Memory (Hard Case Crime) (16 page)

Her refusal to let him touch her leg had drained some of the excitement from him, and now this thought drained the rest, and suddenly he didn’t want to touch her or kiss her at all anymore. Not because of her, but because of him. He could visualize her sitting there next to him, naked to the waist, her slip all bunched around her middle, hopeful and trusting and shy. He felt as though he’d been playing a cruel practical joke on her.

But to just pull away all of a sudden would hurt her feelings, so he made an excuse. He said, “What time is it?”

“Oh, golly, I don’t know!”

“I better check. I’ll have to turn the light on for a second.”

“Don’t look at me!”

“I won’t,” he promised. He got up from the sofa and felt for the lamp and switched it on, keeping his back to her. Looking at his watch, he said, “It’s quarter to two.”

“Oh. It’s a good thing you thought of it.”

“Do you want me to turn the light back off? While you get dressed?”

“Would you? Just for a minute.”

“All right.”

He switched it off again, and in the darkness heard the rustlings of her. She said, “Isn’t this stupid? I don’t know what it is, it just embarrasses me. I feel a like a stupid little kid or something.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with being modest.”

“But I let you—touch me and all. It’s just silly, that’s all. I can’t find my swea—no, here it is. Just a minute now.”

He waited, standing in the pitch darkness next to the lamp, until she said, “There! You can turn it on now.”

He switched the light on, and they squinted at each other, he standing and she still sitting on the sofa. Her hair was mussed up, and there were high round spots of color on her cheeks like a toy soldier.

She got to her feet, making final adjustments on her sweater, and saying, “I guess you better go now. They’ll be coming home pretty soon.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow night after work,” he said.

“Okay.” She smiled happily, and put her hand on his arm as they walked to the door. He kissed her briefly, and put on his coat, and then kissed her again. Then he left, going out into the cold. She stood in the doorway, hugging herself and smiling after him, and when he got out to the sidewalk he waved to her, and then headed home.

What was he going to do about her? He ought to tell her, or stop seeing her, or
something
. It wasn’t right just to let it ride like this. Up to now it hadn’t bothered him, because going to a movie together or dancing together in a tavern wasn’t very much, and didn’t imply very much. But tonight had implied worlds. He may not have been the first man ever to touch her breast, what with high school hayrides and such, but he was sure in his mind that he was the first man ever to get even a part of her clothing off.

He shouldn’t have done it at all. He shouldn’t even have agreed to come here tonight, he should have made some sort of excuse. But the idea had excited him, and he was still strong with the need for
someone
. So he was using her, and it was cruel. And he didn’t want to be cruel.

If he just stayed away from her for the rest of the time here, he would hurt her badly, and that was no good. He knew how shy she was, and how unsure of herself. If he stayed away from her now, particularly after tonight, it would be brutal for her.

What he had to do was tell her the truth. Tomorrow night. It would have been better to tell her before this, but the important thing was that she be told. Tomorrow night would do.

He made the turn at Charter Street, and walked toward home. At the farther end of the first block, he saw parked ahead of him a brand new highly polished black car, and he stopped, feeling suddenly frightened. It took him a few seconds to understand the cause for the fright, and then he remembered vaguely a recent time when the police had come for him and questioned him in a long narrow room. Had they come in a car like that one ahead? That must be it.

But why had they questioned him? It had had something to do with a sheet of shiny metal. He could remember holding it in his hands, remember his face reflected in its surface, and one of the policeman asking him if he’d ever seen that piece of metal before.

But what was the piece of metal? He couldn’t remember, and he wasn’t even sure they’d ever told him or he’d ever known. Whatever it was, he must have satisfied them that he wasn’t guilty, because obviously they’d let him go. Had it been a robbery or something? He couldn’t remember why they’d picked him up.

He approached the car slowly, wondering if it was after all them again, wanting to ask him more questions, and when he saw that the car was empty he smiled with sudden relief, and lit a cigarette.

He still felt a little shaky, and found himself wishing he was back with Edna again, with his arms around her to drain away the shakiness. He walked on homeward, smiling, thinking about Edna, not thinking about getting back to New York at all.

While he was sorting his pay on the bed, he glanced up and saw the note on the wall and realized it didn’t make any sense. It said:

50 GROVE ST.—NEW YORK—Look In Wallet

But he didn’t have a wallet.

He was just thinking about that tonight, when he got paid, about not having a wallet and so having to carry his pay around loose in his trouser pocket. He remembered thinking about that, and also thinking that he must have had a wallet at some time or another, but a long long while ago. He couldn’t even remember it, it was so long ago.

Then why did he have that note up there? If he’d left himself a note in this room about a wallet, then he must have had a wallet at some time while he’d been living in this room, and he’d only been living in this room for how long?

He couldn’t remember.

He frowned at that, beginning to be disturbed. Until he’d noticed that note on the wall, he hadn’t been worried about anything or even thinking about anything, just going though the normal motions without paying any attention. But now everything was different, now he was starting to be scared.

He looked around the room, and it was full of things he couldn’t understand or justify. Not just the note about his nonexistent wallet, but all the other notes as well; why did he have to have notes telling him about his job and his name and the details of his everyday life? And here was the money on his bed, sorted into neat piles, with one of the piles to be added to the little hoard of money in the dresser drawer, but what was that hoard of money for? And how long
had
he lived here? And why couldn’t he remember ever having a wallet?

With the money and the pay envelope on the bed was a ribbon of white paper that had come with his pay. He opened it in a distracted way, half-expecting it to be packed with the answers to all his questions, and at the same time realizing it wouldn’t have anything to tell him at all.

But it did have two things to tell him: his name, and the date.
Paul Cole
. He not only recognized the name at once, but also recognized that he hadn’t remembered it until he’d seen it. And the date, the twelfth of December, seven days from the babysitting evening with Edna.

What was wrong? Why was his mind so leaden? Why didn’t he remember anything, or know what anything meant?

How long had it been like this? He slept, he ate, he watched television, he went to work. The world was in constant flux, always either getting lighter or getting darker, and at every shade between night and day he had his simple function to perform, requiring no attention and no memory, and he’d never known anything was wrong.

Now he did. If it wasn’t so massive, so total, and yet so vague, he’d be frightened out of his wits, but the wrong was too elusive-pervasive and he was only stunned by it. He sat limp-armed on the bed, thrust out of the mnemonic round of habit, but without strong memories or a sense of identity or place to sustain him. His name was Paul Cole, the date was December twelfth; beyond that he knew nothing.

Well, no. He worked in the tannery, and he’d just been paid, he knew both of those things. This was his room, on the second floor of a house otherwise occupied by a family named Malloy, he knew that. Edna, Little Jack and Black Jack, Ralph, Artie Bellman, and even more, these were all names and faces he knew. It wasn’t as though he were drifting in a vacuum.

But it was! What did that note mean?

50 GROVE ST.—NEW YORK—Look In Wallet

The money was for a bus ticket to New York. The fact drifted into his head with the tardiness of someone who hadn’t really intended to come at all. The little hoard of money in the dresser drawer was being saved for a bus ticket to New York City.

And thence to 50 Grove St.?

Damn!
Where was the wallet? He must have had one, sometime, somewhere, a wallet full of answers, a wallet crammed with statements about himself. But somewhere along the line he had lost it; or it had been stolen from him, and he knew with fatalistic certainty he would never get it back nor ever know what had happened to it.

Curiosity, still sluggish and half-drugged by habit, nevertheless now was stirring, dispelling both the fear and the paralysis of his being wrested from his round of routine. It was curiosity that pulled him finally up off the bed and over to the dresser where, with the money saved in there, he found a note which told him, “Bus ticket, $33.42.” There was seventeen dollars in the drawer, and on the bed another ten to be added to this pile. Next week, then. If there was a plan behind all this, and it seemed to him there had to be, then it had to mean he would leave here for New York City next week.

But why? Why go to New York City? He didn’t know anybody there, didn’t think he’d ever been there in his life. At least, he didn’t remember ever having been to New York City.

But he didn’t remember
anything
. Not anything back of the present routine, at any rate.

He was supposed to go to New York City, that’s all he could be sure of. The reasons for it had once been contained in a wallet, but the wallet was now gone. The only clue he had was the address: 50 Grove St. It was necessary for him to go to 50 Grove St. in New York City, in order to find out why he was supposed to go there.

He shook his head, not liking that. Why should he go running off somewhere without any reason? What was the matter with the life he had here? Was he unhappy here, discontented, ill-treated?

He knew he wasn’t. He knew he liked his job, liked the people he lived with and the people he worked with, liked the girl he went on dates with. Why leave any of this, even for a little while? It was best to let matters lie.

But he couldn’t. The thought itself made him suddenly ill, gave him a nervous nausea like the aftermath of a near-accident, the way he might feel right after
not
crashing in an automobile at eighty miles an hour.

He had to go to New York, that was all of it, he had to go there, and it didn’t seem to matter whether he understood or not.

Would other people know? Maybe the people around him knew about his trip and could tell him why he was supposed to make it. Maybe Matt Malloy, or Little Jack Flynn, or Edna; maybe he should ask.

But he couldn’t do that either, admit to others he didn’t know why he was supposed to go to New York. No, more than that; admit to them he didn’t know anything about anything, from before.

He didn’t even know what he meant by
before
, except he didn’t think he had lived here all his life, in this house or in this town. He had come here from somewhere else, though he couldn’t remember where or why, and he was supposed now to travel on again, still not knowing why and only by a cryptic note knowing anything of where.

One thing he did know. If he didn’t want to be startled again like this he should leave himself a more comprehensive note for next time. He never doubted for a second that there would be a next time, that he would sink into the grayness again, probably by morning, and only another accident would bring him back out of it.

In the same dresser drawer with the money was a large-size pad of paper, and a ballpoint pen. There were also several sheets of paper containing writing, in what he recognized as his own hand, mostly sets of names or objects with arrows between, none of which meant anything to him at all, no more than 50 Grove St. had meant anything to him or the idea of New York City had meant anything to him.

He set the written-on papers aside, and began a new note to himself, actually a letter, without salutation:

I am supposed to go to New York City. The money in the dresser drawer is for my ticket, and I will have enough by next payday. When I get to New York City, I am supposed to go to a place called 50 Grove Street. I don’t know why, but maybe I’ll find out there.

This note he folded and placed next to the money in the dresser drawer. Then he altered the note on the wall to read “50 GROVE ST.—NEW YORK—Look In Dresser,” and he made another note saying the same thing, which he put in his hip pocket, where he would have carried a wallet if he’d owned one.

With all this set, he felt relieved and much safer, as though he’d just dropped anchor after having been adrift on the high sea. He had hacked away at the enormity of his helplessness and the frailty of his plans, reducing them to manageable proportions by writing notes about them. He cleared away the rest of the paper, moved the stacks of money from his bed, and got ready for sleep.

But sleep eluded him a long while, lying there in the darkness. He gazed unseeing upward at the ceiling while emotional remnants fluttered in his mind; fear at the nakedness of his position, curiosity about himself and the world around him, even a kind of heady anticipation about the trip next week.

It never occurred to him that thirty-three dollars and forty-two cents was not the price of a round-trip ticket.

He wasn’t supposed to come back.

Saturday morning he’d read the notes he’d left himself the night before, and then, just to be sure, he’d stopped at the bus depot on the way to work, and that’s where he learned he’d been saving for a one-way ticket. What could that mean except he hadn’t intended to come back?