Memory (Hard Case Crime) (39 page)

“I guess so.”

“I’ll give you a note, so you won’t forget. Do you keep a diary?”

“A diary? No.”

“You should. Write in it the memorable things that happen to you each day, and jot down on the appropriate days such appointments as this one, so when that day comes around you’ll open the book, and there’s the reminder waiting for you.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Cole, pleased by it. “I never thought of that.”

“It might help.” The doctor smiled. “At least keep you from missing appointments,” he said. He extended a card across the desk. “Here’s a reminder about our next. January thirtieth, three-thirty in the afternoon. If there’s any change in the meantime, of course, you’ll contact me at once. My number’s on the card there.” He got to his feet, smiling more broadly than before, and said, “I wish you the very best of luck, Paul, and I hope your optimism proves to be more prophetic than my gloom.”

“Thank you.”

Cole left, to find it was seven o’clock in the evening, and the air was, if anything, even colder and damper than when he’d come here this afternoon. He walked to the subway and rode it home, and stopped in at a bookstore on Sheridan Square to buy a diary. When he got home, his first entry in the diary was for next Monday, telling him about the acting job, and his second entry was on January thirtieth, reminding him of his next appointment with the doctor.

It would have been impossible for him to miss getting to his acting job. He had reminders everywhere; a note on the bedroom door, another on the wall over the desk, another on a wall in the bathroom, yet another on the hall door in the living room, all in addition to the reminder note in his diary and the fact that he’d asked his answering service to phone him at eight o’clock that morning, so he’d be sure to get up on time. And then, as though all of that weren’t enough, the telephone rang again at five minutes past nine, and it was Helen Arndt.

“I’m glad I caught you before you left, sweetie,” she said, right away. “You remember about the job today, don’t you?”

“Yes, sure. I left notes up.”

“Good boy. There’s something I forgot to tell you last week, and it’s very important. Can you remember something very very important for just today?”

“I think so,” he said. He couldn’t keep a trace of coldness out of his voice; her manner was too condescending.

She said, “Here’s the story, honey. The way I got you this job without an audition is because of Herbie Lang. Does the name ring a bell?”

“Herbie Lang? No, I’m sorry, I don’t think so.”

“He hired you once before, when you were on
Silent Heart
. You remember being on
Silent Heart
, baby? The soaper.”

“I know I was on it,” he said, which he knew was begging the question—he
knew
he’d been on that show, from his tax forms and resume, but he didn’t
remember
being on it—but her maternal condescension was irritating him, he couldn’t help it.

“Well, that’s where Herbie knows you from. So he knows your work, he knows you’re very very good, and you got the job without an audition. But the point, honey, the point is that I didn’t say anything about your little problem, do you follow me?”

“He doesn’t know about my memory?”

“Not a bit, honey. You don’t get jobs by announcing to one and all that your memory’s gone. I didn’t say anything about it, and you shouldn’t say anything about it either.”

“All right. I won’t.” He hadn’t intended to, anyway, but for a different reason; it was too complicated to try to explain about his memory to everybody he saw.

“But you don’t remember Herbie,” she said. “That, my boy, is a problem.”

“I’ll probably remember him when I see him.”

“Let’s not take a chance on it. I’ll describe him, and when you see him there, you make the first move. Go right on up to him and say how are you, Mr. Lang—you call him Mr. Lang, honey—and you thank him for the job, and let him take it from there. If he talks about the soaper, you can fake it, can’t you? You were in a trial scene, as I remember. I think you were a policeman guarding the defendant, something like that.”

“All right.”

“Now, here’s what he looks like. Short, shorter than you, of course, maybe five foot six or seven. Very young, in his twenties somewhere, but prematurely balding, you know the way? A receding hairline, a very very high forehead. It shines under those lights they have.”

“All right.”

“He wears glasses, with very black hornrims, and he has a round chubby sort of face, smiling to beat the band. Some people say he’s gay as a jay, and some people say he’s just uncommitted, and I say he ought to make up his mind pretty soon, he’s been married two years now. There. Do you think you’ll recognize him?”

“I think so. Short, balding, young, black hornrim glasses, round face, always smiling. Herbie Lang, and I call him Mister Lang.”

“Good boy. Now, so far as I know, there won’t be anyone else there you know, but if there is just fake it. You are an actor, after all, isn’t that right?”

“Right,” he said, more forcefully than he’d intended. But this was confirmation of his reason for existence, his reason for struggling against the dullness of his days and the sluggishness of his memory and the pessimism of the doctor. His irritation with her was forgotten; she was his agent, and he was an actor. The fact of that relationship was enough to bolster him.

“Give me a call when it’s finished, sweetie,” she said. “Let me know how it works out. And don’t forget about tonight. Be there about eight.”

“All right, I will.”

He hung up, suddenly remembering his agreement to go see her this evening, and a pall was cast on his pleasure. He’d been nervous before Helen’s call, and then for a minute he had been calm and relaxed, almost like a professional, and now he was nervous again. Not because of the job this time, but because of the evening that was supposed to follow it.

All right, never mind that for now. One thing at a time. Take care of the job, and then see what could be done to get through this evening.

It was time to leave. He got an extra suit out of the closet and folded it carefully into his canvas bag; they’d said they wanted him to bring two suits, and he was wearing the other. He put on his overcoat, checked his pockets to be sure he had everything he needed, read the notes on the wall to be sure he wasn’t forgetting anything else he was supposed to do today, and at last he was ready to leave. He hefted his canvas bag, grinned uneasily around the apartment—he felt uncomfortable these days if he had to go out before the place was cleaned from one end to the other—and finally he did leave, locking the door behind him.

He had a subway map, and he’d bought maps and street guides to Manhattan and Brooklyn and the Bronx, and last night he’d mapped out his route to the studio; it was with him now, folded and in his pocket, carefully drawn on a sheet of writing paper. He took it from his pocket as he walked toward the subway, refreshing his memory, and then stuffed it back again.

It was a clear day, the first in nearly a week. The sun was very high and very pale, and the sky was such a pale blue as to be almost white, but at least there were no low-hanging greasy-looking clouds, and the dank cold of the last few days had been replaced by a drier breeze whistling down from the north. It was an invigorating day, and he took that to be a good sign.

The trip was no trouble at all. He had only the one subway transfer to make, at Columbus Circle, where he picked up the train to the Bronx. It was only a three block walk from the subway station in the Bronx to the studio, and he got there ten minutes early.

The building was an old neighborhood motion picture theater, converted to television work. Boards had been put over the faces of the old marquee, and painted white, and given the legend in black: fine arts studios. The building was of old brick, very grimy and ancient looking, and the row of doors leading to the lobby were gray with grime and dust.

Cole pushed through one of the doors and crossed the small lobby to another row of doors, these of wood. He went through, and found himself in a large echoing room. The movie theater seats had been removed, and so had the railing behind the last row. Movie theater floors slant downward toward the rear wall, where the screen is located, but here both slant and screen had been removed. The floor had been filled in and straightened to the level of the lobby all the way to the rear wall, and now consisted of wooden planking which rang with a somewhat hollow sound whenever people walked on it. Pipes traversed the ceiling, in a complex kind of tic-tac-toe board, with heavy spotlights suspended from them and cables wound snakelike around them. In the far right corner squatted a bulky bank of electronic equipment. Flimsy looking sets and odd pieces of furniture made little island groupings here and there around the floor, and Cole counted four television cameras standing around waiting, untended now. A group of people were clustered around a large table to the left, which was covered by a sloppy mass of papers and cardboard coffee containers and wadded napkins. Not knowing what else to do, Cole started toward them, and suddenly one of the people there spied him and came walking rapidly toward him, arms outstretched, shouting out, “Comrade!”

It was a short man. He had a receding hairline, and a round face, and hornrim glasses, and he was smiling. He came hurrying forward, and grasped Cole’s right hand in both of his and pumped it effusively, saying, “Good to see you again, comrade, good to see you again.”

“Mister Lang,” said Cole. He said it as a statement, as a greeting, but he meant it as a question.

Apparently the answer was yes. Lang pumped his hand a few seconds longer, and then released it and grabbed his elbow instead, saying, “Get right on into makeup, comrade, today’s the day we beat every speed record, depend on it. We’re liable to use you before lunch, what do you think of that?”

Lang was propelling him toward a door to the left; the room it led to must be next to the lobby. Cole went along willingly, carrying his canvas bag, and Lang said, “It’s good to see you again, comrade, it really is. It’s been too long.” He winked, and smiled broadly, and patted Cole cheerfully on the back, and left him at the doorway, calling, “See you later, comrade.”

Cole went on into the room, and at first glance it looked like a barber shop, full of barber chairs. But they weren’t exactly barber chairs, and the man in the white jacket who began at once to order him around wasn’t exactly a barber. He was a short and narrow-faced man, with moles on his forehead and thick dry-looking black hair. He bundled Cole out of his overcoat and suitcoat and tie and shirt, told him to sit down in one of the chairs, and said, “Right. Who are you?”

“Paul Cole.”

“Paul Cole?” The man seemed baffled. “What the hell—?
No
, no, I mean in the goddamn
show
! How do I make you up if I don’t know who you are in the show? What’s the matter with you, you never done this before?”

“I didn’t know what you meant. Nobody told me who I am in the show.”

“Well, shit. That’s what I say, shit. How they expect me to get anything done around this goddamn place? Shit in a bucket, that’s what I say. Don’t you move, you. You stay right there in that chair.”

“All right.”

The makeup man hurried out of the room, and Cole heard a sudden spate of shouting echo around the big room outside, and then the makeup man came bustling back in, looking indignant and harried. “You’re Condemned Man,” he said brusquely, and turned to the counter where the makeup was.

Condemned Man? Cole started half out of his chair, looking around wildly, as though someone were playing some sort of joke on him in very bad taste. Condemned Man? Was Robin Kirk out there? Was this some sort of joke they were pulling on him, Helen Arndt and Robin Kirk in on it together? Condemned Man!

The makeup man turned back, his hands full of tubes of makeup. He stared at Cole, still half out of the chair, and said, “Where you think you’re going? You think I got all day? You think you’re the only one I got to do?”

Cole stared at him. “Is this a joke?”

“What? What the hell you talking about?”

Cole was trembling now, but not from nervousness; he was trembling with anger. His hands gripped the arms of the chair, squeezing tight so the knuckles stood out white and knobby. He said, “You better tell me. Is this Robin Kirk?”

“What are you, a nut? Is that what you are, you’re a nut?”

The makeup man wasn’t part of any joke; that much came through clearly to Cole, and he subsided, sitting back down in the chair. “I don’t know,” he said, feeling as though he ought to try to explain. “It’s some kind of coincidence or something.”

“Don’t tell me your troubles, you, I got troubles of my own. No talking now, I got to do your face.”

Cole leaned his head back on the rest, and the makeup man went to work on him. The creams he smeared on Cole’s face were cooling, helping to relax him further. But still, it was unnerving. Condemned Man! Sitting there, thinking of it, the coincidental connection with that improvisation of Robin Kirk’s, he began to feel more and more apprehensive. He hadn’t been able to do that improvisation, that bit of make believe about a condemned man in Robin Kirk’s loft, but he’d ignored the implications of that failure. Was it all gone, whatever talent or ability he had had? Then what would happen this morning, when it came his turn to step in front of the television camera?

No, this was going to be different. That improvisation had been nonsensical, a piece of fantasy without beginning or end, without rhyme or reason. It had meant nothing, and it had proved nothing. This was different, this was
work
. There was an actual play, a complete and total play, not some excerpt wrested foolishly out to be performed for no reason, not some spur-of-the-moment invention without depth or purpose. And besides, what had stopped him in the improvisation? Lines, that was all. He hadn’t had anything to say, there were no lines prepared. But here, today, he would have his line. One line to speak, and that was all, and it was already written down for him, with its proper place in the sequence of a planned and purposeful play. There was no reason why he couldn’t do it, no reason at all.