Buddwing

5

He was shocked only because he thought he had forgotten her, and then doubly shocked because even when he remembered her, he could not really remember who she was. She came out of a building on 89th Street and walked quickly to the curb, obviously looking for a taxicab. She was a girl of seventeen, with long black hair that was pulled to the back of her head in a ponytail. He could not see her eyes from this distance, but he knew they were a dark brown, and he recognized instantly the long-legged lope that took her to the curb. She was wearing black stretch tights under a black skirt. She wore a black sweater, too, and her pulled-back hair bobbed like some strange proud crest of feathers as she moved hurriedly to the curb, so that she resembled a rather tall and scrawny, black-legged, black-crested, black-breasted bird. He saw her raise her arm to hail a cruising cab, saw the taxi move toward the curb, saw her hand dart out to open the door of the car, and began running toward her instantly.

“Doris!” he shouted. “Doris!”

The girl did not turn; the girl gave no sign that she had heard him at all, even though he was shouting at the top of his voice. The taxi door slammed just as he approached the corner. He crossed the street against a light, and the taxi emitted a brief cloud of exhaust fumes and pulled away from the curb. He stood on the corner and frantically shouted, “Doris! Doris!” but the taxi was moving away, and he stood in undecided panic for just an instant, and then brought his lips back over his teeth and, using the whistle he had tried to teach to Eric, hailed the next taxi that came by. He scrambled onto the back seat and said, “Would you follow that taxi up ahead, please?” and the cabbie turned to look at him with a curiously sour expression, as though he expected to find a private eye in a trench coat and was disappointed to find only a rather ordinary-looking man in a blue suit. He nodded perfunctorily and set the cab in motion. Buddwing leaned forward, watching the rear of the girl’s cab, wishing his own driver would go a little faster, and then finally saying, “Don’t lose it, huh?”

“Mister,” the cabbie said with infinite patience, “I am going as fast as the law allows. You want to pay the fine if I get a speeding ticket?”

“Yes,” Buddwing said at once, knowing the possibility of the cabbie’s getting a ticket was extremely remote, and also knowing that his verbal agreement could hardly be held binding should the matter ever come to a legal test. “Yes, I’ll pay the fine. Now, hurry up, will you?”

“You’ll all pay the fine,” the cabbie said wisely, “until it comes time to pay the fine. Then nobody wants to pay the fine.”

“I don’t want to lose that cab. It’s very important to me.”

“It’s very important to me that I don’t get in trouble with the police in this rotten city,” the cabbie said. “Besides, the driver up there ain’t allowed to go any faster than I’m allowed to go. So sit back and relax, like the sign says, and leave the driving to us, okay?”

“All right, but don’t lose it,” Buddwing said, still leaning forward.

“I get it, I get it already,” the cabbie said. “You don’t want me to lose that cab, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I get it. Relax.”

Buddwing could not relax. His mind was swarming with a hundred thoughts, who was that girl in the cab ahead, he had called her Doris, who was Doris, how did he know her, how much would it cost to follow her through the city of New York with a meter ticking away, was it forty-five cents already, how much money did he have left, Doris, who was she, who?

“Look at that stupid bastard, did you see that?” the cabbie said suddenly. He leaned his head toward the window, and shouted, “Make up your mind, you jerk!” and then turned the wheel sharply and almost collided with a moving van that had come up on the right of the taxi. “They shouldn’t be allowed to drive,” he muttered. “They take the car out on Saturdays and Sundays, and louse up the entire city, as if it needs lousing up. Man, you got to be out of your mind to drive a taxicab, I’m telling you. Where’s that broad going, anyway?”

“What broad?”

“The one in the cab up ahead. It’s got to be a broad, don’t it?” The cabbie shrugged. “Otherwise, what are you getting in such a sweat for? I had a blond broad in here the other day, she gets in the cab stoned drunk at two o’clock in the afternoon, she wants me to take her to Oyster Bay. You know where Oyster Bay is? That’s a ritzy section in Long Island, all society people. She’s wearing this black cocktail dress, two o’clock in the afternoon, she smells like the Schenley distillery, she wants me to take her home to Oyster Bay. I say to her where in Oyster Bay, lady, she says, ‘On the water.’ I say where on the water, lady, she says, ‘Do you want me to take your number?’ Right away, they want to take your number. Somebody wrote someplace once that the way to scare all the cabbies in New York City is to tell them you’re gonna take their number. So take my number, I tell her. If you want to take my number just ’cause I’m asking you where in Oyster Bay you want to go, which is an out-of-town call anyway, and which you got to pay special out-of-town rates for, then go ahead and take my number. But if you want to be more sensible about it, lady, why, just sit back and relax like the sign says, and give me your address in Oyster Bay, and then we can all have a nice drive because the traffic shouldn’t be too bad this time of the afternoon. Well, she don’t take my number. Instead, she sits back and relaxes all over the place, though she still don’t give me her address, how the hell am I supposed to know she lives on a big estate with tennis courts and a swimming pool, and the place don’t have an address? No numbers, you know what I mean? Just a mailbox on a road near the water, like she said. But the way she relaxes is she sits way back and relaxes, I mean, man, she relaxes. Then she begins singing very dirty songs like ‘Minnie the Mermaid,’ in this low drunken dirty voice while I keep watching her in the mirror, looking up her dress, I swear to God I almost crashed the cab four times. Man, what an afternoon that was. In this business, I’m telling you, you got to be out of your mind. The payoff is she gets to this swanky estate, on the water, just like she told me, and she goes inside to get some money to pay me, and she comes out, and on a twenty-eight-dollar ride, she gives me a quarter tip. I say to her, lady, I say, you sure you can afford this with them tennis courts and that swimming pool in there, you sure this ain’t going to break you? So she gives me a real sweet sexy-looking smile, with this blond hair hanging down over one eye, and she says, ‘Mister, you never had a ride like that in your life,’ and then she goes marching up the front walk, and just before she goes in the door she turns to me and gives me a bump and a grind like as if she’s in a burley joint in Union City. A quarter. Was it worth it, I’m asking you? Man, this business.”

“They’re turning,” Buddwing said.

“I see they’re turning, relax.”

“Where are we?”

“We’re on Sixty-seventh Street and Central Park West. Will you try to relax, mister?”

“Where are they going?”

“How do I know where they’re going? Is she an out-of-towner? It looks to me like we went all the way from Broadway to Central Park West and now we’re heading toward Broadway again. That’s sure the long way around the mulberry bush. Relax, will you?”

“You’re letting that truck get between us!” Buddwing shouted.

“You want me to fight a truck?”

“I want you to follow that cab!”

“I am following it!”

“You’re going to lose it if they make that light on the corner!”

“I don’t control the traffic lights in this city, mister. You got a complaint, go tell it to Commissioner Barnes, maybe you can help him louse up the works a little more.”

With a heartsick sigh, Buddwing saw that Doris’s taxicab had indeed gone through the green light on the corner, and that the light had now changed to red. The truck stopped, blocking the entire street ahead of Buddwing’s taxi, so that he had to crane his head out the window to try for a glimpse of the other cab, which seemed to be proceeding west on 67th Street.

“Now you’ll lose it,” he said. “I told you not to lose it.”

“I still got my eye on it,” the driver said. “It’s stopping in the middle of the next block.”

“Well, hurry up, will you please?”

“The light’s still red.”

“It’s changing. There! Go ahead!”

“Shall I drive right through the truck? Or under it? Which?”

“Give him the horn.”

“He’s moving.”

“Can you still see them?”

“The girl’s getting out.”

“Then hurry!”

“Hurry, hurry, nobody’s got time to relax in this rotten city.” The cabbie shook his head and waited for the truck to make its turn onto Columbus Avenue. He stepped on the gas then and drove recklessly up 67th Street. Doris’s cab was just pulling away from the curb. Buddwing leaned forward and saw only her black-stockinged legs mounting the front steps of a brownstone. He reached for the money in his pocket. The fare was seventy-five cents. He gave the cabbie a dollar bill, and quickly stepped onto the curb.

“Doris!” he called.

The door of the brownstone closed behind the girl.

“Doris!” he called again, and then quickly ran up the front steps of the building and tried the front door. It was locked. He debated ringing the superintendent’s bell, then wondered what he would say to the man when he came to the door, and decided against it. Sighing, he came down the steps again and stood on the sidewalk next to the garbage cans waiting for pickup.

The city was wide awake; he had not noticed that. He had spent too much time with Eric by the river, and then had become involved in following Doris, so that the city had quietly and secretly come awake all around him. He paused on the sun-washed sidewalk now, and tried to get his bearings, amazed that the city was alive, feeling its breath again with a fierce nostalgic intensity.

The block between Amsterdam and Broadway was a short one and consisted of crumbling brown tenements surrounded by the new construction that had come on the heels of Lincoln Center. The parking lot on the corner of Broadway was called the Philharmonic, and the huge structure behind it was called Lincoln Square Motor Inn. Up the street, running at a ninety-degree angle’ to the tenements, was an apartment building complex named Lincoln Towers. In the midst of all this culturally inspired splendor, the tenements crouched like cockroaches under a shiny new kitchen sink, waiting to be stepped on by urban renewal. But, Buddwing noticed, the people on the street went about their business as though nothing at all was happening around them, nothing was threatening their way of life.

A woman in a bathrobe, a scarf on her head, was walking a poodle on a leash. The superintendent next door was out sweeping his sidewalk. A young girl in a tight short skirt came out of one of the buildings carrying two empty milk bottles and heading for Broadway. There were traffic sounds now, the groan of buses, the fainter purring sound of automobiles, the creaking clatter of a horse-drawn wagon that lumbered past the corner. There was a lazy somnolence to the horse and wagon, and to the day itself. The city was awake and alive, but this was Saturday morning, and there was no rush as yet. The city had rolled out of a warm bed, opened a window wide to a balmy spring breeze that gently lifted curtains, savored the mild air, and then consumed a leisurely lazy breakfast. And now she came forth to greet the day, awake but unhurried, still dressed casually; this was Saturday, tonight would be Saturday night and she would emerge sleek and pleasure-bound, but for now she could sweep her sidewalks and walk her dogs and go to the corner store for the morning milk, and idly watch a horse-drawn wagon, the horse’s brown back gilded with sunlight, make its way in a lazy clatter up the avenue.

A stickball game was being formed halfway up the block, but there was no rush to get it going. There was instead an examination of the broom handles that would serve as bats; this one had a crack near its fatter end, it simply wouldn’t do. And then there was a bouncing of balls against the asphalt; the pink Spalding bounced highest but nonetheless had to be tested, the balls held in separate hands and dropped simultaneously, a white one and a pink one, the choice being made. There was a slow and easy choosing of sides — odds, evens, one, two, three, shoot. The boys stood around in a patient circle while the wheat was separated from the chaff, a skinny kid with eyeglasses being the last chosen, accepting his misfit role with tolerant reluctance. There was a painstakingly slow chalking of the bases on the street, the chalk ran out, another color had to be used, third base was a bright yellow against the black, home plate was a lurid green. There were a great many practice pitches and a great many practice throws, and then another examination of the stickball bats, and a final rejection of a red broom handle. Another worn-out broom was brought, beaten against the fire hydrant to loosen the wire, and then the wire holding the straw bristles to the handle was carefully unwound, the bristles finally shaken loose. The new bat was tested, and seemed to prove itself adequate, and the game was ready to begin. But there was still no rush. This was Saturday; even stickball could be calm and easy.

He supposed he would have to wait for Doris to come out since he did not know where she had gone exactly, and since he could hardly go ringing strange doorbells and asking for her. He looked across the street to a candy store, and decided he would have a cup of coffee there, sitting near the open door so that he could watch the front of the brownstone in case she emerged. He crossed the street — the opening pitches of the stickball game were being tossed not fifty feet from him — and saw first the electric clock in the candy store window. The time was 9:10 A.M. Then he saw the newspaper stand outside the store, and he thought it would be nice to buy a newspaper. He stopped beside the stand and was reaching for the New York Times when his eye was pulled back sharply by the bold shrieking black print on the front page of the nearest tabloid. He knew immediately that this was the shock he had been expecting ever since he had left Gloria’s apartment. Not Doris who had appeared suddenly and splendidly in big-bird, black-legged surprise, but this, this that stared up at him from the newsstand, shouting, screaming, this.

He almost rushed away from the newsstand. He thought, hastily, That isn’t me. And then he reached out for the newspaper, his hand trembling, and he carried it with him into the candy store and placed it on the counter before him, not looking at the headline again, and he said to the man behind the counter, “A cup of coffee, please, light with one sugar,” and did not even realize he had automatically remembered how he took his coffee. He almost forgot all about Doris in the next few moments. He had taken the stool at the end of the counter so that he could see through the open door to the street outside and the brownstone across the way. But he did not even glance through the door now. He simply kept staring at the black headline on the front page, finally reading it, and then reading it over and over again, seeing the small type that told him the story was on p. 3, but not wanting to open the paper because he was afraid there might be a picture there, and he would recognize the picture as himself, and then he would know for certain, then the headline would be clear, the ominous black type would assume even more frightening dimension, growing until it obliterated the city and the world and the universe.

The man behind the counter put the cup of coffee down on the counter before him and said, “You taking that paper, mister?”

“Yes,” Buddwing said.

“Then I’ll add it to the check.”

“Yes, do that,” Buddwing said, and the counterman turned away as though he had won a major triumph.

The headline on the front page, shrieking, told Buddwing that a mental patient had escaped last night from a Long Island hospital. The headline did not spell out the words “Long Island,” it simply abbreviated them, using the letters “L.I.,” and Buddwing thought it was somehow odd, although he knew it was perfectly acceptable, that the newspaper should be shrieking about the escape of a madman, and yet should use a commonplace abbreviation like L.I. He thought suddenly of the woman who had gone to Oyster Bay and then given the cabbie a twenty-five-cent tip. He wondered what the woman had looked like beneath the open naked cavern of her black cocktail dress, and then he turned to page three.

There was no picture on page three. He wondered why there was no picture. Didn’t madmen have their pictures taken? Didn’t mental hospitals, like jails, mug and print anyone who came through their doors? The story told him that a man named Edward Voegler had escaped from Central Islip State Hospital on Long Island last night, shortly after the evening meal. Voegler — and he remembered with panic the initials in the ring on his right hand, G.V. — had apparently gone out of the dining room and then had walked into the director’s empty office and stolen a shirt, a tie, and a suit of clothes from the director’s closet. The story did not say what color the suit was, but in his certainty that he was this man Voegler, Buddwing knew the suit was blue. Voegler, the story said, was thirty-eight years old, about six feet tall, and extremely dangerous, a paranoid schizophrenic with a severe persecution complex and delusions of grandeur. The story then went into a quasi-medical explanation of schizophrenia and paranoia and explained what a man with a persecution complex and delusions of grandeur might be expected to do, ending with the number that should be called if anyone happened to run across Voegler.

Buddwing read the story three times.

The legend inside his ring had read “From G.V.” and he again wondered who G.V. was, but this time his wonder was edged with terror. He surmised that G.V. was the wife or mother of this man Voegler, who he knew without doubt he himself was. Edward Voegler. He repeated the name in his mind. It did not have a familiar feel, and yet who else could he be? Had not the newspaper story mentioned Voegler’s seemingly normal behavior interspersed with exceedingly unusual speeches and deeds? Had not his own behavior been odd and somewhat... well, crazy, yes... stopping a stranger on the street and asking him what an A and R man was, spending an hour or more with a young boy by the river, chasing a strange girl (She is not a strange girl, goddamn you! She is Doris! I know her!) in a taxicab and waiting now for her to emerge from the building across the street?

He looked quickly through the open door and across the street. The face of the brownstone was still sealed tight. He turned back to the newspaper and read the story a fourth time. Of course, he thought. What else was my attitude toward Di Palermo than a paranoiac symptom? Severe persecution complex, of course — why the hell else would twenty-two dollars be so important to me? Twenty-two lousy measly dollars — I who spend thousands a year! There, he thought. Delusions of grandeur! And what about the way I treated Mr. Schwartz, who offered to pay for my breakfast? What kind of behavior was that? Who the hell would behave that way except an escaped lunatic named Edward Voegler, who is me, who goddamnit is me, me, me!

Is he? he thought.

Is Edward Voegler really me, and am I really him? And if I am, what the hell do I do now? Should I call that number, let them take me back to that horrible place, what horrible place, how do I know of its horror if I’m not indeed Edward Voegler, the escaped lunatic, what had the headline called him, a schizo, yes, schizo escapes l.i. asylum. There was a poetry in the words. L.I. Asylum. He thought back to a headline he had seen in the Daily News, oh, long ago — why was it he could remember all the stupid trivial paraphernalia of his life, the inconsequential trimmings, and not any of the really important things, like whether or not he happened to be Edward Voegler, escaped lunatic, or madman, or schizo, or whatever he was? The headline had appeared when the men down at Canaveral had sent up a rocket containing white mice. The rocket was supposed to send radio signals back to earth before the eventual return of the mice, but those brilliant spacemen had gloriously fouled up the experiment, and the rocket was not sending back any radio messages, and it looked as though those red-eyed little rodents would go spinning through space eternally. The headline on the Daily News that day — What made him think he didn’t like that newspaper? That headline had cheered up his entire day! — had read simply:

God, that was a great headline! The man who wrote that headline should have been given a medal and a ticker-tape parade down Fifth Avenue in an open car with Mayor Wagner taking off his hat and holding it up to the crowd like a panhandler!

I must be crazy, he thought. I’m sitting here with a cold cup of coffee, light with a little sugar — I take it black, isn’t that what Gloria said? Sam takes it black — remembering a headline I saw years ago, when the headline on the newspaper right in front of me is telling me I’m a nut who stole some director’s nice blue suit (and undoubtedly his gold cuff links and tie tack) and ran off with a case of paranoid schizophrenia and a severe persecution complex with delusions of grandeur. Where the hell is Doris? Isn’t she ever coming out?

She suddenly seemed like his only salvation. Doris in the building across the street, with her long bird legs and her flowing black crest, old Doris would know all the answers. He would wait for her to come out, and then he would simply say, “Hi, Doris, remember me? It’s nutty old Ed Voegler; we used to know each other before I got committed. Remember? I used to tell you about all the hatchet murders I was planning. Come on, you remember, don’t you?”

And Doris would look at him and say, “Why, you silly boy, you. You’re not Ed Voegler at all, whoever he is. You’re Myron Goldfarb, who used to take me cycling in the Bronx, don’t you remember?”

Oh, yes, he thought, oh yes, I remember those sun-stained days, yes, yes, I remember, but hasn’t Edward Voegler got a memory, too, and isn’t his as confused and as terrified as my own, this paranoid schizophrenic who took his evening meal and then ran for freedom? Didn’t I run for freedom this morning, up Central Park South with the birds singing their sweet and piercing song in my ears? Didn’t I run for freedom?

“There’s more of them guys on the outside than on the inside,” the voice beside him said.

He wheeled on his stool. The boy standing next to him was no more than sixteen years old. He was wearing a black leather jacket with silver studs in the collar. His sideburns were long, and his eyes were wide and blue in a guileless open face seeking conversation.

“Are you talking to me?” Buddwing asked.

“Yeah, sure,” the boy said.

“What did you say?”

“I said there’s plenty of them nuts walking the streets.”

Buddwing smiled. “Yes,” he said, “I’ll bet there are.”

“How’d he get out?” the boy asked.

“He just left.”

“Don’t they have fences around them places?”

“I guess they do.”

“So what kind of fences do they have where some nut can just march out like that?” The boy shook his head.

“Maybe he cut a hole in the fence. Or dug under it,” Buddwing said, and then wondered if that was what Voegler had done, what he had done.

Two other boys seemed to materialize out of nowhere. They were sporting sideburns, too. One of them was wearing a gray sweat shirt with a black line drawing of Beethoven stamped onto the front. The other was wearing a blue sports shirt over which was an open red vest. They took up positions slightly behind the boy in the black leather jacket, and joined the conversation easily and naturally.

“I wonder if he really only escaped last night,” the one with the Beethoven sweat shirt said.

“What do you mean?” the one with the red vest asked.

“Well,” Beethoven explained with patient logic, “that’s only what they’re telling us. Suppose he really escaped last week, or maybe even last month? Maybe they’ve been looking for this creep all the time, and they couldn’t find him ’cause he’s hiding out in the bushes someplace, you know, so they figure that now maybe they better warn the people, you dig?”

“That sounds crazy,” Red Vest said, but Buddwing did indeed dig what Beethoven was saying because it suddenly opened a new line of thought for him, and the thought was overwhelming. Suppose, he thought, suppose I am not Edward Voegler but simply a very nice ordinary man, a garbage man perhaps, who doesn’t happen to remember who he is? But more than that, suppose I haven’t really known who I am for a week, maybe, or even maybe a month, just as Beethoven said? Suppose I have been waking up every morning for the past month without having the slightest idea who I am?

“You may be right,” he said to Beethoven, looking at the face above the sweater for the first time. The boy had long brown hair and gray eyes, and really a remarkably handsome face, with a short pug nose and full lips, like one of the carved angels on the roof of Il Duomo in Milan; Italy again, hot, the roller in the typewriter had melted because the typewriter had been near the window with the sun beating in on it and the temperature had been a hundred and two in the shade, the roof of the cathedral with its gingerbread icing, the way her hair had been framed by a sky of molten brass, brass against brass, her hair, Milan.

“Sure,” Beethoven said. “You think they’re gonna tell us anything? And get theirselves in hot water? It’s only ’cause they can’t find that kook is why they’re telling us about it now.”

“Well, maybe so,” Red Vest said. “What do you think?”

He addressed this to Leather Jacket, who was obviously the leader of the trio. L.J., the boss, shrugged as if such speculation were beneath his lofty consideration. “Who cares?” he said. Red Vest, who looked somewhat like an Indian, with a swarthy complexion and black crew-cut hair with incongruously long sideburns, shrugged too. Whatever was all right with L.J. was all right with him, it seemed, and besides, who cared?

“Did they finally get that stickball game going?” L.J. asked Beethoven.

“Yes, they did,” Buddwing answered.

“Takes them an hour to get a game started,” L.J. said, accepting Buddwing into the conversation casually and easily. “You ever see a bunch of guys take so long to get something going?”

“No,” Buddwing said. “It’s Saturday, though, so I guess there’s no rush.” He picked up his cup and sipped at the coffee, pulling a face.

“What’s the matter?” L.J. asked. “Your coffee get cold?”

“Yeah,” Buddwing said.

“Hey, Artie,” L.J. said to the counterman, “why don’t you give this guy a cup of hot coffee?”

“I gave him a cup of hot coffee.”

“Yeah, well, it’s ice-cold now.”

“That’s all right,” Buddwing said.

“Come on, break your heart, Artie. Give the guy a fresh cup. And bring us all some while you’re at it.”

“None for me,” Red Vest said.

“You think coffee grows on trees?” Artie said.

“As a matter of fact, it does,” Buddwing answered, and the boys all laughed.

“Where you think it grows?” Beethoven said, laughing. “In the dirt, like potatoes?”

“The comedians,” Artie said. “Here’s your coffee.”

Buddwing noticed that he put down three cups, and wondered if he was expected to pay for the fresh cup L.J. had demanded. L.J. picked up his own cup of coffee and then started to walk toward one of the booths in the back of the place. He stopped, turned toward Buddwing expectantly, and said, “Whyn’t you sit back here with us?”

Buddwing was about to refuse. But the open innocence was still on L.J.’s face, as though he were asking for contact somehow, as though it were very important to him that Buddwing join them.

“All right,” Buddwing said. “But I have to keep an eye on that building across the street.”

“Oh, yeah?” L.J. said. “How come?”

“I’m waiting for a girl to come out.”

Red Vest made a clucking sound with his tongue, and Beethoven picked up his coffee cup and shouted at the counterman, “Hey, Artie, you think girls grow on trees, too?”

“He thinks girls grow in Macy’s,” L.J. said, and everyone, including Buddwing, laughed.

“Wise guys,” Artie said, but he was smiling.

They made themselves comfortable in the booth, L.J. and Buddwing on one side, Red Vest and Beethoven on the other. L.J. picked up his coffee cup, sipped at it, and then turned to Buddwing and said, “We’re always putting him on. Artie. He’s a nice guy. The guy up the block, he always chases us when we hack around. Not Artie.”

“He does seem like a nice guy,” Buddwing offered, though he really held no opinion of Artie whatever, and was in fact still wondering whether he was expected to pay for the second cup of coffee.

“You connected with the television studio?” L.J. asked.

“What do you mean?” Buddwing said.

“ABC. Over near the park.”

“Oh. No. No, I didn’t even know there was a studio around here.”

“Yeah, there’s always a bunch of actors going in and out of there. You’re not connected with it, huh?”

“No.”

“I thought maybe you were connected with it. You look like an actor or something.”

“I do?”

“Yeah. Don’t he look like an actor?”

“Yeah,” Beethoven said, smiling angelically, “he looks like Boris Karloff.”

“More like Peter Lorre,” Red Vest said.

“Wise guys. You see? They can’t take nothing serious,” L.J. said.

“We’re very serious,” Beethoven said.

“Oh yes, very serious,” Red Vest said.

“You really waiting for a girl?” L.J. asked.

“Yes, I am.”

“What’s her name?”

“Doris.”

L.J. thought for a moment, his brow wrinkling. “Doris,” he said, “Doris.” He turned to the other boys. “You know any Doris on this block?”

“There’s a Dotty,” Beethoven said.

“No. This is Doris,” Buddwing said.

“What’s she look like?” L.J. asked.

“Black hair, brown eyes, very long legs.”

“How old is she?”

“Seventeen,” Buddwing answered without hesitation.

“That’s kind of robbing the cradle, ain’t it?” Red Vest said.

“What do you mean?” L.J. protested. “Maybe he likes them young.” He looked at Buddwing seriously, and said, “How old are you, anyway?”

“Thirty-five,” Buddwing said.

“That’s not so old,” L.J. said.

“That’s pretty old,” Red Vest said. He grinned at Buddwing and added, “I’ll bet you can remember the chariot races.”

“I can remember the building of the pyramids,” Buddwing said.

“Dotty has blond hair,” Beethoven said idly, and then shrugged and picked up his coffee cup.

“No, this is Doris.”

“But there ain’t no Doris on this block.”

“I think you made her up,” Red Vest said.

Buddwing smiled. “No, she’s real, all right.”

“Naw, you made her up,” Red Vest said, and he winked at the other boys. For a moment, Buddwing felt a twinge of anticipation. He was sitting in a booth with three boys who looked like all the pictures of juvenile delinquents he had ever seen. They had accepted him into their circle unquestioningly, had joked with him, had demanded a fresh cup of coffee for him when his first cup had grown cold. But now he grew suspicious of them. Why were they being so friendly? Was their easy banter leading to an argument, leading to an excuse for them to jump him? Cautiously, he lifted his cup, avoiding their eyes, and cautiously he sipped at his coffee.

“Does she put out?” Beethoven asked idly.

Buddwing dared to raise his eyes. He looked into Beethoven’s face, and could read nothing on it. Carefully, he said, “Well, I don’t know.”

“Oh, yeah, he don’t know,” Beethoven said, and laughed gently. The laugh seemed to dissipate whatever anxiety Buddwing had been feeling. He looked into Beethoven’s gray eyes and at his soft face, and he listened to the boy’s warm chuckle, a chuckle that conveyed such a sense of cheerfully shared conspiracy that Buddwing knew instantly his suspicion had been ill-founded, and instantly he relaxed.

“No, really,” he said, smiling. “I don’t know whether she does or not.”

“Yeah, he don’t know,” L.J. said. “Just look at him.”

“Everybody puts out,” Red Vest said. “That’s a fact.”

“This guy thinks the whole city is a whorehouse,” L.J. said.

“It is,” Red Vest answered.

“Then what does that make your mother and your sister?” Beethoven asked with sweet simplicity.

Sipping at his coffee, Buddwing thought, I have had this conversation before.

“My mother puts out, that’s for sure,” Red Vest said, “and my sister’s only eight.”

“That’s very mature,” L.J. said, laughing. “What’s holding her back?”

They all laughed, and Red Vest said, “Yeah, you guys. Boy.” He turned to Buddwing. “You ever see a bunch of hornier guys in your life?”

“Who, us?” L.J. said in astonishment. He nudged Buddwing gently and said, “This is the guy who’s horny. Look at him. Sitting here and waiting for a chick, when it’s only nine o’clock in the morning.”

“Well, it’s really nothing like that,” Buddwing said. “She’s really a very nice girl.”

“Who said she ain’t nice?”

“She’s probably sweet as can be.”

“Mmm. Sweet.”

“With that black hair and those brown eyes.”

“Yeah, and the long legs.”

“I dig long-legged chicks,” Red Vest said.

“You dig anything that walks with a skirt on it.”

This identical conversation, Buddwing thought.

“You know what I dream sometimes?” Red Vest said confidentially. He lowered his voice and leaned across the table. “I dream of all those beautiful long-legged chicks walking around naked, but there’s no body from the waist up, you know what I mean? Just this pussy on legs, that’s all. I dream it all the time.”

“You’re nuts, that’s why you have such dreams,” L.J. said, and Buddwing thought again of Edward Voegler, of Central Islip State Hospital, of the newspaper’s shrieking headline.

“Mmmm,” Red Vest said, “eat them all up. Mmmm,” and he licked his lips.

“You know who’s the sexiest girl on this block?” Beethoven asked idly.

“Who?” Buddwing said.

“Yeah, look at him, he wants to know,” Red Vest said. “I thought you were waiting for Doris.”

“I am.”

“So what do you want to know about some other chick for, huh?”

“Yeah, wait’ll we tell Doris,” Beethoven said. He grinned at Buddwing, enjoying the banter immensely.

“What, is he married to her?” L.J. asked. “Boy, you guys, you never...”

“It’s plain to see he’s bugged over the girl,” Red Vest said, shrugging.

“Are you bugged over her?” L.J. asked Buddwing.

“Well, I like her a lot,” he answered.

“Then I don’t think you ought to tell him about this other chick,” L.J. said to Beethoven.

“Okay, I won’t,” Beethoven said.

“No, go ahead, tell me,” Buddwing said.

“Naw, I don’t think I should.”

“I think Doris would get very angry if we went telling him about some other sexy chick, that’s what I think,” L.J. said.

“That’s what I think, too,” Beethoven said.

“Me, too,” Red Vest said.

“Me, too,” Buddwing said, and they all laughed.

“Louise,” Beethoven said suddenly. “Louise Ambrosini, that’s who the sexiest girl on the block is.”

“Louise Ambrosini!” Red Vest said, shocked.

“Yeah, that’s who.”

“She’s an old lady!”

“She’s a young mother. And don’t yell. There’s people here who know her, you realize that?” Beethoven lowered his voice. “You know what she does?”

“What does she do?”

“Oh, boy, wouldn’t you like to know what she does.”

“Yeah?” Red Vest said, leaning forward. “You mean it?”

Beethoven nodded his head and smiled in a superior manner.

“I don’t believe it,” Red Vest said. “She’s got a baby in a carriage!”

“She’s also got a husband in the navy,” Beethoven said, “that’s what else she’s got. In the navy. In Florida. That’s what.”

“What are you saying?”

“Me? Nothing,” Beethoven said innocently.

“You mean...”

“He means Old Louise is available,” Buddwing said.

“If he knows what I’m saying,” Beethoven said, “how come you guys don’t know what I’m saying?”

“It must be a meeting of the minds,” L.J. said.

“Yeah, it must be a meeting of the world’s great thinkers,” Red Vest said.

Beethoven laughed and said, “You hear that? We’re the world’s great thinkers.”

“Sure, I knew that all along,” Buddwing said.

“Let’s go see how that stickball game is doing,” Red Vest said.

“Sports fans,” L.J. said, his voice deepening in imitation of a radio announcer, “here we are on Sixty-seventh Street, between Amsterdam and Broadway, about to witness the opening game of the spring classic.”

“He wants to be an announcer, this guy,” Red Vest said.

“Really?” Buddwing asked.

“Well, I thought of it,” L.J. said modestly.

“He’s very good at it,” Beethoven said, looking at L.J. in a friendly, encouraging manner, and then turning to Buddwing and trying to convince him. “Really. He’s got it down pat. And he knows all the rules, too, and the batting averages, things like that. He’s very good at it, really.”

“I’ll bet he is,” Buddwing said.

“Well, my voice ain’t so hot.”

“You got a very good voice,” Beethoven said. “Don’t you think he has?”

“Very good,” Buddwing said. “It’s a good deep voice.”

“Not too deep, though,” Red Vest said. “It’s just right for a radio announcer.”

“Yeah, if it’s too deep, you can’t hear them so good,” Beethoven said. “His voice is just right. You should hear him sometimes. He really does a good job.”

“You should see this guy draw,” L.J. said.

“What do you mean?” Buddwing asked.

“Well, I’m not so good,” Beethoven said.

“He’s great, he really is. I can’t even draw a straight line, but you should see some of the pictures he does. Hey, why don’t you run upstairs and get some of your pictures?”

“Naw, come on,” Beethoven said.

“He’s got a picture, it’s all in color,” Red Vest said, “of the rooftops on this block. You ever been up on a roof?”

“Yes,” Buddwing said. “Yes, I’ve been on a roof.”

“Well, he’s got it all down, you know, the television antennas, and the way the tar gets, and the bricks, and even there’s a pigeon coop on one of the roofs. He’s got an eye, boy! When you gonna do our pictures, huh?”

“I’ll do them,” Beethoven said.

“He’s always promising he’s gonna draw our pictures,” L.J. said, “and he never does.”

“He took this girl to the park, though, and he drew her picture, didn’t you, hah? Ah-hah?”

“She posed for him,” L.J. said, grinning.

“You should see that picture,” Red Vest said. “Hey, come on, go upstairs and get them, okay?”

I have heard this talk before, Buddwing thought, I have been in this candy-store booth with these same boys, and we talked of sex and dreams, we talked of ambition and desire, we shared together, we felt what is in this booth now, a pride and a joy and a warmth, I know these boys.

“Come on, let’s go watch that game,” L.J. said.

“I have to keep my eye on the building,” Buddwing said.

“You can watch it from the street, it ain’t going no place.”

“I guess not.”

“Boy, this Doris must be some chick,” Beethoven said.

They moved out of the booth and toward the door of the candy store. Artie looked up from his newspaper and said, “Forty-five cents for the coffee, and five for the paper, if you don’t mind.”

He’s not charging me for the extra cup, Buddwing thought, and immediately said, “I’ve got it.”

“No, no, let me take it,” L.J. said.

“No, that’s all right.”

“Come on, there’s three of us, for Christ’s sake. That ain’t fair. Hey, come on, really.”

“No, don’t worry about it,” Buddwing answered, and he put fifty cents on the counter, the two quarters he had got as part of his change in Schwartz’s cafeteria. He still had the dime and the nickel in his trouser pocket, and he wondered abruptly how many bills he had left. He had spent a dollar for the taxicab, and now an additional fifty cents — should he tip Artie? — how much did that leave him? Were those three bills in his pocket, or only two? How long would his money last, and how long would it be before they dragged him, Edward Voegler, back to Central Islip and started giving him shock treatment, or put him in a tub full of steaming water covered with a rubber sheet... why, that was Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit! he thought suddenly, and wondered all at once whether he had ever really been inside a mental hospital, whether he was really Edward Voegler, the escaped paranoid schizophrenic.

Well, Doris will tell me, he reasoned, if she ever comes out of that damn building. She’s been in there for more than a half hour now; isn’t she ever coming out? The hell with her, he thought suddenly. I have my own friends, I have my own life to lead — and then he recognized how absurd this reasoning was. The three boys he had met were hardly his friends — why had he thought they were his friends? Simply because they had shared some time with him, simply because he had felt a momentary spark of sympathy from them, the idle angelic smile of Beethoven, the reminiscent gutter talk of Red Vest, the playful nudges of L.J.? They were not his friends; they were simply some guys he had stopped to talk to on a mild spring day. And yet he still felt very close to them as he walked out into the spring sunshine and heard the sudden sound of stickball bat against rubber ball, and then the clattering noise of the broom handle being dropped on asphalt.

He blinked his eyes against the sun. The bat was rolling, he heard the sound of it, it seemed to be the only sound on the street. The sun was bright in his eyes, memory sharp and swift and sudden, blinding in its intensity, rooting him to the sidewalk in a brilliant splash of canyon-filtered sunshine, it is too still in this house.

The sunshine is coming through a small window in the entry hall. It crosses the air with flecks of dancing dust motes, the apartment is very still. He can hear a clock ticking someplace in the living room, and another sound below that, a swishing sound, he cannot place it, he does not know what the sound is. They are the only sounds in the apartment, this house is too still. He does not move from the doorway because the stillness has reached out for him, is surrounding him now, it is too still, too unreal, he has walked into something that threatens to suffocate him. The dust motes seem to move more quickly, to whirl and to advance upon him with the stillness, he knows something is wrong, he cannot move.

The carpet is deep and green and he turns his eyes to it now, really listening, but pretending he is only studying the carpet in this silent house, where are the noises? He can see separate strands of wool in the carpet, he can see a stain, his ears are reaching for sound, but there is none, they are always mistaking her for Italian, Ma lei è italiana, sicuramenter, and she answers always with a strange pleased mysterious smile, No, non sono italiana, but tells them nothing more, it is too quiet in this apartment. He wants to scream.

The dust motes tirelessly climb the shaft of sunlight.

“Hey, are you coming?” L.J. called.

Buddwing blinked his eyes. He was breathing hard, and his hands were clenched at his sides. He blinked again and looked toward the voice, the calling voice, and saw someone in a black leather jacket whom he recognized only dimly. Did he know this person? Had he ever really known this person, had he... yes, of course, L.J., of course, the boys, of course, yes, he knew them, surely he knew them, surely they were very important. He was taking a step toward his friend in the black leather jacket when the door in the brownstone across the street opened, and his heart quickened, and he turned as she came down the steps.