Four Days with Hemingway's Ghost (12 page)

“Who?
  Who in the devil are you talking about?”

“
Blanche!  Blanche
lived there! 
My wife!
”

Chapter 1
3

As Ernest and I made our way past a drug store, a restaurant, a pizza joint and all the rest, I was far too deep in a funereal funk to notice the buildings.  Sure, I was glad as hell that I’d remembered who my wife was and that she was such a kind, caring human being.  She was a woman so good that her life had always meant more to me than my own.  But it was also mentally paralyzing knowing I may never return to her.  I’d answered a couple of Ernest’s questions after we passed Blanche’s place, but after that I could no longer make sense of his words.  I didn’t try to.  I was too embedded in dark worry. 

We’d been traipsing two full blocks down the gray sidewalk before Ernest’s words began penetrating my consciousness again.  He’d been leaning into my face and talking to me, but until now I’d heard none of it . . . .

“For God’s sake, Jack, pull
yourself
together.  Calm down, son.  Nobody has yet said you’re not going back to her.”

“Nobody has said I
am
either,” I came back, as we stopped to wait for a red light on the corner of Main and Roosevelt.  Ernest said nothing more.

When the light turned green, we headed across the street and made our way through a flock of pedestrians crossing from the opposite corner.  When we reached the other side, we passed a subway entrance and got into the first cab on line at the curbside taxi stand.  The driver was a young guy with long chestnut hair and granny glasses perched on the bridge of his nose.  He looked like a 1960’s throwback.  I figured he was a college student since there were textbooks strewn on the front seat next to him.  The cab’s radio had been playing loudly when we first approached, but he switched it off when we climbed in.

Ernest whispered from the side of his mouth, “Tell him we’re heading to the Algonquin Hotel at 59 West 44
th.”

I did and then saw the kid’s face light up in the rearview mirror.  Manhattan was a good distance away.  He’d be able to run up quite a few bucks on the meter. But he had other ideas.

“How about I don’t turn the meter on,” he said, now looking at me in the mirror?  “I’ll take you to the hotel for just a flat twenty bucks.”

I turned to Ernest who was shaking his head no.  He handed me five crisp, new twenties and whispered, “Tell him to turn the meter on.”

I did.  And on the other side of a glass partition the driver disgustedly flung the meter’s metal flag up and “
hrmmphhed
” one time before pulling away from the curb.

“I thought you guys didn’t deal with money,” I said to Ernest. “You said you didn’t carry any, didn’t need to.”

“When we have to, we do.”

“Where’d you get it?”

Wiggling two fingers in the breast pocket of his beige safari shirt, he said, “I just reached in here, and voila, five double sawbucks.”  Then, in the same low voice, he said, “It’s crowding two o’clock.  What do you say we have a drink when we get to the hotel?”

“You bet!  I can use a
few
.”

Smiling now, he said, “When we get to the Algonquin, we can talk about what’s bothering you.”

“Forget it, Ernest.  I don’t care about the driver.  I want to talk right now.  He’s not going to hear anything; he’s got the radio going.  He’s in his own world now.  And you know what . . . ?  I really don’t give a shit if he thinks I’m talking to myself back here.”

I said that, but we still kept our tones low, and I glanced at the rearview each time I spoke.  If the John Lennon lookalike happened to glance back while Ernest was speaking and saw I wasn’t, well, good—let him think he was losing it.  It would serve him right for copping a bad attitude.

In the back of the cab, Ernest gave me his fullest attention as I unloaded all my fears.  Despite what I might have thought after reading so much about him in books, he was a damn good listener.  Since I’d met him he’d never once tried to monopolize a conversation.  But when it was Papa Hemingway’s turn to talk, one listened closely.  There was a good chance there was something to learn.  And that’s what I did when he gave me a lecture of sorts. 

He told me that no matter how great one’s fears are
,
it does absolutely no good to worry about them because if things turn out for the worst, nothing can change that.  All the fretting in the world wouldn’t help me.  And, on the other hand, if things did work out well, I would be a damned fool to have made myself miserable for no reason.  He also told me that he’d learned that lesson when he was but nineteen years old on the Italian front.  When both his legs were full of hot shrapnel, he carried an injured soldier through a barrage of gunfire to safety.  It was a lesson that had stuck with him for the rest of his life. 

“Sure,” he said, “throughout my lifetime many people saw me as insensitive.  But that was only because I kept control of my emotions rather than let them take over me.”  He also told me the Silver Medal of Bravery he brought home to Illinois was nice to have, but the lesson he’d learned from the experience proved to be far more valuable than the award itself. 

It was all good advice, and I was thankful for it.  But I well knew it would take an awful lot of practice and willpower to make it work.  Nevertheless, I made a mental note of all he’d said just in case I lived to write about him.

Our driver took a different route back to Manhattan than we took coming out to Queens.  Because it was mid-afternoon and traffic wasn’t all that bad, we were making pretty good time racing up Roosevelt Avenue in the shade of the elevated subway tracks.  As I looked out the window, every city block seemed the same as the last, a blurred chain of parked cars and dark storefronts. 
But  once
we reached Jackson Heights, the monotony abruptly ended when I recognized one particular street intersecting the avenue.  I remembered that for two years, when I had first met Blanche, I used to turn up this very same
street  five
days a week to pick up my taxi. 

Whizzing by it now, I was suddenly mugged by a memory I definitely didn’t need.  What I’d done back then was not an isolated incident.  I did it three or four times a week.  A driver from another shift had rigged the
cab’s
ignition switch.  It was set so that when the key was turned and held while
driving,
the off duty light on the roof would light up without turning the meter on.  And I’d done it many times.  It was the exact same thing the young man sitting in front of Ernest and me had tried to do on this ride.  But back then I’d told myself there were plenty of other drivers who’d done it a lot more often than I had.  I was like an alcoholic who always rationalizes when he sees another worse off than himself.  I kept telling myself that at least I’d kept a handle on my larcenous habit. 

Sitting quietly in the back of the cab with Ernest, I tried putting the advice he’d just given me to work.  I tried to keep my imagination and fears from getting the best of me.  It didn’t work.  And when we crossed the 59
th
Street Bridge, the lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel’s classic song
about the structure started playing inside my head.  When they reached the part about “feeling groovy,” I could only sneer at myself and shake my head in disgust.

Fortunately it was only a matter of minutes before we pulled in front of the Algonquin Hotel.  The driver shut off the meter, turned to me, hiked his glasses up his nose a bit, and said, “Okay, that’s $28.40.”

I put two folded twenties into the small till at the bottom of his protective glass shield then tilted it his way.

“Keep the change, pal.”

“Hey, thanks a lot.  I appreciate that.”

“
Aaaahhh
,” I said, waving him off with a small ironic smile on my face, “just think of it as a
godsend
.” 

And right then Ernest swung open the driver’s side back door and stepped out onto 49
th
Street.  I just sat still and watched the driver’s reaction.  His eyes popped out so far I thought they’d knock his glasses off his nose.  Frantically he jerked his head and buggy eyes back and forth from me to the door and back again.  Then the door slammed closed.

“What the hell?” the driver said in a near shriek.

“What?”

“Didn’t you just see the door open and close?”

“Sure.” 

“What’re you some kind of magician?”

Leaning toward him now and looking from side to side as if I were about to let him in on a big secret, I said, “No.  I’m no magician.  But I do know a thing or two.  And one of them is that there are forces out there you
don’t
want to be messing with.  You
don’t
want to be pissing them off.”

“
Whaddaya
mean?  What forces?  Who are you talking about?”

“Just remember, thou
shalt
not steal.  I’d start using that flag on your meter a little more if I were you.”  Widening my own eyes now, I gave him a big toothy grin and said, “See
ya
!”

I hauled myself out of the cab and joined Ernest on the sidewalk.  The guy still hadn’t pulled away.  I turned to look at him one last time.  He was nose to his window, and he was staring at me all goo-goo eyed as if I were one of the disciples.  Ernest roared and patted me on the back as we stepped toward the hotel’s front door.  A doorman decked out in a dark, gold-trimmed uniform, hat and all like an airline
pilot’s
, nodded and opened the door as I approached.  Nodding back, I took my time so Ernest could whisk himself in first.   

The Algonquin’s lobby was nearly deserted.  Subtly lit, the spacious room was elegant with all its dark wood pillars and trim.  There were leather sofas, a few scattered palm trees, and a terrific old grandfather clock.  All of it helped give the place a cozy, relaxed ambience.  With Ernest alongside me, I marched up to a front desk that was as wide as some I’d seen in airports.  A bespectacled, middle-aged lady waited there with a smile.

“Hi, I have a reservation.”

“What is your name, sir?” she asked, laying her manicured fingers on a computer keyboard.

“Ernest, oh,
excuse
me; I mean Jack Phelan.”

Looking over her horn-rimmed glasses now as if she were about to ask me if I was sure I knew who I was, she began to type.  Feeling like a fugitive, a flimflam man, and a jerk all squeezed into one, the best I could do was offer her a weak smile.  She accepted it and lowered he eyes to the screen.  Ernest got a kick out of the whole deal and gave me a playful jab in the ribs.  Without turning toward him, I snuck him a little elbow-shove on the chest.

Other than that, our stay was uneventful.  We each had two drinks at the Algonquin’s “Blue Bar” where some of Al
Hirschfeld’s
art adorned the wooden walls. The bartender told me that Mister
Hirschfeld
had once been a regular patron at the bar.  After he left to serve some other customers, Ernest told me that Mister
Hirschfeld
had once done a caricature of him for a magazine cover.  He also said that
Hirschfeld
had passed away at the age of 99 a few years back and that he had seen him “upstairs” twice. 

We didn’t stay very long at the bar, and that was a good thing because when I got the bill for my two Corona’s and Hem’s two Daiquiris, I had to hand over every penny of our remaining sixty dollars to cover them and the tip.  Reluctantly letting the bills slip from my fingers, I thought how nice it must be to live above the clouds where money is not needed.  I also thought how, even though it sounded like my kind of place, I was still not in a hurry to get up there.  The next day would be my fourth with Ernest, and I desperately hoped that when it ended I would return to Blanche.  I wanted the opportunity to love her again.  I wanted to be with her for many more years before being judged.  I wanted; I wanted; I wanted, but that didn’t matter.  In our mortal lives we may be able to do some things that seemingly alter our destinies, but in the long run when it’s all over, we take whatever comes at us.

Ernest and I hit the hay early that night.  Check that.  I should say
I
went to bed early.  Because Ernest no longer required sleep, I didn’t have a clue what he did.  For all I knew he might have spent the entire night watching old reruns of Michael Landon’s
Highway to Heaven.
   

But when Ernest killed the lights, there were two things that I did know for sure.  One was what he’d told me after we had dinner in the room.  He said that
if
we did have one more day together, we would not be spending it in New York.  The other thing that I knew, he didn’t tell me.  I observed it in our room.  I’d had to repeat things to Ernest.  I could tell his mind was somewhere else.  He was jumpy as well.  He kept getting up for fresh glasses of water he didn’t drink, looking out the window, and constantly taking his eyes off the TV when he was in the bed alongside mine.  He would stare at the curtains across the room, and I’d notice the lines in his weather-beaten forehead deepening.  He was as nervous as I’d been in Flushing and during the cab ride back.  The second thing that I knew was that wherever it was we were supposed to be going made Ernest very, very anxious.