Memory (Hard Case Crime) (20 page)

One thing he couldn’t do, he couldn’t go back down those stairs, carrying his luggage, and go walking along the cold pavements. Not when his haven was so close. He looked up and down the hall, not knowing what to do, knowing Benny and the girl would be coming to this door—
his
door, damn them,
his
door—in just a minute or two, and he couldn’t still be standing here when they came out.

His eye caught the staircase, continuing on up to the fourth floor and the roof. That was where he would have to go. Not all the way to the roof, just far enough up to be out of sight.

He carried his luggage up the next flight of stairs, and sat on the top step, his suitcase next to him on one side and the canvas bag on the other. Looking down, he could see part of the black composition flooring in the third floor hall, but not his own door. He lit a cigarette, hoping no one would come along during his exile here, and waited.

Everything was silent. There wasn’t a sound anywhere, not a sound. Not even a television set or a radio. Not even a baby crying, or a man and wife arguing. He was too high up to hear street sounds; there was nothing. When he moved his foot to ease his stiffness, the scraping of his shoe on the step echoed in the stairwell.

So the sound was very loud and echoing when at last his apartment door did open. He heard it open, and tensed, waiting, and then he heard their voices, hers first:

“The least he could have done was phone you.”

“Don’t ask me, baby, that’s the same thing I told him myself.”

“I’m embarrassed, that’s what I am. I’m embarrassed.”

“Jesus, how do you think I feel? I want us to be so close it’s like nothing that ever happened before, and a relationship like that is a delicate thing, you know? If Cole loused it up for us, baby, I’ll beat his head in.”

“You’re sweet.”

“Listen, I’ll call you, right? Soon as I get a pad.”

“All right, Benny.”

“I wish I could take you home, but I better stick around and see what’s what with Cole.” (Upstairs, Cole shook his head violently, but made no sound.)

“That’s okay.”

Their kiss was loud, too, and then there was the echoing shuffle of her departure; she was wearing tennis shoes or loafers or something like that. The apartment door closed again. The shuffling of the girl’s feet faded away down the stairwell.

What now? Benny was still in the apartment, waiting for Cole, and he wouldn’t leave no matter how long Cole sat here on the stairs.

The choice was clear. Either he had to go away right now or he had to go down there and face Benny and somehow wrest the apartment from him.

But how? With no memory, no knowledge of Benny or the true situation here, how could he get away with it?

He had to try, that’s all there was to it. Somehow, someway, he had to keep Benny from knowing anything was wrong. All he could do was follow Benny’s lead, respond to Benny’s questions as generally as he could, keep conversations between them down to a minimum until Benny went away.

It was a pretty good plan, and the only one open to him, and if he was careful it might work. Still, he wasn’t pleased; this wasn’t what he had been expecting, in coming here. He had come here for safety and healing, for security and rebirth. He had come here to have old problems solved, not to have new problems thrust upon him. Arriving here weary, apprehensive, wanting only to rest at the end of his long run, now he was going to have to live some sort of lie for the benefit of an interloper in his home.

But it would end. Sooner or later, Benny too would have to leave, just as his girl had left, and the darkness would have to lift from Cole’s mind, and everything would have to be all right again. Sooner or later; it was bound to be.

And it was doing no good to be sitting up here. The sooner he got started, the sooner Benny would be out of there and Cole could begin to rest.

He got to his feet. He felt stiff, his muscles ached, he felt like something made of wood. He carried his luggage back down to the third floor, and tried the doorknob, but the door was locked. He took out his key and unlocked the door for the second time, and re-entered his apartment. Once again the long living room was empty, though this time the light was lit, and this time also the door in the right-hand wall was ajar, and vague sounds of movement came from within.

Cole was weary, exhausted, but tense with the uncertainty of how he would talk with Benny. He dropped his luggage on the floor, shut the hall door, and started to take off his coat. His fingers felt thick and arthritic and fuzzy, fumbling with the zipper. The living room seemed more barren and cold than the last time. He stiffly finished removing the coat, and then went over to the crumbling sofa, moving in a prison shuffle. He sank down onto the sofa, dropping the coat on the cushion beside him. He listened to the faint sounds Benny was making.

After a few minutes, Benny came striding purposefully into the room, and stopped short when he saw Cole sitting on the sofa. He seemed embarrassed, and covered it with a heavy kind of heartiness, shouting, “Hey, there! Why didn’t you tell me you were here?” He was wearing khaki Army pants now, and white tennis shoes without socks.

Cole shrugged, not having anything at all to answer. He wondered how long it would take Benny to leave.

But Benny didn’t seem to be in any hurry. He said, “You really should of phoned first, man, you know what I mean? You might of screwed it up with that bitch forever.”

“I’m sorry,” Cole said, because it seemed to him some sort of perfunctory apology would normally be delivered now. “I didn’t think.”

“Well, I guess it’s okay,” Benny said, trying unsuccessfully to be gracious. “I got it all squared away with her.”

Once again there was no possible response. Cole reached for his cigarettes, to have something to do.

Benny said, “Anyway, it’s okay if I rack out on the sofa here a few nights, isn’t it? Till I find another place.”

Cole stared at him. “Here? You can’t stay here.”

And now they were both amazed. Benny said, “What the hell? What kind of a way is that to act?”

“You’ve got to go away,” Cole told him; there was no question in his mind. This had nothing to do with making believe for Benny, or anything else. Cole had to have his nest to himself, that’s all.

Benny said, “Come
on
, man! You waltz in with no word of warning, you don’t give me a chance—”

“You can’t stay here.”

“Listen, buddy, you sublet this place! You sublet it to me for while you were gone.”

“Well, I’m back.”

“Yeah? Well,
I
paid the goddamn rent this month!”

“I can’t help that.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do? I can’t go look for a pad till tomorrow.”

“Sleep on someone else’s sofa.”

“You owe me twenty-five bucks, man,” Benny told him, angry and cold. “I paid a full month on this place, seventy-five bills, so you owe me one-third. Twenty-five bucks.”

“I don’t have any money now.”

“Yeah, well, tough. You cough up the twenty-five clams, or I don’t go anywhere. What the hell you think you’re trying to pull?”

Cole said, “I’ll pay you when I get some money. But now you’ve got to go.”

“And the hell I do, too.”

I’m going to have to fight him
, Cole thought, and it didn’t matter anymore what Benny thought of him. All that mattered was getting Benny out.

He got to his feet, moving slowly from his weariness, and said, “You’ve got to go away, Benny.”

“Oh, yeah? Who’s going to make me?”

Cole walked around him and over to the kitchenette corner, where the formica-topped table and the four kitchen chairs stood. He picked up one of the chairs and held it like a lion-tamer. “You’ve got to pack your things now,” he said.

Benny looked at the chair with wary disbelief and a hardening of his facial muscles. “You’ll be sorry for this,” he said.

Holding the chair, Cole felt a tingling in his mind, as though some memory of danger or disaster lurked there, trying to come out into the open. He found he was loathing himself for holding the chair—not for wanting Benny out or trying to force Benny out, but simply for the physical act of holding the chair—and a steady repugnance was filling him. All at once, he felt a total sympathy for Benny, understood Benny’s feelings at his own unexpected arrival, understood Benny’s feelings at thus being shoved out into the night with no home to call his own, and he knew he couldn’t do it. With a feeling of great relief, of disaster averted, he put the chair down again. (In his mind, faintly, there was an image of the chair as having eyes in the bottom of its legs. When he had held the chair up, the eyes had been looking at Benny, planning him evil and harm, but now that the chair was put down again the eyes were blinded, shut against the floor.) “Never mind,” he muttered, looking away from Benny’s wary face. “Stay here tonight.”

“That’s what I said all along.”

“But you’ve got to leave tomorrow.”

“Don’t you worry, man.”

Cole turned away and went through the doorway on the other side of the kitchen table. At last he would see the rest of the apartment.

A short hall, with a window on the left and a door on the right. A yellow bare bulb hung from a black chain attached to the ceiling, giving a soft light that soothed and smoothed the old walls. Cole pushed open the door on the right and saw a long narrow bathroom with hexagonal white tiles on the floor, square white tiles halfway up the walls, and flat gray paint the rest of the way up. The tub was old-fashioned and old, with rust in the enamel around the drain. There was a copy of
Playboy
on the floor beside the toilet.

Had he know this time, in advance? The hall he had recognized in the instant of seeing it, in the way that was usual with him tonight, but it seemed now that he had anticipated the bathroom by a second or two, that he had seen the bathroom in his mind’s eye for just a fraction of time before his hand had turned the knob and pushed open the door for him to see it in reality. But he couldn’t be sure; he told himself fatalistically that it was more than likely wishful thinking.

The hall was no more than six or seven feet long, and at the opposite end was another door, open two or three inches. Logic, rather than memory, told him that beyond this door was a bedroom, and the end of the apartment. He stood in the hall a minute longer, testing himself, trying to visualize the bedroom, but he could get no more than faint glimmerings.

Then the door behind him opened and Benny came blundering into the small space. Cole whirled, as angry and embarrassed as if he’d been caught abusing himself, crying, “What do you want? What are you doing here?”

“For Christ’s sake, man.” Benny took a backward step, startled and aggrieved. “What’s got into you? I gotta get my stuff, that’s all.”

Angry in defeat this time, Cole pushed past him, heading toward the living room again, saying, “Let me know when you’re done.” He wouldn’t go into the bedroom until it was completely and indisputably and finally his.

Benny said more things, but Cole didn’t pay attention to them. He paced back and forth in the living room, pausing to light a cigarette, and then pacing again, restless and impatient and irritated. He spied his suitcase and canvas bag on the floor, and his coat over on the sofa, and went and got them, and when Benny came back from the bedroom, his hands full of clothing and magazines, Cole was standing there holding his luggage, the coat slung over one shoulder, the cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

“It’s all yours,” said Benny, with elaborate sarcasm.

Cole ignored him. Nothing would spoil things for him now. He went past Benny and into the hall, where he set the luggage down and carefully closed the door. There was no key in the lock, but maybe he wouldn’t need it. Maybe Benny would keep away for the rest of the night.

He picked up his gear again, and went on into the bedroom. It was a twelve-foot square, scantily furnished. An ancient gray rug covered most of the floor, and the exposed flooring near the walls was scratched and dull and dirty, probably years since its last waxing. The sheets on the double bed were gray and wrinkled, and the blankets were thin and harsh-looking, one green and one rose. There was a small metal bureau painted dark brown, and a small metal desk painted gray, and an antique bedside table of dark wood with gray-white glass circles marring its top, and another wooden kitchen chair like the ones in the living room. The closet door had a mirror on it. There was nothing on the walls here, no paintings or photos or calendars or pennants or anything; into his mind came a picture of his bedroom in the Malloy house.

But this place, bare and austere though it was, contained for him the faint glimmerings of recognition, and he knew he was home. He set his luggage down again, and dropped his coat on the chair, and stood looking around. The presence of Benny in the other room, taciturn and mulish, detracted from his pleasure, but still and all he was home. Now, finally, alone.

And now he could realize just how exhausted he was. He had no plans for tomorrow, no ideas or purposes or goals, but he was too tired to think about it. Tomorrow would be soon enough; right now, he had to sleep. And never mind the gray sheets, tomorrow would be soon enough to take care of them, too.

He undressed. Just before going to bed, he put the kitchen chair against the bedroom door.

He awoke slowly, in gradual stages, like surfacing from some deep dark sea. He was conscious at first of himself, his body sprawled in warmth on its side, covered by the warm slight weight of the blankets, and his head burrowed into the pillow, with light a faint awareness only on his left eyelid. He stretched, not yet opening his eyes, and his arms and legs slid out to new and cold areas of the sheets, bringing him closer to wakefulness. He smiled in sleepy content, and rolled onto his back; his eyes were still shut.

He wondered what time it was, where Mrs. Malloy was. Was it Sunday? If it was Sunday, he didn’t have to go to work. Maybe he was supposed to take Edna to a movie tonight. No, it was probably a workday.