The Night Listener and Others (5 page)

BOOK: The Night Listener and Others
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He did that for years, until his debt was paid off. The house hadn’t brought enough to pay the bank completely, and he was paying the rest of it with what he made off the White Horse. Every Friday night after he got paid he’d cross the street to the bank and put money in that night depository chute. I seen him do it many times. My rooms are still where they were then, over the furniture store catty-corner from the bank. Those days I could howl till midnight or later, and lots of times I saw Zane drop his money down that chute. None of us ever thought he’d get that debt to the bank paid off.

But he did. I guess it was in the early fifties, around the time my sister’s boy died in Korea, that Zane stopped making those night deposits. We found out from Harry Becker, who worked at the bank, that Zane’s debt had finally been paid.

Well, that night some of the boys decided to throw a little shindig in the White Horse for Zane to celebrate—a surprise like. I said I don’t know if it was all that smart, that maybe Zane would just like to forget all about it. But you know what guys’re like when they have a few drinks, so Wally Lovinger— he was bartender then—sends Zane up to Heisey’s store; for a case of club soda, claiming he’s run out. The boys go across to the five-and-dime and buy streamers and balloons, and when Zane comes back everybody’s cheering and yelling. He’s confused at first, and then one of the boys tells him it’s to celebrate his getting out of debt. His face goes white then, and everybody stops laughing.

Then he says, “I’ll never be out of debt.” Just like that, real quiet and whispery, but everybody in the room hears it, and he walks out and doesn’t come back that night at all.

He quit his job at the White Horse the next day and took his clothes and things out of the room above the kitchen and moved in with the Koser sisters over on Oak Street. I saw him a few days later in the park and asked him how things are, and he says the Koser sisters are real good to him, and he even has his own bathroom and a hot plate and can use their refrigerator.

So the years go by, and when the rendering plant shuts down about fifteen years back, Zane goes on the social security and it’s enough to get by on, but just barely. I don’t think the Koser girls ever raised his rent in all those years. They must’ve figured he’d had enough trouble. Course when Emma died a few years back I guess Miriam was glad for the company.

It was just last year that his mind starts going on him. You’d say hi to him on the street and he’d just sort of smile like he didn’t really remember who you were, and when you told him he’d just nod so that you knew he really didn’t recognize the name anymore. Miriam Koser looked after him all right, even though she’s almost eighty herself now. But even she didn’t know what was happening near the end.

Zane never went to a doctor. Never. After his first trouble he couldn’t afford it and I guess he got out of the habit. But most of us could see that more was going than his mind. He started to walk funny like, as if he’d got arthritis bad, or his legs was going on him for some other reason. Limped at first—end of the summer it was—and finally had to use two canes, one in each hand, by the time fall came on. I talked to Jane Garber about him one day and she thought as how it
was
arthritis, as he even had trouble holding his canes come winter, especially with those big thick mittens he wore.

He had so much trouble getting around come Christmas that we hardly ever saw him out on the street at all. That’s one reason it was such a surprise to me when I saw him through my window late one Friday night.

It was around midnight, and I’d gotten up to take a leak—that’s what happens when you get old—when I looked out the window and saw Zane hobbling up the street. Course I wondered why in hell he was out at such an hour on such a cold night, so I just stood there and watched him. He goes right up to the night depository, pulls it open with his cane handle sort of fumbly like, and shoves an envelope down the chute. Then he turns around and walks back toward Oak Street.

Now I’m confused. I know damn sure he doesn’t have to do that anymore. Miriam Koser takes care of his social security checks. But even so, there’s nobody in that bank. It’s clean empty.

This was about six months after they opened the new building up on the ridge and locked the old one up. Tore it down this spring to put up those apartments. So Zane’s making a deposit in a bank that’s not even open for business and never will be again. Right then and there I know he’s crazy, but I start to wonder about what he’s putting in that night depository slot. I hoped it wasn’t any money because he sure as hell can’t afford that. I figured pretty easy that he’s going back in his mind in time, you know, making those deposits to pay back the bank like he did for so many years.

I didn’t mention it to anybody. Nobody’s business but his, really, and I didn’t think he was hurting anything. Miriam kept tight enough watch on his money that he wouldn’t put much down there, if any, and if he did drop a dollar or two down, well, like I said, his business. I thought if it made him happy, fine.

I’d sort of forgot about it by the next Friday night. It wasn’t until I’d gotten up about four or so to visit the john that it crossed my mind. So I looked out the window, never really expecting to see Zane out there at that time, just one of the things you do, and I see this mound of white in front of the night depository.

It’d been snowing earlier, but had stopped. The streets were all covered with it, and there was just this mound of white lying there. And I knew right away what it was, that it was Zane Kaylor. So I pulled my clothes on and called Doctor Barnes before I went out, even though I knew that if it wasn’t Zane I’d look goddam stupid, but I was sure it was.

Then I went out and across the street and brushed the snow off him, and it was him, lying there curled up like a baby, looking as if he was sleeping, and there was a little smile froze on his face. Doctor Barnes came up shortly after, and young Bob Darkes, the cop, was with him. They saw right away he was dead, and Doctor Barnes started feeling over him to see how long he’d been there. I could’ve told him since midnight, but he didn’t ask.

Anyway, the doc pulls off one of Zane’s mittens and just yells, real frightened like. Bob Darkes and me look down at Zane and see what’s scared the doc so.

Zane’s hand’s got no fingers on it.

Then I know everything. I know why Zane started limping last summer, and I know why it got worse as the weeks went on. I know why he kept his mittens on, even inside stores, when fall came. And I know that it hasn’t been money he’s been dropping down the mouth of that night depository every Friday midnight.

The twenty white envelopes Bob Darkes found in the cellar of the old bank proved me right. Even when the money was all paid to the bank, Zane Kaylor had to start paying off his debt to Tommy Martin.

Next morning the sun melted the snow on the sidewalk, and I found something Bob Darkes hadn’t. It was an old bankbook. I don’t know where Zane had got it, but he’d scratched his name on the first page. The rest of it was blank.

Two days later I slipped it into Zane’s coffin at his funeral, but not before I wrote PAID IN FULL smack dab in the middle of the last page.

… To Feel Another’s Woe

 

 

I had to admit she looked like a vampire when Kevin described her as such. Her face, at least, with those high model’s cheek-bones and absolutely huge, wet-looking eyes. The jet of her hair set off her pale skin strikingly, and that skin was perfect, nearly luminous. To the best of my knowledge, however, vampires didn’t wear Danskin tops and Annie Hall flop-slacks, nor did they audition for Broadway shows.

There must have been two hundred of us jammed into the less than immaculate halls of the Ansonia Hotel that morning, with photo/résumés clutched in one hand, scripts of
A Streetcar Named Desire
in the other. John Weidner was directing a revival at Circle in the Square, and every New York actor with an Equity card and a halfway intelligible Brooklyn dialect under his collar was there to try out. Stanley Kowalski had already been spoken for by a new Italian-American film star with more
chutzpah
than talent, but the rest of the roles were open. I was hoping for Steve or Mitch, or maybe even a standby, just something to pay the rent.

I found myself in line next to Kevin McQuinn, a gay song-and-dance man I’d done Jones Beach with two years before. A nice guy, not at all flouncy. “Didn’t know this was a musical.” I smiled at him.

“Sure. You never heard of the Stella aria? And he sang softly, “I’ll never stop saying Steh-el-
la
…”

“Seriously. You going dramatic?”

He shrugged. “No choice. Musicals these days are all rock or opera or rock opera. No soft shoes in
Sweeney Todd.”

“Sweeney Todd
closed ages ago.”

“That’s ‘cause they didn’t have no soft shoes.”

Then she walked in holding her P/R and script, and sat on the floor with her back to the wall as gracefully as if she owned the place. I was, to Kevin’s amusement, instantly smitten.

“Forget it,” he said. “She’d eat you alive.”

“I wish. Who is she?”

“Name’s Sheila Remarque.”

“Shitty stage name.”

“She was born with it, so she says. Me, I believe her. Nobody’d
pick
that.”

“She any good?”

Kevin smiled, a bit less broadly than his usually mobile face allowed.

“Let’s just say that I’ve got twenty bucks that says she’ll get whatever part she’s after.”

“Serious?”

“The girl’s phenomenal. You catch
Lear
in the park last summer?” I nodded. “She played Goneril.”

“Oh
yeah.”
I was amazed that I hadn’t recalled the name. “She
was
good.”

“You said good, I said phenomenal. Along with the critics.”

As I thought back, I remembered the performance vividly. Generally Cordelia stole the show from Lear’s two nasty daughters, but all eyes had been on Goneril at the matinee I’d seen. It wasn’t that the actress had been upstaging, or doing anything to excess. It was simply (or complexly, if you’re an actor) that she was so damned
believable,
There’d been no trace of
acting,
no indication shared between actress and audience, as even the finest performers will do, no self-consciousness whatsoever, only utterly true emotion. As I remembered, the one word I had associated with it was
awesome.
How stupid, I thought, to have forgotten her name. “What else do you know about her?” I asked Kevin.

“Not much. A mild reputation with the boys. Love ‘em and leave ‘em. A Theda Bara vampire type.”

“Ever work with her?”

“Three years ago.
Oklahoma
at Allenberry. I did Will Parker, and she was in the chorus. Fair voice, danced a little, but lousy presence. A real poser, you know? I don’t know what the hell happened.”

I started to ask Kevin if he knew where she studied, when he suddenly tensed. I followed his gaze, and saw a man coming down the hall carrying a dance bag. He was tall and thin, with light-brown hair and a nondescript face. It’s hard to describe features on which not the slightest bit of emotion is displayed. Instead of sitting on the floor like the rest of us, he remained standing, a few yards away from Sheila Remarque, whom he looked at steadily, yet apparently without interest. She looked up, saw him, gave a brief smile, and returned to her script.

Kevin leaned closer and whispered. “You want to know about
Ms.
Remarque,
there’s
the man you should ask, not me.”

“Why? Who is he?” The man hadn’t taken his eyes from the girl, but I couldn’t tell whether he watched her in lust or anger. At any rate, I admired her self-control. Save for that first glance, she didn’t acknowledge him at all.

“Name’s Guy Taylor.”

“The one who was in
Annie?”

Kevin nodded. “Three years here. One on the road. Same company I went out with. Used to drink together. He was hilarious, even when he was sober. But put the drinks in him and he’d make Eddie Murphy look like David Merrick. Bars would fall apart laughing.”

“He went with this girl?”

“Lived with her for three, maybe four months, just this past year.”

“They split up, I take it.”

“Mmm-hmm. Don’t know much about it, though.” He shook his head. “I ran into Guy a week or so ago at the
Circle of Three
auditions. I was really happy to see him, but he acted like he barely knew me. Asked him how his lady was—I’d never met her, but the word had spread—and he told me he was living alone now, so I didn’t press it. Asked a couple people and found out she’d walked out on him. Damn near crushed him. He must’ve had it hard.”

“That’s love for you. “

“Yeah. Ain’t I glad I don’t mess with women.”

Kevin and I started talking about other things then, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off Sheila Remarque’s haunting face, nor off the vacuous features of Guy Taylor, who watched the girl with the look of a stolid, stupid guard dog. I wondered if he’d bite anybody who dared to talk to her.

At ten o’clock, as scheduled, the line started to move. When I got to the table, the assistant casting director, or whatever flunky was using that name, looked at my P/R and at me, evidently approved of what he saw, and told me to come back at two o’clock for a reading. Kevin, right beside me, received only a shake of the head and a “thank you for coming.”

“Dammit,” Kevin said as we walked out. “I shouldn’t have stood behind you in line, then I wouldn’t’ve looked so un-macho. I mean, didn’t they
know
about Tennessee Williams, for crissake?”

When I went back to the Ansonia at two, there were over thirty people already waiting, twice as many men as women. Among the dozen or so femmes was Sheila Remarque, her nose still stuck in her script, oblivious to those around her. Guy Taylor was also there, standing against a wall as before. He had a script open in front of him, and from time to time would look down at it, but most of the time he stared at Sheila Remarque, who, I honestly believe, was totally indifferent to, and perhaps even ignorant of, his perusal.

BOOK: The Night Listener and Others
11.5Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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