Memory (Hard Case Crime) (22 page)

He carried one of the photos into the bathroom and stood before the mirror there, holding the photo up beside his head so he could see both in the mirror. Yes it was the same, and yet it was different. What was there missing in the present face that shone in the photographed representation from the past? Something was missing, certainly, something had been lost. Maybe only memory, or self-knowledge. But the face in the photograph was much more confident.

The music came to an end again, and he went in and turned the record over. He stood there a minute while it started to play, frowning as he listened. He didn’t like this music very much, it was too loud and cocky, too blatant. Why had he liked it? He couldn’t understand the presence of these records, and there was something frightening about that, eerie, as though there were a ghost in the room.

He went back to the bedroom, and searched through the last drawer in the desk, where he found the mail that had accumulated in his absence; bills, and subscription pleas from magazines, and two more personal letters very much like the one from Ray. And under all the mail was a green leatherette folder that proved to contain a checkbook. His name was printed on all the checks, and according to the stubs he now had a balance of sixty-seven dollars and forty-three cents. He smiled at that, and patted the checkbook; worry about money had been hovering all the while in the back of his mind, temporarily shunted away by all these discoveries. Sixty-seven dollars wasn’t bad, when he hadn’t known he had any at all.

The storage well on the other side of the desk was disappointing, by comparison with the treasures he’d already found. There were the two Manhattan phone books, and some large manila envelopes and a roll of postage stamps, and a stack of typewriter paper. Nothing with personality in it, nothing that was particularly and individually
his
.

He went back to the unpaid bills, which he’d ignored the first time around. He owed a dentist eighty-seven dollars; a panic-stricken dentist, apparently, because there were three bills from him alone. There were gas and electric bills, but no telephone bill; apparently Benny had been paying that one. And there were three payment-overdue notices from his answering service.

Answering service. There’d been something about an answering service in the tax forms, too. Another part of his old life, someone who answered his telephone for him and held his messages. The service’s phone number was on their notices to him, so he made his first actual call now, to them.

A woman answered, and Cole said, “This is Paul Cole. Any messages?” The phrase came readily and naturally to him, and he grinned to himself.

The woman asked him to hold on, but when she came back she said, “I’m sorry, Mister Cole, but that service has been discontinued.”

Oh. For non-payment, he supposed. He said, “Well, were there any messages up to when it was discontinued?”

“I would have no record here,” she said. “The service has been discontinued.”

He knew then no matter what he said she would go on making the same reply. He hung up without saying goodbye.

It was the first really depressing event of the day, a part of the past that had been stopped, cut off. He was somehow less Paul Cole without the answering service that had been a natural part of Paul Cole’s life, and less capable of being Paul Cole again.

They wanted fifteen dollars from him, so he wrote his first check, and then wrote a note saying, “Please start the service again at once.”

In the storage well with the phone books and manila envelopes were some smaller envelopes, and he got one of these and the roll of stamps, and then discovered the booklet, tucked in back, down at the bottom. It was a payment record booklet for the Unemployment Insurance office. He put envelopes and check aside, and studied this booklet, and now the facts of Paul Cole’s employment life were complete. In the spaces when he hadn’t been working, he had been collecting unemployment insurance. He could follow the weeks, back and forth from tax form and resume to payment booklet, from job to unemployment to job again.

He could start collecting again now. So he’d have a little money coming in, and he’d still be free to spend full time finding himself. He seemed to remember some sort of bad experience at an unemployment insurance office once, but that hadn’t been in New York, it had been in the town. He tried for a second to remember the name of that town, but it didn’t come readily so he dropped it. That name didn’t matter anymore. That had been the interregnum, between Paul Cole and Paul Cole, when he had been X.

He addressed the envelope and put a stamp on it, and put the check and the most recent payment notice into it. He’d go out this afternoon, and he could mail it then.

There was still more to explore, medicine chest in the bathroom, kitchen cabinets, dresser and closet in the bedroom. All contained normal predictable things, nothing specifically and uniquely his, except the contents of a shoebox up on the bedroom closet shelf. It was half full of programs from all the professional productions he had been connected with. He took it to the bed and sat there crosslegged, tailor fashion, and read twice through every word.

He was learning about himself as though he were constructing a jigsaw puzzle. In many ways it was as though he were building up an image of someone else, someone he had never met, with the faint memories that stirred now and then being only particularly vivid imaginings of what that other person’s life must have been.

Finally he was finished. He had looked at and touched everything in the apartment. All he could do now was continue to live here, use these things, gradually absorb them once again until they helped rekindle his memory. Right now he
knew
what he had been, at least in part, but he didn’t yet remember.

With nothing more to do, he suddenly realized he was ravenous. So far today he’d had only the one cup of coffee. He went back to the kitchenette and opened a can of soup and ate it all. Then he changed his clothes, taking off everything he’d worn here on the bus, putting on all clothing fresh from the apartment. He shrugged into the overcoat he’d found in the closet, and went out to discover his neighborhood.

It was like a place where he had lived thirty years ago, and now he was coming back for the first time. Vaguely familiar sights surrounded him, evoking echoes of recognition, muted and clouded by time; except in this case it wasn’t time that had smoothed the sands, it was the unknown thing that had happened to him.

His one fear as he walked along was that he would run into someone he had known but would not now recognize. Every stranger that passed him was a potential friend, who might suddenly call out his name and start talking happily to him about incomprehensibilities. Well, if it happened he would try to go along as best he could, making believe everything was all right, hoping he could carry it off. He had a terror of letting any of his old friends know about his present weakness.

It was a cold clear day, crisp, with pale blue sky and high bright sun. The streets were crowded with pedestrians, and cars and taxis jolted by, but Cole had the feeling most of the activity was foreign, that most of the people he saw didn’t actually live around here, but were here in the Village because it was Sunday, a part of the weekend, and they didn’t have to go to work at their jobs. A vestigial contempt stirred within him, but couldn’t gain ground against his conviction that he was even more a stranger here on these sidewalks than they.

He walked for hours, stopping twice for hamburgers and coffee, once on Eighth Street near Sixth Avenue and once on Seventh Avenue near Sheridan Square, not far from his apartment. He was discovering no sudden improvement in his memory, but he hadn’t expected it to work that way and so he wasn’t disappointed. He would simply fill his senses with the physical facts of his home and former life, and slowly this warming influence might thaw his frozen memory and return him to his earlier condition.

Still, as the afternoon progressed he began to feel his solitude in a way he hadn’t anticipated. He wanted to talk about himself, wanted to tell someone all about himself, desired it almost painfully; but at the same time he was still afraid to expose himself to any friends and acquaintances from Before. Walking, walking, he began almost to hope someone would recognize him and force him into conversation and find him out.

He even thought, at one point, of going into a bar to talk with the bartender, but he knew that was a foolish idea. The sympathetic listener behind the bar at the local tavern was a creation of fiction, hardly to be found in any of the tourist traps in Greenwich Village.

There was a church he’d passed two or three times before, and now he was coming to it again. It was a small old church of heavy blocks of dark brown stone, encircled by a fence of tall iron spikes except at the entrance. On impulse, he turned and went up the slate steps and inside.

Within, it had that peculiar quality of some churches, looking larger inside than out. It was dark, lit only by racks of votive candles in red glass containers down front. Cole recognized it as a Roman Catholic church, but didn’t know how he knew; there was no memory of his ever having been in this particular church before, nor could he remember in which religious discipline he had been brought up, though he was pretty sure that whatever it was he had abandoned it shortly after going out on his own.

No instinctive rituals came to him as he stood there, no impulse to genuflect or make the sign of the cross. Nor did he know yet exactly why he was here. He had come in, that was all, an impulsive thing. He walked around, noting that the church was completely empty except for himself, looking at the bas reliefs of Christ’s execution on the side walls, and the secondary altars to the Virgin Mary and some male statue—St. Joseph?—flanking the main altar. He walked around, mildly curious, patient, expecting nothing in particular. He glanced into one of the confessionals, noted that it made him think of monasteries, and walked on. When he came near the doors again, he went back out to the afternoon sunlight, which suddenly seemed much brighter than before.

He stood on the sidewalk a while, indecisive, vaguely troubled. Next to the church, and also contained within the iron fence, was a two story brick structure of an old-fashioned residential type, with bay windows on the front. This was undoubtedly where the priests lived.

He lit a cigarette and considered, and finally understood that what he wanted was to talk to a priest. He wasn’t sure why, except that a priest was the only dispassionate but willing listener he could think of.

What could he lose? For the next few days, he would follow any vagrant notion that came into his head, for who knew where such a notion might lead? To the center of the lost landscape perhaps. So he flicked the cigarette away and went over to the brick house, through the second break in the fence, and rang the doorbell.

A woman answered, which surprised him, until he realized she must be the housekeeper. She was a narrow impatient sharp-faced woman in a faded dress. She asked him what he wanted, and he said, “I want to talk to a priest.”

“Come in,” she said. Despite her somewhat hostile appearance, her voice was soft and her manner hurried but pleasant. She showed him to a small room off the front hallway and assured him someone would be along in a moment or two. He thanked her and sat down.

It was a strange small room. Two leather armchairs stood facing one another across a low table containing nothing but an ashtray. Highly polished small dark tables stood against the walls, one topped by a leafy plant in a copper pot, one by a statue of the Infant Jesus in red Imperial robes, one by little stacks of small square pamphlets. On the walls were a large painting of the Ascension, a not-so-large portrait of Christ wearing his crown of thorns, and a heavy-looking very large wooden crucifix.

Cole was standing, looking up at this crucifix, noting the minute details of the sculpture of the hanging Christ, when the sliding doors opened and the priest came in, closing the doors again behind himself. He said, “You wanted to talk to a priest?”

He was an old man, short and thin and bent; a gnarled tree. His face was a gathering of lesser features around a long and formless nose, the nose grown blue-white with age. He wore a black gown which was here and there flecked with what looked to be chalk dust, and on his feet—glimpsed beneath the frayed hem of his robe—were old brown bedroom slippers.

Cole looked at him and was unencouraged. He said, “It isn’t a religious matter. I don’t think—I’m not sure I should even be here at all.”

The priest smiled vaguely. “Don’t be so certain,” he said. “One way or another, nearly everything in life is a religious matter. Come, sit down, we’ll talk about it.” His voice was frail, windy, the remnants of a voice.

They sat facing one another over the low table, and Cole pointed to the ashtray, saying, “Is it all right if I smoke?”

“Certainly. Relax yourself, be easy.” The old priest’s elbows rested on the chair arms, his bent-twig fingers interlaced across his stomach. He sat slightly forward in an attitude of alertness.

For some reason, it seemed to Cole this old man was play-acting, being for both their sakes something that each of them expected him to be. But that was probably his own uncertainty, seeing itself reflected in the old man’s eyes; blue eyes, faded blue, Virgin Mary blue.

Cole lit his cigarette, and the priest said, “My name is Father Bernardus.”

“Cole. Paul Cole.” He hesitated, frowning at the ashtray, and said, “I don’t know how to start. Where to start?”

“Are you in trouble?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I am.”

“A young lady? The police?”

“No...no. Nothing like that.”

“Well... Begin wherever you like, then. Explain the situation as best you can, and if there are things I don’t understand I’ll ask you about them.”

“All right. What, what it is, something’s...happened to me. I used to be an actor, and then this thing, this thing happened to me. I don’t remember— No. My memory isn’t good any more, that’s what it is.”