Memory (Hard Case Crime) (35 page)

“This is new. We used to meet up on Carmine Street. In the basement, remember?”

“No, I’m sorry. I’d have to see it, I guess.”

“It’s torn down. They’re putting up one of their ugly co-ops. Beehives for drones, society’s cattle. Come up here and sit down.”

Cole took the other chair; the table was between them. Kirk’s face, seen up close, looked weaker and more tired, lined not by strength but by exhaustion. Kirk studied him a minute and said, “You’re changed. The arrogance is gone.”

“Was I arrogant?”

“In a good way. You were sure of yourself, proud of yourself.” Kirk shrugged carelessly. “You had reason to be.”

“I guess I’m not sure of myself anymore.”

Kirk motioned disgustedly at the empty chairs. “Did you see what I’ve got this time? Not a spark in a carload. Drones with big ideas, killing time on their way from their parents’ homes to their childrens’ homes. I keep waiting for one of them to show me something, but they never will.” He made a face and shook his head. “Do you know how many reasons there’ve been since you? Two. In three years, just two of them.”

“Reasons? I don’t know what you mean.”

“You forget that?” Kirk grinned sardonically and looked out at the empty room. “You’re a walking symbol of man’s futility now, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry, Mister Kirk—” at least he’d remembered that much, that no one was ever permitted to call this man by his first name, but only
Mister Kirk
“—I don’t remember very many things.”

“You’ve been to a doctor?”

“I had my X-rays the other day. I don’t remember what you mean about reasons, would you tell me again? If you tell me, maybe I’ll remember it.”

Instead of answering, Kirk got to his feet and walked to the edge of the platform, where he stood gazing down the length of the room to the dimness at the far end. After a minute, he said, “You make me uncomfortable now, Paul. Helen said she thought I might be able to do something for you, help you some way, but I don’t know. There’s an atmosphere of hopelessness around you, like a cloud. You come near me, and I begin to wonder what use I am. Then you ask me about my reasons, and that in a way is pretty comic.”

Kirk stepped down off the platform and began to walk this way and that amid the rows of chairs. His hands were in his hip pockets, bunching up his coat-tail, and he talked as he wandered, not looking at Cole as he talked but gazing upward at the ceiling. His voice was unnaturally loud, as though he were addressing an assembly.

He said, “I am an acting teacher. Robin Kirk, professor of dramaturgy, instructor of the hopeful, tutor to tomorrow’s stars, keeper of the flame, confidence man. You saw my present crop, my pitiful pupils? Not a one of these, not a single solitary one of these, will ever be an actor of the slightest talent or integrity or meaning. Not a one. But they pay me four dollars an hour to tell them they have talent, and I do it. Simply by letting them sit in this room, simply by taking their money, I tell them they have talent and promise and a brilliant future.” He stopped, and looked suddenly over at Cole. “Did Marcia charge you for auditing?”

“Yes.”

“She shouldn’t have, I’ll give you your money back.” He turned away again, and roamed some more. “You’ll get your money back,” he told the ceiling, “though you’re the one who’s an actor. The rest don’t get their money back ever, not even when they give up their idiotic dreams and go home where they belong. Four dollars an hour, one hour a week, thirty-two students in three classes, one hundred twenty-eight dollars a week. It keeps me alive, it keeps me alive. One hundred twenty-eight dollars a week keeps me alive. But I’ll tell you something,” he called to the ceiling. “If the only justification I had for keeping alive was to go on lying to those stupid drones for more money to keep alive to keep lying, I’d stop it, I’d
stop
the cycle and lie down in the gutter and die. I’ve got to have a better reason for living than living itself, and I do have one, and you are it, Paul Cole, you and the others, less than a dozen over the years, two in the three years since you.”

Cole sat watching him, listening, trying to understand and through understanding to remember. Kirk’s voice was getting louder and louder, and in his ramblings back and forth amid the chairs he was moving farther and farther away into the dim opposite end of the room. Except for the one question about money, he hadn’t looked at Cole at all.

“Every once in a while,” he called, walking around and around, “through that door over there comes an
actor
. Every once in a while, every once in a great great while. Not one of these pale idiots who
wants
to be an actor, can you think of anything more foolish? It’s like wanting to fly, isn’t it, you can or you can’t and that’s an end to it, wanting has nothing to do with it. You can even want
not
to fly, but if you’ve got the wings you’ll fly, one way or another, and wanting has nothing to do with
that
.”

He stopped again. He was now very near the door, standing facing it with his hands on his hips in a belligerent way. He talked now at the door, but loudly enough for Cole to hear him, with a slight echo in the words. “These young fools come in here with their feeble desires and chip away at my
life!
Like woodpeckers. What sort of a useless stupid appendix of the emotions is desire, what has desire ever done for anybody but turn him into an embarrassing fool? How can you
want
to be an actor? You are or you aren’t, and ninety-nine percent of them coming through the door are
not
. But then there’s the one who is.”

Kirk’s voice had lowered on the last sentence, so that Cole could barely hear him, and now he turned back and came walking straight toward the platform, looking directly at Cole now as he spoke: “That’s what I live for, Paul, that’s the reason for my existence. I sit here and wait and wait and wait, and every once in a while an actor comes through that door back there, a boy or a girl who’s been an actor from the minute he was born, whether he knew it or not. They come to me, and I give them the rudiments, I give them the terms for what they already know how to do, and I give them freely from my own poor store of contacts in the theatrical world, and I watch them discover themselves, discover their own powers and the gulf that yawns between them and the poor fools sitting around them in class, and I start another scrapbook with another name at the clipping service. Did I ever tell you about the scrapbooks? I keep them on all my birds, on all the rare ones with wings; I have one for you. I’m a
midwife
, Paul, I’m a
teacher
. What do you think a teacher is?”

Kirk waited, but Cole could think of nothing to say, and shook his head.

But Kirk didn’t answer the question; instead, he said, “There’ve been damn few of them, Paul, but they’re my reasons for existence, my only only reasons. And you were one of them, I saw it in you from the very first day and saw it grow in you, the way it always does.” He was standing at the edge of the platform, staring intently at Cole. “God help me,” he said, “I don’t see it there now.”

“It will come back,” Cole told him shakily. “When I get my memory back, I’ll be my old self again.”

“Make it soon.” Kirk turned away, glaring out over the empty chairs again, and then looked back at Cole. “Will you try something?”

“What?”

“An improvisation. You remember how they work?”

“I saw one today.”

“That isn’t how they work.” Kirk shook his head in disgust. “That’s how they
don’t
work. Will you try one with me? We’ll see if Helen’s right.”

It was important to Kirk, so Cole felt he ought to try. He nodded reluctantly and said, “I don’t know if I can, but I’ll try.”

“Good.” Kirk moved suddenly with speed and determination. He came up on the platform and grabbed the chair he’d been sitting in before and carried it away, to put it over in a corner. He came back and made sketching gestures in the air. “A jail cell,” he said. “Death row. Tonight at midnight they electrocute you. Your cot there, and this table and chair. A window high in the wall there, door of bars over here. I the attendant bringing you your last meal.
I
am the one guilty of the murder for which you are to die tonight, and you know it. You can’t prove it, and no one will believe you, and you’ve given up trying to convince people. We will be alone together for just a minute now, as I bring the tray in. You won’t try to attack me, because you know there are half a dozen guards just down the corridor. All right?”

Cole frowned, trying to absorb the information, which was like pieces of foam rubber. What was he supposed to do? Doubtfully, he said, “All right.”

“Take a minute,” Kirk told him. “Get into the character.”

Cole sat pensive at the table, trying to think about it, but he could get no clue. It wasn’t real. Was this supposed to have happened sometime? But it didn’t make sense. Why would the attendant come into the cell alone? Why should he kill anybody, why should he be in jail? The thought of jail was frightening, with an image like quicksand. Bars, and cold rooms, and sneering faces, and squares of bright metal. What was he supposed to do?

Kirk had stepped down off the platform. Now he said, “Begin.” He held up his hands, as though carrying an imaginary tray, and came up on the platform again. He said, “Your dinner. Everything like you ordered.” There was a sly look on his face now, and some sort of faint accent in his words. He set the imaginary tray down on the table and stood looking at Cole.

Cole knew he was now supposed to say something, but what? He poked at the bits and pieces Kirk had told him, and finally said, “You killed—” Who? Panic filled him for just an instant, followed by annoyance. When he couldn’t even remember himself, why should he ensnarl himself in sketchy absurdities? He gestured vaguely, and said “—him?” He shook his head. “Who did you kill? I don’t know.”

Kirk waved his hands in exasperation. “What difference does it make? Make up any details you need, I’ll follow along. We’ll start again.” He went back down off the platform. “You ready?”

“Yes.”

Kirk began the scene again, same movements and same words and same attitude. This time, he had barely finished his speech when Cole said, “You killed him.”

“Now, don’t start that again.”

“I—” Cole looked around miserably, and found nothing to say.

Kirk snapped out of character again and said, “You aren’t
trying
, Paul. You’ve got to
feel
the character. He’s going to die,
tonight
, for a crime he didn’t commit, and the guilty one is standing there in front of him. Can’t you
feel
it?”

Cole tried to feel it, but he couldn’t. There was too much discomfort and worry and doubt in his real self; he couldn’t believe in the condemned man at all. He shook his head and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Switch the characters? I’ll be the condemned man, you be the attendant, it might be easier for you.”

“I’ll try,” said Cole.

They switched places. Kirk sat down at the chair, and slumped, his whole body registering despair. Cole went down off the platform, and did as Kirk had done. He carried an imaginary tray onto the platform and said, “Your dinner. Everything like you ordered.” He tried to say it the way Kirk had done, but it sounded flat to his ears, just words droned out in a monotone.

Kirk raised his head laboriously, as though it weighed a ton. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.” Bitterness and despair and the cold remnants of anger were mixed in his tone and expression.

Cole put the imaginary tray down on the table, and straightened, wondering what to say next. Now was he supposed to be a murderer, and Kirk was supposed to be someone convicted of a murder that Cole had done. What would a murderer say to Kirk now? Cole had no idea, and he shook his head, giving up. “I’m sorry,” he said.

But Kirk thought it was part of the improvisation. Wearily he said, “You’re sorry. Tomorrow you’ll be here, and I’ll be nothing.”

“I don’t know what to do,” said Cole.

“You mean you don’t have the courage to do what you know you should do.” Kirk glanced up at him again, and then frowned. “Are you in character or not?”

“I guess I’m not. It just isn’t working.”

“You can’t feel these people at all? You can’t
feel
the grimy damp atmosphere of the cell, the...the
guilt
between these two men? You can’t feel any of it?”

Cole shook his head.

Kirk got to his feet and took out his cigarettes. His expression was irritated, his movements quick and impatient. He lit the cigarette and said, “What did you come back here for?” His voice was cold now, unfriendly.

“I thought it would help. Everywhere I go I remember more things.”

“How long have you been back in town?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“You don’t know.”

“Since before Christmas. A few days before Christmas, I think.”

“Two weeks? Three weeks?”

“I guess so.”

“You’ve see your friends? Your neighborhood? Your apartment?”

“Yes.”

“And now you’ve seen me. And I’ve given you a basic exercise.” Kirk was glaring at him, spitting out his words. “And what’s the result? Is it all coming back in a flood?”

“No, not in a flood.”

“Not at all. There’s nothing in you now. What did you come back here for, to bring me pain?”

“No. No, I—”

“I can’t talk to you any more now. I have people to see. I’m sorry you can’t stay here, but I have to lock up when I leave.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do it.”

“That’s all right, it’s not your fault.” But the words were said with mechanical rapidity; Kirk was already starting for the door.

Cole followed him. It was like Rita again, but this time he didn’t entirely blame himself. Kirk knew what had happened to him, why should he expect him to be the same? Why treat him like this? Why so cold and bitter?

Kirk held the door for him, and then closed and locked it. Cole had already started down the stairs, but moving slowly, hoping Kirk would get over his irritation. They went down the stairwell together in silence, and out to the late afternoon sun and the bitter cold of the street. Kirk said, brusquely, “I wish you a speedy recovery. Goodbye, Paul.” He turned and strode away, his hands in his overcoat pockets.