In a Mist (3 page)

Alice returns the magazine, grabs Roy's hand and leads him in the direction of the subway.

“You're not going to buy it?” the man calls after them.

On the cramped train, pressed close to Roy, Alice speaks into his ear.

“The last time I looked at the magazine he told me I didn't need to pay in cash, that I could settle up another way.”

By 98
^th
Street their car is nearly empty. Roy looks over his shoulder and observes two women seated at the back. One is black, slim and poised. Her companion, by comparison, is pale and diminutive. Both wear stilettos, too much makeup and tight, revealing skirts. Roy nudges Alice and gestures with his eyes.

“Don't you have whores where you're from?” she asks.

“I suppose so,” says Roy. “Not that I've ever had to pay for it.” Alice pinches his arm.

At the next stop Roy follows Alice off the train and into the failing daylight. They walk north for several blocks and when Roy suggests they got off a stop too early, Alice responds that he gets to see more of the city this way. When they reach 138th Street they come to a diner with a painted sign that reads “The Bridgeview,” and as Roy looks for the bridge, Alice opens the door and motions for him to follow.

Roy notices, as they seat themselves in a booth, that the women from the subway are sitting across the aisle.

“Don't you want to find the place first?”

Alice shakes her head. “It should just be another half a block down.”

“Aren't you nervous? I can never eat when I'm nervous.

“Then just have coffee.”

“I never said I was nervous. I just thought that you might be.”

A young black waiter in a white t-shirt approaches and says, “Mm-hm?”

“Just a coffee.”

“Grilled cheese and fries.”

Roy turns up his nose. Alice swings her foot under the table and taps him on the shin.

When the waiter has come and gone again and his coffee cup is filled, Roy discreetly pours in whiskey from his flask. But he is not so discreet that Alice will not notice, and at the appearance of the flask, her foot touches his leg once more. Roy drinks and as he lowers the cup from his lips he is smiling until he looks around the restaurant and in the back corner sees what cannot be. Beyond the haze of the warmth in Roy's stomach and the grease in the air sits the Houston Street newsman. The newsman smokes a new cigarillo and has removed his watch cap to reveal his balding head. In front of him there is a steaming bowl and a cup like the one Roy holds in his hand. The newsman pays no attention to these things but looks intently across the room, his gaze fixed in the direction of the booth directly across from Roy and Alice. Roy averts his gaze and watches Alice toy with the packets of milk on his saucer. He leans in and whispers, “The man from the newsstand is sitting in the far corner.”

“How is that possible?”

Roy shakes his head and looks again, not because he is unsure of what he has seen, but because he cannot help but look. When Alice goes to the restroom Roy turns in the direction the newsman is looking. The prostitutes sit smoking and laughing, watching the door to see who enters and who leaves. On the wall behind them hangs a photograph of someone who looks like Art Beazley. The black prostitute, Roy decides, is in fact a man. She is better dressed than her companion; from this distance, she is decidedly the more attractive of the two. The shorter woman—a girl, really—wears a white felt hat with a turned-down brim that might have been stylish once but has lost its shape, giving its owner a pitiable, juvenile look.

The waiter places Alice's sandwich on the table. “We're closing in fifteen minutes.”

“Is that Art Beazley in that photo?” Roy asks.

“None other than.” The waiter fills his cup without asking.

As Alice returns from the restroom, she scarcely looks at the man sitting in the corner.

“What do you think he's doing here?”

Alice shrugs her shoulders. “Having dinner.”

“Has he seen us?”

“I don't think so. He's got other things on his mind.” Alice nods in the direction of the prostitutes, and demurely swallows a mouthful of her sandwich.

Roy smiles and says, “I think the tall one's more your type.”

Alice places her napkin on her plate and wraps her scarf around her face.

“You find it cold in here?” asks Roy.

“I'm going. I don't want to stay here any longer.” Alice puts on her coat. “I'll meet you at my place afterwards. You can find your way back from here?”

“You sure you don't want me to come along? I'd like to see this studio.”

“You'll just make me uncomfortable. I'll let you listen to the recording as soon as I get home. One of us has to stay and settle the tab.”

Alice leaves and a moment later the prostitutes make their way to the cash. As the shorter woman asks the waiter for a pack of Pall Malls, the newsman approaches, puts his arm around her and tries to kiss her. When she protests he grabs her by the arm and with his other hand he produces his wallet and insists on paying for her. Roy cannot quite make out their conversation, but he sees the waiter point to the newsman, then to the door. The newsman swears and pounds the counter with his fist, and the few remaining customers begin to take notice. Before the waiter can get out from behind the counter, the transvestite steps in and removes the newsman's hand from the girl's arm.

As they walk out together the waiter blocks the newsman's path and says, “Best wait here until they're gone.”

The newsman throws his hands in the air and at that moment from the dimness of the street there is a panicked scream, and then what Roy imagines must be the sound of a gun, and then silence. The newsman runs out the front door and Roy follows. Outside he sees the newsman kneeling beside the girl, who lies motionless on the sidewalk. There is a dark trickle running from her mouth to her chin. There are tears in the newsman's eyes and he does not notice Roy. There is no sign of the girl's companion and there is no sign of Alice. In the distance is the sound of sirens as Roy hurries down the street.

He is out of breath when he reaches the corner where the studio should be and is greeted by a graffiti-covered facade with plywood over its windows and a door that does not open.

Up the street, a bearded man with no laces in his boots has never heard of a place called Silhouette Studios, and is in need of thirty-five cents. Roy reaches into his pocket and hands the man a quarter.

He smiles. “Check the book in the phone booth around the corner.”

Roy finds the booth, where all the directory pages between “Q” and “V” have been torn out. He picks up the phone, not knowing whom he intends to call. He reaches a hand into his empty pocket, then slams the phone into the receiver in frustration. From the top of the phone something falls to the ground that is immediately familiar to Roy, though in the twilight he does not recognize it to be Alice's address book until he holds it close to his face. It is open to the page for Silhouette Studios. Roy closes the book and attempts to place it in the inside pocket of his coat, which holds his half-empty flask. He shoves the bottom half of the book in his outer pocket as he makes his way back to 138
^th
Street.

The girl's body no longer lies on the sidewalk. There is no ambulance, or police car, or any sign that anything at all has happened. Roy tries the door to the diner and finds it locked. Inside the waiter mops the floor. When Roy bangs on the window with his fist the waiter mutters something inaudible and points to the “Closed” sign on the door. Roy works his way down the street, trying every door along the way.

The fifth door is unlocked. Inside is a musty, narrow, high-ceilinged storeroom. Light from a single bare bulb illuminates a closed door at the end of the room. The walls are lined with metal shelves piled with old newspapers and magazines that spill out onto the floor. From behind the door at the back of the room there comes a sound and Roy decides he does not want to wait for the door to open. On
his way out, he stumbles over a stack of
New Yorkers
and sends them scattering. Someone yells at him from behind.

Roy finds a train waiting at the bottom of the 135
^th
St. stairs. He struggles through the turnstile and onto the nearest car without pausing to find out where the train is bound. Roy collapses in a seat and tries to still his shaking hands. Across the aisle, reading a copy of the
Amsterdam News
, sits the waiter from the restaurant.

“Excuse me.”

The waiter looks up, sees Roy and turns back to his paper.

“Could you tell me where I could find Silhouette Studios?”

The waiter's expression softens. “You're on the wrong side of town. You want
West
138
^th
. Get off at the next stop, turn yourself around. You play?”

“No. Not really. My girlfriend sings.”

“Does she now? That's alright.” The man turns back to his paper, humming a tune that Roy does not recognize.

“Thank you,” says Roy, as he gets off the train. “Mm-hm,” says the man.

Roy surveys the platform while he awaits the southbound train. The faces of those around him are turned away as he tips his flask to his lips.

An hour after he last sees Alice, Roy sits in the lobby of Silhouette Studios, his head in his hands. The radiator ticks with heat. There is an empty water cooler, a half-empty coffeepot, a table covered with scribbled sheet music, and the withered leaves of a dying aspidistra. There are framed forty-fives on the wall, and above a closed, padded door an illuminated sign that reads “Recording: Do Not Enter.” Roy wants to examine the sheet music, to read the labels on the forty-fives, but his uneasy stomach and his throbbing head will not allow it. From the direction of the control room drifts the sounds of the session.

Oh , if you wouldn't mind,
I'd find it divine,
if I could tickle your funny bone.
Some girls like to dance
to be gently romanced,
but I'd like to tickle your funny bone.
No need to be shy,
better to moan than to cry,
oh so sweetly I'd tickle your funny bone.
Twenty dollars no less,
just a drop, not a mess,
such a treat when I tickle your funny bone

The voice that sings is not Alice's and the song makes Roy want to leave. There is a piano break and the padded door opens to reveal a squat, rumpled man with horn-rimmed glasses and rolled-up sleeves. He raises his eyebrows and looks at Roy.

“I'm looking for Alice Alderson,” says Roy.

“Alderson . . . Called to get directions, said she'd be late, never showed.”

* * *

It is not until Roy returns to the empty apartment and checks the answering machine that he realizes her address book is no longer in his coat pocket.

“Listen,” says the voice on the machine, “meet me back at the storeroom on 138
^th
and I'll tell you where to find her. Don't tell no one where you're going and don't bring no one with you.”

Roy barely makes it into the bathroom before he vomits.

He lies on the rumpled sheets of Alice's unmade bed. The apartment provides no comfort without her. It is as
cold and indiff erent to Roy's presence as the rest of the city. His head aches. He rolls over, opens the drawer of Alice's bedside table, and scrounges for a bottle. His hand falls on a photograph, and when he examines it in the dim light he sees Alice standing in a park in the summer heat, her arm around another woman he does not recognize. He swallows two tablets from the bottle, drinks as much water as he can keep down, puts on his coat, and is back on the street in minutes, on his way to the train.

The motion of the train makes his head spin and he is relieved to get off at 135
^th
, though he does not look forward to what must follow. At the storeroom again, this time he knocks on the door, and the newsman, still smoking, greets him. As though in a gesture of good faith, he returns Alice's address book. He then hands him a small, limp package the size of a woman's purse, wrapped in newsprint and bound with string. “You need to make a delivery,” the man says. “You deliver this for me.”

Roy's head throbs, and it is hard for him to stand, though he doesn't dare to sit down. He wonders what might happen if he were to vomit on the magazines strewn about the floor.

“And then you will tell me where Alice is?”

The man smiles sadly, and nods, as if he would tell Roy then and there where Alice is, but he cannot because there is something Roy must do for him first.

“You deliver this to the river. Go down to the bridge and put this in the river, and I'll tell you where she is.”

Roy wants to know why the man doesn't do it himself, how the man will know if Roy has done what has been asked of him, and the newsman says, “I'll know,” without Roy having to ask.

Outside, away from the lingering scent of cigar, Roy makes his way toward the bridge, which the newsman has
told him he will find at the end of 138
^th
. It should make for a short, brisk walk, but there is fear and substances in Roy's blood that make the walk otherwise. To steel his resolve Roy imagines that he is of another era, a young hustler making a name for himself in the big city, all keyed up on dope with nothing to lose, running errands for some racket fronting as a late-night delicatessen. He walks past the Bridgeview, past the boarded-up facade on the corner, until in the distance he sees the darkness of the Harlem river.

It is then Roy happens upon the Wolverine Lounge. There is a brightly lit marquee and he can hear the sounds of swing coming from inside. It is precisely the sort of place he imagined he would find in New York and he thinks, if the night had turned out diff erently, he might have taken Alice here, told her the story of how a talented cornet player named Bix Beiderbecke found his way to New York fifty years before, only to drink himself to the grave at the age of twenty-eight. As he passes under the marquee, a man and a woman emerge from the club. The man is older than the woman, and dressed entirely in black.