From Time to Time

5

ALTHOUGH THIS WAS WINTER and well after dark, the air wetly cold, a man sat on a Central Park bench near Fifth Avenue, watching the path to his left. The light from a streetlamp just touched him, a dark motionless lump. The turned-up collar of his overcoat covered his chin, his cap pulled low over his forehead. Hands pushed into the overcoat pockets, he watched the path, and when he saw the man he was waiting for walking quickly toward him—“Right on time,” he said to himself—he lowered his face, and sat staring down at the path apparently in thought.

The man walked by; he was wearing an ankle-length dark overcoat and a brown fur cap, and when he’d walked on a dozen steps, the seated man stood up—tall now—and followed Simon Morley.

. . . I walked out onto Fifth Avenue, a light delivery wagon rattled slowly by, the horse tired, his neck slumped, a kerosene lantern swaying under the rear axle. On the walk a woman in a feathered black hat, a fur cape over her shoulders, walked by, holding her long dark skirt an inch above the wet paving stones.

I turned south, down narrow, quiet residential Fifth Avenue (the tall man, twenty yards behind him, turned too), glancing into yellow-lighted windows as I walked, catching glimpses: of a bald bearded man reading a newspaper, the light from a fireplace I couldn’t see reflected redly on the windowpane; of a white-aproned, white-capped maid passing through a room; of a month-old Christmas tree, a woman touching a lighted taper to its candles for the pleasure of the five-year-old boy beside her.

. . . north on Broadway from Madison Square, I walked along the Rialto, the theatrical section of New York when Broadway was Broadway. The street was jammed with newly washed and polished carriages. The sidewalks were alive with people, at least half of them in evening dress, the night filled with the sound of them, and the feel of excitement and imminent pleasure hung in the air.

Following only a few steps behind now, the tall man looked at the passing faces, and glanced into carriages, sometimes stooping momentarily to do so, smiling with the pleasure of being here.

. . . I hurried past the lighted theaters, restaurants, and great hotels, until I reached the Gilsey House between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth. There, at the lobby cigar counter, I bought a cigar, a long thin cheroot, and tucked it carefully into the breast pocket of my inner coat. Outside—

Outside on the crowded evening sidewalk the tall man sauntered now, taking his time, toward the Gilsey House . . . until Simon Morley walked out again and down the steps, tucking his cigar into an inside coat pocket, and went on. The tall man walked faster until he’d nearly caught up. Then, hanging only a step or two behind, he kept pace, one or two pedestrians between them.

Waiting for an opportunity to present itself, he saw it presently, twenty-odd yards ahead. A short brass-railed flight of stone stairs led up from the sidewalk to the first-floor double doors; Wellman & Co., Insurance Brokers, said the gold-leaf letters on the dark windows. Directly beside those stairs another, steeper flight led down to a below-street-level barbershop: its striped pole stood at the curb.

In the moment, in the half-step before Simon Morley reached that second staircase, the tall man just behind stepped up beside him, walked the half-step with him, then slammed the full weight of his big body sideways into Morley, thrusting his hip hard into him for good measure. He literally lifted the smaller man from his feet, shooting him into the staircase, and Morley dropped to strike the sharp stone edges of the stairs, tumbling hard down the flight until his body slammed into the locked door of the barbershop. The tall man walked on, not hurrying, and at Thirtieth Street turned the corner. Several men looked at him, and he looked back, meeting their eyes, and no one stopped him.

For half a minute Simon Morley lay almost unmoving, his mind not truly functioning. Then the pain came into his shinbones, his right shoulder and right hip, and the palms of his hands, and he moaned. He got himself up slowly, afraid of discovering a bone had broken. Then he stood, both hands bracing against the wall beside him, his head low between them. Now he pushed himself upright, and in the weak light from the street above, looked down at the scraped-bloody, dirt-smeared palms of his hands, then at the torn trouser legs and the bleeding skin showing through. He turned and, using the black metal handrail, made himself climb the stairs to the sidewalk. On the walk again, he moved on in not quite a run but a frantic hobble.

I saw the theater ahead, saw its sign, Wallack’s, and the posters beside its entrance reading, The Money Spinners. I saw Apple Mary herself, the old lady who sold apples before the theaters, and tried to sprint, desperate to move faster, squeezing, sidling, bumping past baffled angry pedestrians—because Apple Mary stood facing the tall young man in evening dress. She was speaking to him, and—did I really see it? I thought so!—I saw the wink of gold from a coin dropping from his hand to hers, a dozen yards and two or three people between us. He turned, someone just ahead pausing to hold the lobby door open for him, and skipped inside.

I walked now, only a dozen yards, walked past Apple Mary calling, “Apples, apples! Get your apples, get Apple Mary’s best!” shoving one at me. But I shook my head, and stood staring in at the busy lobby, and across the tiled floor saw the group I knew would be there: the bearded father, a ruby stud in his stiff white shirtfront; the smiling gowned mother, and their daughters, the younger in a marvelous gown of unadorned spring-green velvet. When she smiled, as she did now at the tall young man who had given the gold coin to Apple Mary, she looked lovely. I had to hear, had to, and walked in to stand close, hiding my bloody hands at my sides.

“My dear, may I present my young friend,” her father was saying, “Mr. Otto Danziger,” and I watched the tall young man bow, knowing that what had happened had happened, and that I was too late. Now they’d met, these two young people. I hadn’t quite been able to prevent it. And now, in time, they would marry, and have a son. And I knew that far ahead, in the twentieth century I’d left, that son was a man long since grown, Dr. E. E. Danziger—the Project he’d begun in the old Beekey warehouse still functioning under the control of Major Ruben Prien and Colonel Esterhazy, and whatever it was they represented.

But now these were thoughts of a far-off future I no longer belonged in, and I looked again at the handsome new couple, and, not knowing I was going to, found myself smiling. Then I turned and walked out.

The tall man swung in behind Morley as he walked back to Thirtieth Street and turned east. Watching closely, he saw from the slow, painful walk that Morley’s urgency was gone. And now he knew it was over; that whatever it was that Morley was attempting had been prevented. He followed for a long block, however, and for half of the next, making sure. Then—he did not know what had happened, didn’t know what Morley had intended, but knew he’d done what he’d come for. And at the next corner, Morley walking slowly on ahead, the tall man turned away, and began hunting for a cab.

Walking down toward Gramercy Park, I looked around me at the world I was in. At the gaslighted brownstones beside me. At the nighttime winter sky. This too was an imperfect world, and I knew it, did not need to be told. But—I drew a deep breath, sharply chilling my lungs—the air was still clean. The rivers flowed fresh, as they had since time began. And the first of the terrible corrupting great wars still lay decades ahead. I reached Lexington Avenue, turned south, and then, the yellow lights of Gramercy Park waiting at the end of the street, I walked on toward Number 19.

At a ticket window in the small red brick Grand Central station, John McNaughton leaned toward the row of vertical brass rods between him and the waiting clerk. “Winfield,” he said. “Ticket to Winfield, Vermont.”

“Round trip?”

“No.” McNaughton smiled with the pleasure of saying it: “No, I won’t be coming back from Winfield. Not ever again.”