Laughing Man (16 page)

"It doesn't look like the face of a toad?"

"It's a beautiful face," Patricia repeated. "Jack, can you get up?" She glanced at the open window. "I'm going to close that," she said.

"No, don't!" Erthmun protested.

She hesitated only a moment, then stepped over to the window and slammed it shut. Erthmun looked confusedly at it, as if uncertain why he had opened it in the first place.

Patricia put her hands under his arms. "C'mon, Jack, we've got to get you out of here and to a hospital. You may be suffering from hypothermia."

"I've got . . . a joke," Jack whispered.

"A joke? Sure. Tell it to me on the way to the hospital."

"No. Let me tell it to you now."

She still had her hands under his arms. She thought he felt very cold beneath his heavy jacket. She let go of his arms, straightened, looked down at him. She could see only the back of his head. "If I let you tell me the joke," she asked, "will you let me take you to a hospital?"

"To a hospital? Yes," he whispered.

"Okay. Tell me the joke."

"It's another word joke, another pun," he whispered, and turned his head a little so he could see her out of the corner of his eye.

"Yes. Good," she said. "A pun. Tell it to me."

He turned his head back, fell silent a moment, said, "I don't remember it. It had to do with classical music."

"Classical music?"

"Yes."

"But you don't remember it?"

"Don't remember it? Yes. I don't remember it."

"Does that mean you'll cooperate with me now?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"Good." She put her hands under his arms again to help him up.

He shook his head. "No. I remember the joke."

"Jack, for Christ's sake, this really is not the time for jokes."

"It is," he whispered. "Of course it is." He turned his head and looked pleadingly at her. "Who tells jokes, Patricia?"

"Huh?"

"
People
tell jokes.
People
tell jokes! Let me tell you mine. Then I'll go wherever you want me to go."

B
efore their homelessness, the young couple had read both the
New York Times
and the
Post
religiously. It had seemed to be a necessary part of living in society. They had both kept up with politics and social issues, and they had read the comics and sports pages, too. He had liked baseball and football. She had liked tennis and auto racing.

They no longer read newspapers. It didn't seem necessary because they didn't feel that they were a part of society anymore. They felt that society had rejected them, had spit them out.

If they had continued reading newspapers, they would have seen news about the second massive storm in less than a week that was heading through New York State, driven by fierce arctic winds. So, when the temperature dropped precipitously, and the winds picked up, and the snow started, and when the young man's trick knee began to ache, it was their first hint that they were in trouble, that their plan to make it to the George Washington Bridge today would have to be postponed. That they'd have to find some kind of shelter quickly.

They were on West 161st Street. The Hudson River was not far to the west. To the east, a row of sad brownstones stood empty. This, they decided, was their salvation.

"H
ere's the joke," Erthmun declared. He had begun to shiver. It wasn't continuous—it came and went—and Patricia didn't know if this was a good sign or a bad sign.

"Yes, the joke," Patricia coaxed. "Go ahead." She was still standing behind him. Snow was pelting the window with a random
tap-tap-tap
.

Erthmun sighed, shivered. "Classical music," he said.

"Do you know about classical music?" He was slurring his words now, and Patricia thought this was a bad sign.

"Yes, I do," she said, though it was a lie. She wanted to get him moving.

"Yes," he said, repeated, "Classical music," and added quickly, "What did the . . ." He stopped.

"What did the . . . what?" Patricia coaxed.

"What did the . . . shape-shifting classical composer . . ." He stopped. He was slurring his words badly now. Patricia could hardly understand him.

"What did the shape-shifting classical composer . . . what?" she coaxed.

"What did the shape-shifting classical composer say?"

"I don't know."

"He said this: He said, 'I'm . . ." Erthmun shivered, shook. "He said, 'I'm Haydn now, but I'll be Bach later.'"

Patricia laughed quickly.

"I'm Haydn now, but I'll be Bach later," Erthmun repeated.

Patricia said, "It's funny, Jack. Can we go now?"

"Funny?" Jack pleaded. "Is it?"

She said, "Jack, I can't understand you. You're slurring your words."

"Is it funny?" he repeated, emphasizing each word.

She understood him. She said, "It is, Jack. It's funny. Didn't I laugh?"

He shivered again.

"Didn't I laugh?" Patricia repeated.

"Yes," Erthmun said.

"So we can go now?"

"Go now? Yes," Jack managed.

B
reaking into one of the abandoned brownstones hadn't been as easy as the homeless couple had imagined. They had chosen one whose door still was planked shut because the others, they decided, were probably filled with druggies and other homeless people. But getting the plank off the door was no easy matter. The young man had thought he could simply pull it loose by hand, but it had been nailed into the oak door frame with huge nails, and though he and his wife both tried, they soon realized that pulling the plank loose without some kind of lever would be impossible.

He told her to wait on the steps of the brownstone while he went looking for something with which to pry the plank loose. The snow, by then, had begun curling around them like a cloud, and the wind was painfully cold, so she agreed to wait for him in a little sheltered area to the right of the front door.

He looked in the storm for quite a while; at last, he found an abandoned car whose trunk wasn't latched securely. He located a tire iron in the trunk—this was a providential find, he decided—made his way through the storm back to the brownstone, and pried the plank loose from the front door. It was a chore that made his hands ache from exposure to the cold wind and his arms ache from the effort, so when he was done, he cursed into the storm and threw the tire iron away in anger.

The inside of the brownstone was a place of devastation. A stairway that had once led to the second floor was gone. A homemade wooden ladder stood in its place. Much of the first floor was missing, revealing a basement full of litter and yellow dust. Above, snow was making its way through what could only have been a hole in the roof, down a short hallway, and then over the landing.

The young woman said, "This is an awful place." Her husband agreed.

They decided that as soon as possible, they would leave. But for now, it was their only shelter.

They climbed the homemade ladder to the second floor.

E
rthmun dreamed of running. He dreamed that the tall, golden grasses moving past him, as he ran, coalesced into one monolithic golden form because he was running so fast. He dreamed that the sun raced him through the day, and that he outran the noises of insects and birds, and he saw other insects, and other birds, in a blur, trying in vain to flutter out of his way. But he was Death, and he was Life, and nothing could get out of his way, and nothing could stop him.

It was a wonderful dream, and he did not wake from it at once.

P
atricia David said, "He's smiling."

The doctor standing with her at Erthmun's bedside said, "A dream."

"I know," said Patricia David. "I assume that's a good sign."

The doctor shook her head a little. "It's a dream, that's all."

I
n the empty brownstone on West 161st Street, the young homeless couple had busied themselves with talk of architecture because they were trying to ignore their hunger pangs, their desperation, and the storm that had worked into an urban fury beyond the tall windows. Most of these windows were cracked, though none on the second floor were broken, and some had been covered with plywood that, oddly, still smelled of glue and formaldehyde, and still bore a fresh, orange cast.

The young man had said, "They don't make houses like this anymore."

The young woman had agreed, and then announced that it was a Federal-style house, to which the young man chortled and said that of course it wasn't a Federal-style house, it was a Late Victorian house.

There were four rooms on the second floor. They were of a uniform size—large enough for a double bed and a couple of dressers, though the rooms were empty now—and each had a small closet with a closed door. The young couple had not looked into any of the closets because their curiosity was not at peak today, and because they did not imagine there was anything in these closets that they wanted to see, or that would be useful to them.

There was also a bathroom, sans fixtures, except for a water-stained oak medicine cabinet with a cracked mirror. All the walls had been done in a bold, blue-flower print wallpaper that was remarkably well preserved, though water-stained, too, and the floors were hardwood, covered with a fine gray dust, which was undisturbed; the young couple had accepted that this was a good sign.

They were huddled together in a room that was protected from the direct onslaught of the wind and so was a few degrees warmer than the other rooms. The young man said, "It usually doesn't get this cold in New York."

"But it gets real hot in the summer," the young woman said.

"I wish it was summer now," said the young man.

They fell silent after that, and they maintained silence for quite a while. They did not want to believe that the storm was intensifying, although it was obvious from the whining noise the storm made against the window glass. They didn't want to admit, either, that the day was ending, that the pale light in the house was beginning to fade. Cold, darkness, and hunger in such a place as this was not what they had planned for themselves a year earlier. They had planned babies, mortgages, car payments, barbecues on balconies that overlooked Central Park.

E
rthmun's dream of running ended and became a dream of disease. He saw the earth beneath his feet rise up in great globular pustules that ran with putrefaction and partly coagulated blood. This blood clogged the mouths of living things around him—insects, animals, birds, people at play—and made them gasp for air and fall dead. Then they became globular pustules that ran with putrefaction and coagulates that clogged open mouths; these open mouths appeared from the earth around him, from within mounds of fallen leaves and punctured mushrooms and flower petals. These open mouths became open eyes that were sky-blue, and they quickly became clouded with coagulates. Then there were faces in the earth, open rosebud mouths and open sky-blue eyes, and noses clogged with coagulates and clumps of earth.

Then the earth was alive with dark creatures that ran naked through golden grass and mounted one another and laughed and ate and ate and ate, and mounted one another, and mounted one another and watched the air change and the living things sleep, and dream, and die, and then they died, too.

And the earth was a place of disease and cold and death. Erthmun himself was running naked in this place. His bare feet plunged into hip-deep snow, and he leaped as if he were weightless through it. Then the snow caught him, held him, clogged his mouth, his nose, clouded his eyes, became warm, became clumps of wet, warm earth, became great globular pustules that spouted partially coagulated blood and putrefaction, and then there were mouths in the putrefaction, mouths spitting out the coagulates, mouths screaming, mouths crying. "I am human! I am human!"

"My God!" breathed Patricia David.

"Mr. Erthmun," said the doctor who had been standing by the bedside with her; the doctor was shaking Jack, now, trying to rouse him. "Wake up, Mr. Erthmun! Wake up!"

"Jack?" Patricia whispered.

T
he young woman whose name was Greta felt delicious, real, alive. She felt as if she could jump from her fifth-floor window, land unscathed in the park, and then run for hours and hours without losing her breath. She thought that she had once actually done just that sort of thing, but in a different place. Not her childhood home in Pennsylvania, but some other home. She tried to remember it. She saw trees and hills in her mind's eye, and the name of the place itself tickled and teased her memory but stayed just out of reach.

F
ive stories below, at Columbus Circle, she could see that some of the police cars were leaving. She thought again that she was somehow responsible for what they had been doing in the park, but when she tried to recall exactly how she could have been responsible, she got only a quick sense of desperation, then a feeling of orgasmic satisfaction. It was very stimulating, so she tried to tweak the memory often as she sat at her window. If she had cared to look, she would have seen her dim reflection in the window glass, would have seen her quivering smile come and go as if in time with her inhales and exhales. And, not for the first time, she would have wondered just what sort of creature she was.