Derailed

THIRTY-SEVEN

I bought a pair of sunglasses from the Vision Hut on 48th Street. I was pretty sure the black man hadn’t recognized me the other day, that he hadn’t matched the bearded and undernourished-looking man he’d seen sitting in the lobby to the man he’d led into that alleyway in Alphabet City.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to take precautions.

I completed fifty-two push-ups and seventy-five sit-ups before 7:00A .M.

When I got downstairs, I walked over to the bellman’s desk and said hello.

“Hi,” the bell captain said.

“Not too busy today, huh?” I said.

“Nope.”

Then I was pretty much out of things to say.

“How long have you worked here?” The good conversationalist will always ask the other person about himself.

The bellman looked kind of suspicious. He was about forty or forty-five, I guessed, greasy hair combed in a kind of pompadour, a style about forty years out-of-date.

“A while,” he said.

“Get any days off?”

“Why?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why do you want to know if I get any days off?”

“I don’t know. Just making conversation.” That, at least, was what I was attempting to do.

“Oh, I get it,” he said.

“Huh?”

“What kind you looking for? You want white, black, spic . . .what? ”

“Excuse me?”

“You looking for a date or not?”

I blushed. “No. I was just . . . talking. . . .”

“Right,” the bellman said. “Fine.”

In this hotel, apparently the bell captain did a little more than carry your bags.

“Are you the only bellman?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation where I needed it to go.

“Why?”

“I was just wondering if you had any — ”

“Whatexactly you looking for, mister?” He sounded irritated now. “You got something going with Dexter, ask him, okay?”

Dexter. That was his name. Dexter.

“When does . . . Dexter work?”

The bell captain shrugged. “Wednesdays and Fridays.”

“Oh.”

“You need your bags put somewhere?”

“Bags? No.”

“Right. Well, I’m the bell captain. So if you don’t need your bags put somewhere . . .”

He was asking me to shut up. I retreated back to the couch, where I sat for another half hour or so, or until lunchtime.

When I came back in from my 7:00A .M. coffee run a few mornings later, Dexter was standing behind the desk.

I sat on the lobby couch and opened my coffee cup with trembling hands.

I was afraid Dexter would recognize me, and I was feeling kind of scared again; I might look like a dangerous man with my oversize shades, but looks can be deceiving. For instance, Dexter looked more or less harmless reading a magazine in that pale green uniform. He looked like a guy who might even help you with your bags if you asked him nicely. Not like a guy who’d slam you up against an alley wall and laugh when you were punched in the stomach.

I could feel a vague pain there, the vestige of that wallop to my solar plexus, which might have been the body’s way of warning me. What are you doing, Charles? my body was saying. Don't you remember how much it hurt? You were crying. You couldn’t breathe, remember?

I remembered just fine.

There was another reason my hands were trembling.

Wednesdays and Fridays, the bellman had answered me when I’d asked about Dexter’s work schedule.

But today was Tuesday.