Steel (22 page)

The man blinked, moved his lips forward, and withdrew his hands. “No,” he said, “I may need you again.”

Dr. Morton tightened. “I'm usually available,” he said stiffly. The
nerve
of the man!

“Good,” said the man. He opened the door and moved into the corridor.

Dr. Morton locked the door with a solid thrust. There, he thought. So much for you, Mr. Goodman. If that's really your name.

When he went back in the workroom to clean the drill, he saw the man's red scarf on the counter. Oh, no, he thought. He wasn't going to allow the man back to claim it. Snatching it off the counter, he left the room and hurried to the front door. Unlocking it, he pulled it open and lunged into the corridor. Here's your damn scarf! he thought of raging. He wouldn't, of course. But at least he'd be rid of Mr. Goodman. Peculiar—no,
weird
—Mr. Goodman.

He opened the front door of the building and stepped outside. Here's your scarf, sir! he said in his mind.

The parking lot was empty. Didn't the man drive here? Dr. Morton thought. Was he
walking?
At this time of night? Surely there was bus service available. A taxicab might not be possible.

He jerked back his head as a rushing sound moved overhead. A momentary shadow swept across him, making him start.

Quickly, Dr. Morton moved back into the building and walked to his office with unaccustomed speed. For some reason, he felt very cold.

THE WINDOW OF TIME

Let me say, at the outset, that I don't blame my daughter for what happened. Actually, “blame” is too critical a word. What I mean to say is that my daughter was hardly responsible for what happened. Miriam is a good soul, a benevolent human being. She never (well, almost never) found fault with my living in her home. And Bob's. And the three boys'. And if she did find fault, it was of such brief duration as to be negligible. Bob, on the other hand—well, let that go. (The main point I want to make is that my daughter did not demean me in any way for my extended residence. She knew I was alone and friendless; all of them deceased, including my beloved wife, Agnes. Appreciating that, Miriam treated me with thoughtfulness, kindness. And, most importantly, love.)

So much for the outset. The upshot? I know that my daughter and her family were in a constant state of stress because of me. I did the best I could, using their second bathroom (I didn't have the temerity to utilize the master bathroom) as expeditiously as possible, watching television on the small black-and-white set in my bedroom, rarely watching the fifty-five-inch LCD color TV in their living room and sharing that only when we all agreed on a specific program. Most of my personal books were in storage and scarcely ever reread. I'd read them all anyway.

Oh, there were other elements of stress. Certain foods I couldn't eat. Medicine prescriptions I needed periodically. Rides to various doctors. (I'd lost my driver's license in 2008 following my stroke.) Well, why go on? I was, to be brief, in the way. So I decided to leave. I had enough private income from social security and my retirement pension from the Writers Guild. (I was rather a successful series television writer in the '60s and '70s.) So I had enough income to keep paying Miriam by the month even though I wasn't there.

*   *   *

I didn't tell her I was leaving. I knew she'd try to dissuade me. My age (eighty-two, I'd married late), my health (questionable), my need for company (beyond question). I didn't want to debate with her. So I just left, a parting note on the kitchen table. I didn't take any belongings with me. I could get them after I located a furnished room or flat. I waited until Miriam had gone shopping for groceries. Bob was at work (he's a car salesman, poor chap), the boys—Jeremy, seventeen, Arthur, fourteen, and Melvin, twelve—were at school. So I decamped from the three-bedroom, two-bath Kelsey domicile (Jeremy would likely be delighted at long last to acquire his own room) and walked over to Church Avenue. (Did I mention that their house was in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn? No, I didn't. Well, it is.) And I had seen (for some time) an ad in the local news sheet about a retirement home in that area called Golden Years. The name gave me the pip. Golden Years my foot! But I was in no position—or condition, for that matter—to go searching to hell and gone for an appropriate landing spot.

The home—I had trouble thinking of it as a “home”—was a couple of blocks west of Flatbush Avenue. The ad described it so. To be truthful, I can't tell east from west or north from south. I assumed that I was heading in the right direction and evidently, I was. I found the house a block and a half distant from what had been the RKO Kenmore Theatre in my youth. Not a bad-looking house, cleanly painted, a sign hanging above its porch which read
G-LDEN YEARS
, the
O
missing. No mention of retirement. I had to assume it was the place I was searching for.

No doorbell. Instead, a rather portentous-looking knocker made, I guessed, of cast iron painted to resemble copper. It made such a deafening resonance when I struck it against the door that it made me wince.

An old lady answered the door. My immediate assumption was that the house was hers and she was attempting to keep from losing it by renting out unused bedrooms.

She smiled at me. “You've come looking for a place,” she said.

Her assumption would, ordinarily, have offended me. But her demeanor was so friendly, her voice so agreeable, that I felt nothing but acceptance in her presence. “Yes, I am,” I answered her. Politely.

“Come in then,” she said, still smiling.

There was no mention of rental as she led me down the dimlit hall. Hung on both sides were old, faded photographs and paintings.
She must be almost my age
, I thought although I wouldn't have dreamed of asking. Her hair was silvery-gray, her clothes outdated, her dark dress ankle-length. She walked with a youthful step, however.

Reaching a door, she opened it. “Here it is,” she said. “Let me know if it's what you need.” With that, she was gone.

I closed the door behind me and looked around. What I need? An odd expression to use. Fundamentally true, though. I did need some place to hang my hat. (My cap.) I needed to give Miriam a much-needed breather from my presence.

There were two windows in the room. Through the one in front of me, I could see Church Avenue, the passing cars and occasional pedestrians. Nothing special there. I looked around the room. Nothing special there, either. The furniture was as elderly as I was, equally so. No private bathroom, of course. I'd have to share. Not a problem. The house was pleasantly quiet except for the motor hum of passing vehicles. The room would do.

I moved to the other window. It looked out on a barren lot. To the right was a view of Church Avenue. I looked at it for a few moments.

And felt my spine turn to cold water. I shuddered so violently that I visualized my spine collapsing like a thin tower and splashing out of my body.

It was Church Avenue all right. But not the avenue I was accustomed to. It was unquestionably—
incredibly
—different. In brief, I didn't recognize it. It was
different.
How different, I had no idea.

So what did I do? Old fool that I am, I raised the window and—bones creaking—climbed (clambered, actually) outside and dropped to the ground. The fall gave me spinal pain; now it was hard bone again. I ignored the pain and moved as quickly as I could to Church Avenue.

“
My God
,” I remember muttering. (I muttered it innumerable times that afternoon.)

It
was
different. Totally different. Appearing as it had when I was young.

Young!
I shuffled, unable to move distinctly, and looked at my reflection in the nearest store window. No difference there. My reflection was, as usual, that of an eighty-two-year-old man—white bearded (albeit well trimmed), face not too noticeably lined, white cap covering hair-receded skull. Not too bad looking. But still eighty-two. Church Avenue might have changed. I had not.

I looked into the store. It was a butcher shop. There was a sign printed on the window:
ESPOSITO MEATS
.

That cold, liquid sensation in my spine again. Johnny Esposito! The Y! The gang! Was that the time I'd reached? How old was I? Thirteen? Fourteen? What? “My God,” I said again. (As I mentioned, one of many I muttered that afternoon.)

No, I was still eighty-two. But what year was I in? If Johnny Esposito was about, were Harry Pearce and Ken Naylor and all the others? Good God, could I walk up a few blocks, turn right and come to the YMCA? Would I see the old gang playing softball in the yard?
Hit the porch column and get a double!
Jesus, I hadn't thought of that in ages!

No.
I had to shake my head. It was all too insane. What if I
could
reach the Y? What if I saw my young self playing in the yard? Pitching for the Ravens. Would I stare? Walk away? Yell to myself? “Hey, strike 'im out, Rich!” Impossible. Put the crazy notion aside. So Church Avenue had changed. That was no reason to believe that the area for miles around had changed too. I was sure it hadn't.

Or
had
it?

Now the entire madness of what I was experiencing flooded through me. I had time traveled! I'd written television scripts about that, but now I was actually living it! Or was I dreaming it? Was I at home in Miriam's house, sacked out on my bed, fantasizing about my past? But, if that was true, why was I still eighty-two? Why was I experiencing every moment in my brain and body?

Only one way to validate. Keep moving. Keep looking. Should I try to find the Y? Probably not. I had no proof that this pocket of the past (insane notion) extended blocks beyond where I stood. Not knowing what had caused it in the first place, how could I be sure of its entirety? Better not, I decided. Stay on Church Avenue. Maybe that's all there was. Go the other way. The Y and what I might find there was really immaterial anyway. The gang was part of my youth but not so important a part that I had to see it. And God knew I'd rather avoid seeing my young self playing softball. More important things to see. And who knew how long this mad excursion into yesteryear would last?
I
didn't.

So I started—what, east?—down Church Avenue toward, I believed, Flatbush Avenue. The accuracy of my impulse was verified by the sight of the Kenmore Theatre marquee. I was able to see the letters.
LITTLE MISS MARKER.
The sight of it thrilled me. I'd seen it one afternoon after Sunday school. My sister treated my mother and me to the show; they were coming from church. How old was I? Twelve? Thirteen? Impossible to recollect, but I was getting close, I thought.

Before the show, we had lunch at Bickford's Cafeteria, which (thrilled again) I could now see across the way, on Flatbush Avenue; I was at its intersection with Church.
My God.
One remembered sight followed another. Now the Flatbush Theatre on Church Avenue just past Flatbush. I could barely make out the letters on its smaller marquee.
BROOKLYN, USA.
I remembered seeing it. The scene in the barbershop, the customer, (a gangster, I recalled) getting murdered with an ice pick. Scary stuff to a—what?—thirteen-year-old. Fourteen? And just down the avenue was the bar-restaurant where real gangsters met and ate and even married. I'd read about it in the newspaper when I was—whatever age I was, I still didn't know.

It suddenly occurred to me—at once thrilling and frightening—that, if I walked further down Church Avenue, I might reach the ancient brick building I knew as P.S. 81. Was it still there? Why wouldn't it be? Unless this section of the past did not extend that far. That's the part that frightened me. Why was all this happening to me anyway? Should I stop someone and ask? No, that would be stupid. Everyone I passed obviously belonged in this time. I couldn't prove it, but I'm sure my expression was one of constant awe. No one I passed wore such an expression. They were in their time. I was the dazed interloper.

I wouldn't try to explore the size of the past world. If P.S. 81 was actually there, I was too unnerved to try reaching it. What if I did reach it? Would I see my young self in one of the classrooms taking instructions (in what? Grammar? Arithmetic? Geography?) from Mrs. Ottolengui? Good God, I remembered her name! That frightened me, too. Did it mean I was being absorbed back into this time? I looked at the backs of my hands in alarm. (Or was it with hope?)

No.
Still old. As always, thickly veined in dark blue. I had not lost eighty-two years.
Jesus Christ, what's going on?!
I wondered in sudden alarmed anger. What was the point of it all? For a moment (but only a moment) I considered rushing back to the house and climbing back through that window. Except, of course (a terrifying except), what if the house wasn't there any longer? What if I was trapped in the past—a lone elderly gent caught in his own childhood?

No, that was impossible. There had to be
some
logic left in the world. Some sense to what I was going through. Why reverse time itself if there was no point to it? Why should nature distort itself so bizarrely for no reason?

All right, I decided (what other choice did I have?), I would continue and let the chronological chips fall where they may.

I crossed Church Avenue, wondering what the consequences would be of allowing myself to be struck down by one of the passing cars. A screech of brakes, an impact, the old gent flying to the pavement, most likely to his death. Who would gather up the body? Would my young self suffer the same fate when he reached eighty-two? Enigma piled on enigma. Would it happen again? A nightmarish possibility.

Anyway, I reached the curb safely, ignoring the angry shout of a motorist who had just missed sideswiping me. In front of me was the Dutch Reform Church. I remembered playing basketball in its gym. A
gym
in a
church?
I thought, confused.