Epitaph

by James Siegel

  "I've got a bunch of friends. The thing is, we keep missing each other. They come to visit me but I never see them."

  "Sure. That happens."

  "I've got to straighten that out."

  "Yeah. You ever get to see anybody?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Like who…?"

  "I've got to straighten it out. Talk to the management here…"

  "Tell you what," William said. "I'll talk to them for you."

  "What…?"

  "Who came to visit you, Mr. Koppleman?"

  "You'll talk to them for me?"

  "Sure."

  "About what…?"

  "I'll straighten it out for you."

  "Somebody's got to."

  "Who came to visit you?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You said sometimes you got to see visitors. Who?"

  "What did your wife die of?"

  "Loneliness, I think." And Rachel nodded, then finally left the room. So long, Rachel. So long. "I don't remember," Mr. Koppleman said.

  "You don't remember what?"

  "Who came to visit me."

  "I'll throw out a name here. Jean Goldblum."

  "Who?" "Jean. Jean Goldblum. He's dead now." "Sorry to hear it." "Yeah. But I think he came to see you." "You said he's dead." "Before he died." "What?"

  "Holy shit!" The orderly was dangling the Hustler centerfold in front of a glazed-eyed resident now. "Look at that." He turned it around and kissed it somewhere south of her belly button. "Sweet…" "Mr. Koppleman?" "Yes?" "Hello." "Hello." "Jean Goldblum came to see you. Remember?" "Maybe." "What did he want?" "I'm not sure." "You're not sure?" "I'm not sure he came to see me." Okay, he'd never been very good at the tango. Now Santini, he could cut the rug like nobody's business. But him-he was in dire need of a few Arthur Murrays.

  "Come on, Mr. Koppleman. Think. I'm in trouble here. I need your help." "Okay."

  "Jean Goldblum came to see you. They brought you in here just like this. You had no idea who he was maybe. Maybe you said get me out of here. But he said wait a minute. Listen to me. I need to know something. Help me out here. So you did. Maybe he even thanked you afterward."

  "Sure."

  "You remember, don't you?"

  "Maybe."

  "Well then." He leaned forward now, close enough to whisper in his ear, close enough to kiss him. "What did he ask you? What?"

  "He asked me why I'd been spared."

  "What?"

  "He asked me why I'd been spared. Me, out of everyone."

  "Spared, Mr. Koppleman? By who?"

  Do you go for the box, or what's behind curtain number two, the TV MC was saying. The black orderly had thrown his Hustler down on the chair and joined the other men by the television.

  "Go for the curtain," he said now, and laughed, "go for the gold, baby."

  "Good question," Mr. Koppleman said.

  "What did he mean?"

  "Good question."

  "Come on, Alfred. Stay with me."

  "He thought I knew something."

  "That's right."

  "He badgered me."

  "What did he think you knew?"

  "Good question."

  "He asked you why were you spared. You. Out of everyone."

  "He badgered me."

  "Do you know who everyone was?"

  "Good question."

  "I do. I know who they are."

  "Who?"

  He pulled the map out of his pocket. "Alma Ross… Joseph Waldron… Arthur Shankin… Mrs. Winters…" ticking them off one by one, hoping the names, like signposts, might lead him home-might lead the both of them there.

  "See, Mr. Koppleman. Everyone."

  "Okay."

  "They weren't spared. That's what Jean knew. That's what Jean found out here, isn't it? But you were."

  "What?"

  "You were spared."

  "By who?"

  "Good question." He felt drained. Yes he did. A couple of times around the dance floor and he was ready for the oxygen tent. "Mr. Koppleman?"

  "Yes."

  "Hello."

  "Hello."

  "Who were they?"

  "Who were who?"

  "Those people. The ones who weren't spared. Do you know them?"

  "Do I know who?"

  "These people."

  "What people?"

  Okay, Mr. Koppleman had left him. Sure he had. Scurried up a telephone pole, danced along the wire, and was smiling at him-like the Cheshire Cat. William kept at it-for a little while more he did, tried this and that to get him down, but although he tried every way he knew and for longer than he should've, it was no go. Even the fire department couldn't get him down now. So he gave up. The black orderly was fiddling with the TV dial, switching it back and forth with a vengeance. "I'm done," William called out to him. And, in a way, he was. "Leave him there," the orderly said. "I told him to go for the curtain, so he keeps the box and gets skunked." "Yeah," William said. "What a shame." "Just leave him there…" William looked down at Mr. Koppleman, down, because he'd already gotten up to go. "Take it easy," he said. But he didn't think Mr. Kop- pleman heard him. "I've got to straighten this out," he said. You and me both, William thought. You and me both. There were just a few more places to go before he left Miami. He called the number again, the last place Koppleman had lived before he'd been put out to pasture in Golden Meadows. He told the woman he was coming to see her. She was, it turned out, the landlord. But not of much. The neighborhood was, if anything, a step down from the one he'd just left-which was saying something. And the building she lorded it over didn't put up much of an argument to change your mind. It was a sort of transient hotel, what they used to refer to in the old days as a fleabag, back before roaches relegated fleas to second banana in the order of household pests. There was a big one just inside the front steps-about the size of a good Havana cigar. It was taking a midday stroll on a stained carpet the color of pea soup. Two men with paper bags in their hands sat there staring at it like handicappers watching the pre-race walk-through.

  "Bless you," one of the men said to William when he walked by, his hand out for donations, echoing the girl in white shorts from earlier. William put a dollar bill in it, wondering what he was going to do with all those blessings; maybe he could hold some in reserve for a rainy day.

  The woman sat inside a glass-enclosed cubicle, watching a small TV.

  "Excuse me," William said, talking through a hole he assumed was for that purpose.

  "Twelve-fifty a night," she said. "Just like it says outside. We close the doors at eleven sharp and no funny business in the rooms."

  "I don't want a room," William said.

  "Then you came to the wrong place," she said, irri- tatingly, looking at the TV. "If you were going to the beach, you're lost. If you were going to the dog races, you took the wrong turn."

  William said, "I came to talk to you about Mr. Koppleman."

  Now, at last, she looked up at him.

  "So?" she said.

  "So?"

  "So what about Mr. Koppleman. This is a television. This is the Guiding Light. I watch the Guiding Light every day-I've watched it every day for twenty years. So what about Mr. Koppleman?"

  "When," William said, looking at his watch, "is it over?"

  "Three."

  "Fine. I'll wait."

  He walked back to the only open chair in the lobby and sat down. There was a fan in the glass cubicle, but there wasn't a fan anywhere else. In five minutes he went from perspiration to actual rainfall. No kidding. He was slowly creating his own lake, Lake William; people would be able to rent rowboats on it and take a nice Sunday afternoon picnic by its shores. It would be listed in Mr. Leonati's guidebook under Florida attractions, right up there with Elmo's Alligator Farm and the Official Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum. If he were especially lucky, it might even make the museum.

  At three o'clock, he sloshed back over to the glass booth but the television was still on.
>
  "General Hospital," she said.

  "All right," William said, "all right." He took out his wallet and counted out twenty dollars, then held it up where she could see it.

  "Great," she said. "I'll go right out and order the fur."

  She took forty. (The equivalent, by the way, of six frozen Shakeys Pizzas, eight chicken pot pies, six cans of Chef Boyardee spaghetti, two loaves of bread, eleven cans of Bumble Bee tuna-or about two good weeks of eating. Not that he wasn't buying something nourishing here.)

  He asked her how long Mr. Koppleman had lived there. Long. And who'd put him into Golden Meadows. His son. And why? Have you seen Mr. Koppleman? He was starting to walk into walls. And if he'd always lived in Florida? Uh uh. New York. And why'd he leave New York for here? Because his doctor recommended it. Because he liked the Dolphins. Because he was old. Who knows. That's what old people do. Aren't you here? And then just one more thing. Yes? What part of New York had Mr. Koppleman come from? Flushing. Yes, William said. Yes. Now there was one place left to go. Just one. He drove out of the city, out of the greater Miami area, down U.S. 1 to Homestead. Years ago, someone had mentioned that that's where he'd gone. To Homestead. That you could find him almost any day of the week down at the public golf course practicing his short game. William counted down the miles as he neared the city limits, and when he grew tired of counting down the miles, he started counting down the years. Then he gave up. The public golf course was easy to find-Florida was good about things like that. Lots of signs directing you to lots of places you really didn't want to go. But when he got there, he was right where they'd said he be. Only today, he was practicing his drives, banging them this way and that, trying to get the club handle around a belly that was starting to resemble the Pills- bury Doughboy's. William wondered if he still drummed his fingers across it, still imitated all those tough guys that only popped up on late-night TV now. Actually, William wondered about a lot of things. He was trying to think of the right greeting. What you say to someone who you haven't seen in an eternity. What you say to someone who you used to work with, used to tail like Tinker Bell on his trips to Never-Never Land. And he was trying to think of something that he'd never been able to think of. What you say to someone who's fucked your wife. But he needn't have bothered. Santini turned and saw him first. "What do you know," he said. "It must be old home month." Santini looked like an old duffer. Shocking. Except that's what he looked like too. Oh yeah. "How are you, Santini?" "Down to an eighteen handicap," he said. "Not too shabby. You play?" "No." "Sure. You can never get on a course up there. I remember." Santini turned and sliced another one into the tree line. "Shit. You'd think I wouldn't do that anymore." "It's a hard game." "You can say that again." Santini turned back around.

  "You know, you don't look too terrible. Kept the weight off at least."

  "Yeah."

  "Want to grab a beer?"

  "Why not."

  Santini led him to a refreshment stand dotted with white plastic tables, almost all of them filled with other old duffers who looked just like him. "How's it goin'?" a few of them muttered as they passed by with two tepid beers.

  They found a table to themselves at the back of the terrace.

  "So," William said, "Jean came to say hello." Old home month, Santini had said. His first look at William in God knows how long and that's what he'd said.

  "Yeah." Santini took a long swallow. "Ahhh."

  "What did he want?"

  "You know Jean. Who knows?"

  "Yeah. I know Jean."

  "He said he was working on a case."

  "What did you say?"

  "I laughed. I think."

  "He was."

  "Was what?"

  "Working on a case."

  "Well, what do you know." Santini took another swallow.

  "Did he mention anything about anything?"

  "I didn't ask. I don't play detective anymore. I play golf."

  "Sure."

  "How about you, William? You working on a case too?"

  "He's dead, Santini. Jean died."

  Santini took another swallow, but if the first one had been long, this one was longer, real long, and after he finished, he put the glass down slowly, real slow.

  "Yeah, well, that seems to be happening to everybody I know, isn't it. What happened-he get hit by a bus?"

  "Heart attack."

  "Couldn't be. He didn't have one."

  "Maybe he developed one right at the end."

  "Not a chance. You were always the one with the heart. Remember?"

  "I remember."

  "And you still have it, I bet. Is that what this is all about? You taking over for Jean-for old times' sake?"

  "For old times' sake."

  "Well, be careful, William. When I laughed at him, Jean said he hadn't lost it. Maybe. But you never had it. Understand-one friend to another."

  "Sure. I'll be careful."

  Then they started talking about old times, lots of old times, all the old times except, of course, one. But then, after a half hour or so, it was as if the gulf of missing years began to widen, till they were both on opposite shores, shouting to be heard but too far away to be understood. And they were just two old guys who used to know each other.

  Santini began to play with his driver, twisting it this way and that, executing phantom half swings at the slate tile floor. William finished his beer, wiped his mouth, and got up.

  "Well, it was nice to see you, Santini."

  "You too, William."

  He turned to go. "William?" William turned back around, all the way back around, thirty-five years back around. "It could've been anybody, William. Understand? Anybody. I'm just sorry it was me." "Yeah," William said. "So am I, Santini. So am I."

  SIXTEEN

  To begin then, begin at the beginning.

  The very beginning. Construct a scenario, one scene at a time, follow it through to the final curtain, and if you don't applaud-if you don't stand up and give it a goddamn ovation, start over.

  If it's too much to swallow, Jean used to say, spit it out.

  He was home now. Back in his apartment. And though he'd only been gone three days, it felt like three years. At least. He hadn't just come back older either, maybe wiser too.

  No one had been there to greet him, which was just as well, since he hadn't been in the mood for it, and wouldn't have had anything to say. They, however, would have had a lot to say to him; Mr. Wilson had died. Chalk up another one for the carnivores. They weren't there because they were all at his funeral. It was, he heard later, a dignified, if sparsely attended, affair.

  To begin then, begin at the beginning.

  The first thing he'd done, the very first thing, even before unpacking or taking a shower or knocking one back, was enter Mr. Wilson's room like a thief in the night.

  He knew Mr. Wilson had died the moment he walked into the room. Someone had put all of his possessions into boxes, one on top of the other, forming a kind of poor man's pyramid. His Harlequin collection took up two boxes by itself. His pictures had been taken off the walls, his clothing wrapped in plastic sheets, the floor swept clean. Mr. Wilson's death hadn't been tidy-he'd lasted for over a week, in and out, up and down-but what he'd left behind was. You could wrap it with a bow, you could give it the white glove test-it was suddenly as antiseptic as a newly available hospital bed.

  William was there for a purpose, and even though his sudden knowledge of Mr. Wilson's death made him feel more like an intruder, and not less, and also, by the way, made him feel diminished, diminished by one fewer person who would ever share his bridge chair, purpose stuck. Mr. Wilson had been a collector of sorts, not just of Harlequins and Senior Citizen Workshop pamphlets, but of everything else. Like phone books, maybe. Not just this year's, but last year's, and even the years before that. That was his reason for being there, to see if Mr. Wilson's collection of knickknacks included Ma Bell.

  He had to sift through several boxes, three in fact, before he found it did
. The phone books went back fifteen years. Even the Yellow Pages. William put those aside, and carried the regular listings back to his room. He should've made two trips but he did it in one, groaning and grunting all the while (his shoulder was tormenting him with particular vengeance today and arthritis had settled into his knee joints like an irritating relation that has no intention of leaving).

  To begin then, begin at the beginning.

  It didn't take long to find what he was looking for. Even though he had to go back ten years before the list was complete. Then he had it, laid out before him in black and white, another expression Santini was fond of using, and understandably, since that was very much the way he saw the world.

  The phone book from ten years ago had them all. Kop- pleman to Winters-every last one of them. Shankin dropped from the phone book a year later. Waldron and Timinsky a year after that. Mrs. Winters-our lady of the Christmas card-was next. Then a banner year-every- one exiting except Koppleman, who lasted until just two years ago.

  There-everyone present and accounted for, sir. Black and white.

  It suddenly seemed to him that he'd gone on a long trip only to walk downstairs. They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, but he'd managed to turn the aphorism on its head. His journey of one step had begun with a thousand miles. The answer had been in Mr. Wilson's phone books all the time, resting one floor down while he sweated his way through southern Florida like a tourist with a limited timetable. So much to see and so little time to see it.

  To begin then, begin at the beginning.

  The beginning was Shankin. Chronologically speaking, it began with him. So that's where he began too, starting the very next day after a very bad night, beginning there, then going through the list with chronological precision, excepting for Mrs. Winters, whom he tried third due to a hunch of his. By then, of course, the pattern was set in stone, and it wouldn't have mattered what order he'd gone in, the order being irrelevant, since the results were, in each and every case, the same.

  They were all, each and every one of them, in Flushing. He took the same bus he'd taken a week before to Jean's funeral, and that he'd taken again to visit Rodriguez and Weeks. They were becoming old friends, the bus driver-a fat black woman-and him. She just about smiled at him when he climbed aboard. She nearly said hello and asked him where he got such a fancy tan. She almost refused to accept his money. Okay, so maybe they weren't that good friends, maybe he was taking a little license here, but a few more bus rides and who knew? This Flushing thing, after all, was getting to be a habit.