A Manhattan Ghost Story (22 page)

“Dead is
dead!
” she cut in, and speared a piece of sourdough with her fork. She repeated, though without emphasis this time, and with a little whimsical smile playing on her lips, “Dead, Abner, is dead.” She began munching on the sourdough. She nodded at the breadbasket. “Eat. You need to eat, Abner. I want you to eat.”

“Serena, I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.” I glanced at the garden again. The woman there still was leaning over the baby carriage. I looked back. “But I’m scared, Serena—” I looked at the woman in the garden. She had lifted one foot. I looked back. Serena had speared another slice of sourdough. She was buttering it. Her hand was quivering. “
You’re
scared?” she said, and grinned. “
You’re
scared?”

“I’m scared,” I acknowledged. I looked at the woman in the garden. She was bent over violently at the waist, her right leg at right angles to her left, which was straight. I looked back. Serena was still buttering her slice of sourdough; it was beginning to shred.

“Abner,” she said, her eyes on the sourdough, “I’m not going to try and humor you. I’m not going to play any silly games with you. I am going to tell you again that you are making me very nervous, and I don’t like to be nervous. I sweat when I’m nervous. I’m sweating now. And you’re making me nervous—” her butter knife went through the bread, spreading some of the butter onto her fingers; she didn’t seem to notice—”because I honestly feel that you need help of some kind. Maybe because of the setback with the book, I don’t know. If so, then I’m partially responsible, and so that makes you—to some small degree—
my
responsibility. So I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to eat this bread, and then I’m going to phone someone I know who will talk with you—”

“You think I’m nuts, Serena?”

She looked up suddenly, surprised. “Of course I think you’re nuts.” Another grin, short-lived.

“Will you at least listen to me?” I said.

“No. I’m sorry.” She took a little bite of the sourdough and chewed it delicately.

In the garden behind the house, the woman leaning over the baby carriage had stuck her head further into it, so her right leg was high in the air. I said to Serena, “I wish I was.”

“Was what?”

“Nuts.”

“You
are
nuts, Abner.” She took another small bite of the sourdough, and again chewed it delicately. “And I wish, I really wish that I could afford to sit and talk with you about it, but I can’t. Please understand—the luxury of being nuts comes with certain—” she thought a moment—”certain
miseries
. And one of those miseries is having to accept the fact that … acquaintances—and that’s all I am; I am
not
your friend—are not going to listen to you.”

I stood. I looked at the garden again. I saw the baby carriage. I did not see the woman.

Serena said, “So if you are not going to have any more food with me, I’d like you to leave.” Another grin. “And quickly, please.”

I looked at her. “
Hope
, Serena,” I said. “There
is
hope, believe me.”

She shook her head. “No. There isn’t. Now, please, will you leave? For a while you were very entertaining. But no more.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I pushed my chair back, stood, nodded at the linguini. “Thank you, Serena. It was good.”

“No problem,” she said.

“And I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

She said nothing.

I went to the door, looked back. She was not looking around at me. She was sitting with her face buried in her hands. I believe that she was weeping softly.

I left the apartment and went down to the street, then back, into the garden.

CHAPTER TWO

To the baby carriage there, which was big and black, with lots of chrome.

And empty, too. Except for the face of that woman—a nice face, with large hazel eyes and full red lips:

Which moved and pleaded with me, “My baby, where is my baby?”

It was a long way back to Art’s apartment. More than sixty blocks. I ran it. I jogged it. And when I got there, I sank into Art’s black leather couch and I watched a cable channel that was showing something filthy. I immersed myself in it. Completely. As I never before had. I got a hard-on; I found myself smiling. It was a retreat, a haven—it was
life
, for God’s sake! Tacky as it was, it was
life
.

And I did not know how long Phyllis had been sitting on the couch with me. When I noticed her, at last, I screeched out of fear and surprise, and she turned her face toward me. She was grinning.

She said, her voice lower than I remembered, and harsher, “I told you that you wouldn’t like it out there, Abner.”

Her face was flatter somehow, her skin tighter; and her smell had changed, too. It had softened, become more subtle, and distant.

She was wearing what she always wore; her fake, white mink coat, her green dress, her white, stacked-heel boots. I said, “I miss you, Phyllis.”

She continued grinning. It was hard and humorless. “You have me now,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, and I took her hand. She stiffened, as if in pain. She said, “No, Abner.” And she still was grinning. “No, Abner.” And I heard the same kind of quivering anger and grief in her voice that I had heard in the whorehouse East 80th Street. “I am coming apart, Abner.”

“I miss you, Phyllis,” I told her again.

“I am coming apart,” she said. “We come apart. We all come apart.” Her grin changed slightly. “The way dolls do.”

I shook my head.

“It happens, Abner. It has to happen.”

I shook my head more violently. I said nothing.

“We leave, Abner. We go away.”

I lowered my head; it frightened me to look at her.

“We leave,” she said again. “We go away.”

I looked at her. I saw that she was the woman I had stopped outside the house on East 80th Street.

And she said now, as she had said then, “I ain’t no one else, honey. I ain’t never been no one else.”

And I grabbed her, pulled her to me, wept, babbled into her shoulder. I was desperate to keep her; I would have held her for days on end to keep her.

God, I loved her.

I love her even now.

Her body felt like a sack of loose sand. And I held it, weeping, until she slid away from me.

She scared me. Good Christ, she scared me!

But not enough. She slid away from me; her fingers traced lightly down my shirt, my thigh, my calf. I grabbed for her; I grabbed hard.

And got her hand clean off at the wrist.

And watched her slide away, through the floor, like water soaking in.

At the Hammet Mausoleum, Halloween, 1965

“Why do you like it here, Sam?” I asked.

“It’s quiet,” he answered.

“Yeah, well,
libraries
are quiet, and I know you don’t like libraries.”

“And it’s … a place to be.”

“A place to be, Sam?”

“Yeah. Forever. You gotta end up being someplace, right?”

“Maybe.”

He reached out and fingered Flora’s skull. “Like Flora here. She’ll be buried with me, I guarantee it, Abner.”

“That’s nice, Sam.”

“It ain’t nice, Abner. It’s the way that things have gotta be. You try and spend forever with something you love. God, Abner, you make bein’ dead sound like a Tupperware party or something. Nice, shit! Nothin’ is
nice
.’”

“You’re damn spooky, Sam.”

“Sure I am.” He pushed himself to his feet suddenly, swiped at the back of his pants, smiled down at me. “You wanta pick those things up, Abner—” he nodded at the candles, which had burned to half of what they were when we got there, and at Flora’s skull—”I think we’d better get outa here, okay?”

“Sure enough, Sam.” I was happy. “Whatever you—”

“But first,” he cut in, “I gotta have just one little look at Joe Hammet. I gotta
touch
him, Abner. I gotta see how real he is. I gotta see how
real
he is anymore.”

CHAPTER THREE

It was an afternoon early in February, the day after I’d gone to Serena’s apartment and also the day after Phyllis had come to Art’s apartment, that Stacy showed up there. I’d been sleeping fitfully when I heard her knock. I think I knew it was her at once, and when I answered the door, after throwing on one of Art’s robes, which was much too short, I realized that I did not want to see her, that I thought of her as an intruder.

She looked awful.

“Jesus, Stacy—”

“Can I come in, Abner?”

I stepped out of the way, held my hand out toward the living room. “Sure. Of course,” I said. “Come in.”

She came in. She was wearing what must have, at one time, been a very stylish, blue raincoat, a pair of white jeans, and a ruffled, white cotton blouse that—also at one time—must have fit her quite fetchingly, but hung limply on her now, because she was very wet, as if she’d been standing a long time in a rainstorm. And there were streaks of brownish grit on the coat and the jeans, even down the side of her face.

“Give me your coat, Stacy.”

She gave it to me. “I’d like to use the shower, if that’s all right.”

“Of course it’s all right.” I nodded to my left. “The bathroom’s over there, just past the bedroom.”

“Thanks, Abner.” She sounded hoarse. “I know where it is.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes.” And she went quickly down the short hallway to the bathroom.

I made some coffee for both of us, dressed, and waited for her. She took a full half-hour in the bathroom and needed every minute of it. But when she reappeared, she didn’t look at all refreshed, only cleaner. She had one of Art’s shirts on over her underwear.

She sat, legs crossed loosely, her cup of coffee in hand, in a black leather chair opposite the couch. “Could you do me a favor,” she began, “and get my clothes cleaned somewhere? The coat has to be dry-cleaned; the other stuff you can take to a laundromat. You don’t mind, do you?”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t mind.” It was a lie. “What have you been doing, Stacy?”

“Searching for Art.” She looked pained. She sipped her coffee, set the cup on the floor, and announced, “I found him.”

“You
found
him?” I said. “He told me he was in Nice, Stacy. Where’d you find him, for Christ’s sake?”

She relaxed; her head was resting on the back of the chair, and she sighed, then explained, her gaze on the ceiling, “On East 100th Street. He’s got an apartment there—he calls it an apartment.” She brought her head forward; she looked suddenly angry. “It’s a goddamned pigsty. He’s cleaned it up, of course. He wanted to paint, but they wouldn’t let him—Jesus Christ, Abner, he’s a goddamned
mess
! You know what he’s doing? You want to know what he’s doing? He’s
hiding out
. Jesus, hiding out! I asked him what good he was doing himself, living there like that, and you want to know what he told me? He told me that he’s
free
. Free, for Christ’s sake. Free! I asked him—free to do
what
? He said ‘free to scratch.’ That’s what he said exactly. ‘I’m free to scratch, if I want.’ ” She picked her coffee up, sipped it, grinned. “Which is when I told him he was full of shit!” Another sip of coffee. Her grin reappeared, but there was pain in it now. “Which is when he hit me.” She touched the left side of her chest, just below her breast. “Here.” She touched the back of her head. “And here. With his fists. He likes to hit people with his fists. Not just women. People in general. When we were married, he hit this supermarket check-out boy who was looking at me, just looking at me. People look at other people, right? Where’s the harm? He broke the boy’s cheekbone. That’s awfully hard to do, I’m told.”

“I stood, went over to her, put my hand on her shoulder. “Do you want to see a doctor, Stacy?”

She shook her head. “No. Not here anyway. I’ll see my doctor in Bangor. I’m okay.”

“You’re going back to Bangor?”

“Yes, tomorrow, I think. Maybe tonight. It depends on what kind of arrangements I can make.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

She nodded, sipped her coffee again. “Yes. I run fast. He can’t run.”

“I know.”

“So I ran from him. This is a
dirty
city, Abner. This is an awfully
dirty
city.”

“Here and there,” I said.

“They’ll catch up with him though.”

“Who?” I asked. “Who’ll catch up with him?”

She shrugged. “Whoever.” She smiled. “Someone.” She pushed herself to her feet. “Can I stay here tonight if I have to, Abner?”

“Sure you can. But won’t you be a little … uncomfortable?”

She started for the bedroom, looked back. “He won’t come here. This is where he killed her, Abner. He’s afraid to come here.”

* * *

I slept on the couch, she in the bed. And she left the following morning, early.

I kissed her good-bye. I said to her, “I love you, Stacy,” and conjured up a tear or two. She said she was glad she’d come, after all, that she was finally able to admit to herself that Art was “a crud” and unworthy of her, so she could put a big, unhappy part of her past behind her, at last. And then a taxi took her to Grand Central.

I was posturing all the while. I felt like a man on display. Do this; do that; be what she
expects
and
needs
you to be, Abner. I felt the way a visitor from another planet probably feels—stiff and uncomfortable. As if she were in one world and I had one foot in another. I was not at all sad to see her go. Because I do not believe that I felt anything for her. Only for Art. My best friend. Who, deep inside me, was fueling a smouldering anger.

At the Hammet Mausoleum, Halloween, 1965

I shook my head violently. “I’m not going to help you break into Joe Hammet’s casket. No way, no how, nowhere—”

“Oh, your grannie’s knuckles,” Sam said. “I’ll do it myself, okay? Just give me the fuckin’ screwdriver and I’ll do it myself. You don’t even have to watch. You can go over there—” he nodded at a far corner of the mausoleum—”and you can hang onto your little cock so’s you don’t pee your pants. Christ, Abner, all I wanta do before we go is touch him. What’s
he
gonna care?”