress described them. “They’re all pretty good.”
“Find Gina,” he told her.
She left looking sullen, and he studied the license plates of passing cars. It was getting dark, but he could read some of them, and they were perfectly ordinary.
He looked through the pockets of his jacket, moved by the feeling that he had forgotten something. There was nothing in either side pocket, and only a handkerchief—the red one he had carried there for months—in the breast pocket. His checkbook was in the inside pocket, and he pulled it out and examined it. The last check he had recorded there had been written on March eleventh. It occurred to him that he had paid for the doll by check, and that the amount of the check had been large; but he could not remember how large, and he was not sure a check could be presented for collection by a shop in another world, a shop in a dream.
“ … not here,” the waitress announced to his elbow.
He glanced up at her. “I’m sorry?”
“I said Gina’s not here. I looked all over.” The waitress brushed a lock of hair away from her forehead and contrived to appear both hot and tired when she was neither. “Dinner’s just starting, too.”
“Can she do that? Just leave like that?”
The waitress leaned closer. “Gina’s screwing Guido. She can do any damned thing she wants.”
“Is Guido here?” He glanced toward the register. There was no one there.
“Nah, Guido’s gone. He don’t hardly ever stay for dinner. What’d you like?”
He ordered one of the salads, and she drifted away. After a minute or two, he returned his checkbook to his breast pocket, wondering what to do until his food came. He had eaten here for years, usually alone as he was now; surely he had done something. While Lara had lived with him, there had always been things to do, someone to talk with.
Mama Capini pulled out the empty chair and sat down. “Hey, what’s the matter with you? You didn’t get full at lunch? You should of said somethin’, I’d have got you some garlic bread.”
He asked, “Do you remember the girl I brought here for lunch, Mama?”
Mama kissed her fingers. “Sure. You gonna get married?”
“If she comes in, will you tell me?”
“Sure!”
“And remember Lara? Tell me if Lara comes in. Especially if Lara comes in.”
“Sure. You lookin’ for a date?”
“No, I’m just trying to find these people. And if the big man and his wife—that’s the lady in the red dress—come in, let me know about them, too.”
He dawdled over his salad for an hour and half, drinking an espresso and a couple of amarettos. He saw no one he knew, and nothing happened.
At last he paid the check. When he counted his change, it was just money; nor had he seen any bills with strange pictures in the drawer. The man at the register was the one who had told him Guido was crazy, bigger and older than Guido. As he trudged back to his apartment, he wondered vaguely where Guido had gone. Had Guido been drawn into the other world? If so, did he know it yet? Perhaps Gina came from there; if customers could walk through the door from another world, as Joe and Jennifer had, it seemed likely enough that a waitress looking for work might walk through it, too.
Back at the apartment he put on one of his favorite albums, but found that the music that had once charmed him was harsh and ugly now. He turned on the television. After an hour or so, he realized he had no idea what the show was or why he was watching it.
The Store
He had forgotten how new the store looked, how shiny everything was. The walls were faced with limestone, and the co
mpany had them sandblasted every other year. The curving show windows had bright brass frames. Maintenance washed all those windows every morning and polished the frames until they sparkled like gold.
“It’s not open,” a fat woman told him. She was standing in front of one of the windows eyeing a sundress.
“I work here,” he said, and hoped he still did. The store would open at nine-thirty sharp, but main-shift hourly employees were supposed to clock in by eight-thirty. It was three minutes after eight. He went around back and climbed the concrete steps to the employees’ entrance, where Whitey watched to make sure no one punched in for someone else.
“Hi,” Whitey said. “Have a nice vacation?”
He nodded. “Seems like I’ve only been gone for a couple of days.”
It did, and yet it did not. Nothing had changed except for himself.
He resisted the temptation to have a look at his department and took the elevator to the administrative floor. Lie, or tell the truth? Tell them the truth, he decided; he was a bad liar, and he could not think of a story that would explain such a long absence anyway.
The next question was: Mr. Capper or Personnel? Capper was (or he had been) in charge of the department; with Capper on his side, Personnel would not be too rough with him. On the other hand, if Cap was mad—and there was a good chance of that—the personnel manager would resent his not having gone there first, and would probably kill any chance of transferring.
Besides, Personnel was easy to find. Cap might be in the office doing paperwork, but might just as easily be out in the department helping stock. Cap might not even be in yet.
Ella was at her desk doing her nails. She said, “Well … hello!”
There were folding steel chairs for job applicants. He sat in the one nearest her desk. “I’m back,” he said.
“I see.” Ella hesitated. “Mr. Drummond’s not in yet.”
“I’ll wait.”
“I carried you sick for a week.” Although they were alone, Ella lowered her voice. “Then he made me start phoning. Once he even went to your apartment at night and rang your bell, but he said nobody answered.”
“I was away. I got back to my apartment yesterday, and I could see I hadn’t been there. Everything was dusty, you know?”
“You blacked out?”
“I don’t think so. I can remember two nights, one when I was in a hospital and one—no, two—when I was in a hotel room.” Not knowing what else to say, he added, “It was the same room.”
Ella leaned toward him and held out her hand for his. He noticed then how much she looked like Fanny, though perhaps he was just forgetting what Fanny looked like. Ella said, “You’ve been gone over a month.”
He nodded. “I think so.”
Unconsciously he had extended his own hand, and when Ella touched it she felt his bandage. “What in the world happened to you? Your face too—you’ve got a burn on your cheek and one on your forehead.”
“They’ve gone away, pretty much,” he said. “They weren’t very bad.”
“Were you in an accident? What happened?”
He nodded again. “I was in this Chinese shop—Mr. Sheng’s. He had fireworks stored in his basement, and something set them off. I think it was a guy named Bill North. Anyway, North was down there, and he’s a cigar smoker.” Though he felt it might be against his best interests, he grinned. “I was drinking tea with Mr. Sheng and his nephew, and a skyrocket came right up the stairs. It hit the wall at the top and came into the room where we were. It scared hell out of us. Then I guess some more must have gone off, because the next thing I knew I was in the street with my ears ringing and a cop and a paramedic bending over me. They said another ambulance had taken Mr. Sheng to the hospital, but—”
Drummond came in, nodded to Ella, raised an eyebrow at him, then smiled.
Ella said, “Good morning, sir.”
Drummond went into the little private office behind Ella’s reception room and shut the door.
Ella whispered, “I want to go in and talk to Dixie just for a minute. You wait here, okay?”
He nodded, studying her as she went into Drummond’s office. She was a little bit heavier than Fanny, he decided. That was an improvement, if anything. And her hair was brown. He felt sure Fanny’s had been black. Of course, no one was or could be like Lara, and he could never mistake any other woman for her. He had known right away that Marcella was really Lara, although Marcella had been a blonde, or at least had appeared to be. You could never tell, he thought, in black-and-white or in pictures drawn by a second-rate artist.
He glanced at his watch. It was eight twenty-eight, but he did not know just when he had come into the Personnel Office; it seemed to him Ella had been in the private office with Drummond a long time.
There was a drinking fountain in the hall outside. He got a drink, filling his mouth with icy water several times and each time making himself swallow it. He had the feeling that he did not always drink enough water, and ought to make himself drink more whenever he got the chance.
When he went back in, Ella was still in the private office with Drummond. He found Time in a pile of magazines on the end table and leafed through it. The President had reaffirmed his commitment to “ordinary Americans” and endorsed a reduction in Social Security benefits; the Near East seemed ready to explode. He wondered if it would help to send the President to the Near East, then tried to remember whether he had ever seen Time or a newspaper There. “There” was, he discovered, his private name for the other world, for the place where Lara was. He could not remember having seen one, although he could not be sure he had not—
Yes, of course, he had seen Walsh’s picture in the paper. This was Here and that was There. He could not remember if the comics had been the same, or whether that paper had carried any comics at all.
The door of the inner office swung open, and Ella came out. She said, “Mr. Drummond will see you now.” He put down Time and went in.
Drummond smiled and said, “Sit down. I’d like to start by admitting that most of this is my fault. I like to keep tabs on all our employees, and I certainly should have kept better tabs on you.”
He sat and found he was facing a large bronze nameplate as well as Drummond. The nameplate read:
A. DICKSON DRUMMOND
Manager of Personnel
He said, “That’s very nice of you, Mr. Drummond. Only it wasn’t your fault, I know that.” He counted silently to three and added, “I really don’t think it was mine either. It just happened.”
Drummond shook his head. “No, I blame myself. I was on the phone with your doctor a moment ago, by the way. She says it’s been a long time since you’ve been to see her.”
He tried to remember whether he had ever been to a doctor. Surely he had, but he could not recall the occasion. Dr. Pille had been his doctor in the hospital, but that was certainly not what Drummond meant. He said, “I guess it has.”
“We want you to see her right away; let me make that clear. Not next week, not tomorrow, not this afternoon—this morning, as soon as you leave my office.”
“I was hoping to get back to my department, sir. There’s a sale, and they need me.”
“And you can,” Drummond told him, “just as soon as you get back from the doctor. Come up here, show me a note saying she’s seen you, and you can get right back to work.”
A great weight lifted from his chest.
“Your doctor will see you as soon as you get to her office—she doesn’t take appointments. There’s no reason you can’t be back at work before lunch.”
He nodded.
“She asked me to ask you whether by any chance you suffered a blow to the head.”
He nodded. “I slipped on some ice and hit my head on the pavement.”
Drummond smiled again. “It could’ve happened to any of us, couldn’t it? That’s all for now. You go over and see her, and don’t forget to bring me the note.”
He rose. “I won’t, sir.”
“One more thing.” Drummond raised a finger. “While you were missing, I had Ella phone your number. She was never able to reach you, but on one occasion she got someone who said his name was Perlman, or some such. Do you know why he was in your apartment?”
He shrugged. “I guess he must have been from the building management company, sir.”
When he was outside in the reception room again, he tried to remember the telephone calls he had made from United. The harsh male voice—had that been Perlman?
Ella asked, “Everything okay?”
“Fine,” he said absently, suppressing the fact that he had to go see some doctor he could not remember. Had there been a doctor’s bill in the mail in his box? Or in all the stuff that he had picked up at the post office? He had not paid a lot of attention to most of it; he could not remember that either.
“Ella, you said you called my apartment?”
She nodded.
“Mr. Drummond mentioned that, too. He said you talked to somebody named Perlman once.”
Ella shook her head. “I never got an answer at all.” She hesitated. “If you’re going to be here in the store about noon, how about letting Personnel buy your lunch? Sort of celebrate your coming back.”
“You didn’t talk to anybody named Perlman?”
“I didn’t talk to anybody,” Ella said. She seemed suddenly depressed, for no reason he could see. “But I was out for a week with my back, and they got a temp. Dixie’s been blaming me for her mistakes ever since, so she was probably the one that talked to Perlman. But if you ask me it was a wrong number.”
There was an employee lounge on the floor below, a bare and frequently dirty room in which associates who brown-bagged ate their lunches. He fed coins into the coffee machine (recalling Joe in the basement of the hospital), found a clean chair, and sat down.
Doctors had to be paid. He got out his checkbook and read through the stubs. He had written no check to any doctor. None at all. Yet doctors were paid, by someone.