Lawrence Block - Out on the Cutting Edge

When the manager reappeared I walked over to meet him. “There’s no answer,” he said. “Here’s the number, if you don’t believe me you can try it yourself.”

I took the slip of paper he handed me. I said, “Why shouldn’t I believe you? Of course I believe you.”

He looked at me, his eyes wary.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was out of line there, and I apologize. It’s been a rough couple of days.”

He wavered, then went with the flow. “Hey, that’s cool,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“This city,” I said, as if that explained everything, and he nodded, as if indeed it did.

He wound up buying us a drink. We had survived a tense moment together, and that seemed to carry more weight than the fact that we had created the tension ourselves. I didn’t really want another Perrier, but Willa managed to find room for another brandy.

When we stepped outside, the fresh air sucker-punched her and almost knocked her down. She grabbed my arm, caught her balance. “I can feel that last brandy,” she announced.

“No kidding.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

She drew away from me, her nostrils flaring, her face dark. “I’m quite all right,” she said. “I can get home under my own power.”

“Take it easy, Willa.”

“Don’t tell me to take it easy. Mr. Holier-than-thou. Mr. Soberer-than-thou.”

She stalked off down the street. I walked alongside her and didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Forget it.”

“You’re not mad?”

“No, of course not.”

She didn’t say much the rest of the way home. When we got into her apartment she swept up the faded flowers from the kitchen table and started dancing around the floor with them. She was humming something but I couldn’t recognize the tune. After a few turns she stopped and began to cry. I took the flowers from her and put them on the table. I held her and she sobbed. When the tears stopped I let go of her and she stepped back. She began undressing, dropping her clothes on the floor as she removed them. She took off everything and walked straight back to the bedroom and got into the bed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“Stay with me.”

I stayed until I was sure she was sleeping soundly. Then I let myself out and went home.

Itried Gary’s number in the morning. I let it ring and no one answered, neither man nor machine. I tried him again after breakfast with the same result. I took a long walk and tried the number a third time when I got back to the hotel. I put the television on, but all I could find were economists talking about the deficit and evangelists talking about the Day of Judgment. I turned them all off and the phone rang.

It was Willa. “I would have called you a little earlier,” she said, “but I wanted to make sure I was going to live.”

“Rough morning?”

“God. Was I impossible last night?”

“You weren’t so bad.”

“You could say anything and I couldn’t prove you wrong. I don’t remember the end of the evening.”

“Well, you were a little fuzzy there toward the end.”

“I remember having a second brandy at Paris Green. I remember telling myself that I didn’t have to drink it just because it was free. He bought us a round, didn’t he?”

“He did indeed.”

“Maybe he put arsenic in it. I almost wish he had. I don’t remember anything after that. How did I get home?”

“We walked.”

“Did I turn nasty?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You were drunk and you were in a blackout. You didn’t throw up, turn violent, or say anything indiscreet.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Positive.”

“I hate not remembering. I hate losing control.”

“I know.”

There’s a Sunday afternoon meeting in SoHo that I’ve always liked. I hadn’t been there in months. I usually would spend Saturdays with Jan. We’d make the rounds of the galleries and go out for dinner, and I’d stay over, and in the morning she’d fix a big brunch. We’d walk around and look in shops and, when the time came, go to the meeting.

When we stopped seeing each other, I stopped going.

I took a subway downtown and walked in and out of a lot of shops on Spring Street and West Broadway. Most of the SoHo art galleries close on Sunday, but a few stay open, and there was one show I liked, realistic landscapes, all of them of Central Park. Most of them showed only grass and trees and benches, with no buildings looming in the background, but it was nonetheless clear that you were looking at a distinctly urban environment no matter how peaceful and green it appeared. Somehow the artist had managed to instill the city’s hard-edged energy in the canvases, and I couldn’t figure out how he’d done it.

I went to the meeting, and Jan was there. I managed to focus on the qualification, and then during the break I went over and sat next to her.

“It’s funny,” she said. “I was thinking of you just this morning.”

“I almost called you yesterday.”

“Oh?”

“To see if you wanted to go out to Shea.”

“That’s really funny. I watched that game.”

“You were out there?”

“On television. You really almost called?”

“I did call.”

“When? I was home all day.”

“I let it ring twice and hung up.”

“I remember the call. I wondered who that was. As a matter of fact—”

“You wondered if it was me?”

“Uh-huh. The thought crossed my mind.” She had her hands in her lap and she was looking at them. “I don’t think I’d have gone.”

“To the game?”

She nodded. “But it’s hard to say, isn’t it? How I might have reacted. What you’d have said, what I’d have said.”

“Do you want to have coffee after the meeting?”

She looked at me, then looked away. “Oh, I don’t know, Matthew,” she said. “I don’t know.”

I started to say something, but the chairperson was rapping on the table with a glass ashtray to indicate that it was time to resume the meeting. I went back to where I’d been sitting. Toward the end I started raising my hand, and when I got called on I said, “My name is Matt and I’m an alcoholic. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time around people who are drinking. Some of it’s professional and some is social, and it’s not always easy to tell which is which. I spent an hour or two in a ginmill the other night having one of those rambling conversations, and it was just like old times except I was drinking Coke.”

I went on for another minute or two, saying what came to mind. Then someone else got called on and talked about how her building was going co-op and she didn’t see how she could afford to buy her apartment.

After the prayer, after the chairs were folded and stacked, I asked Jan if she felt like coffee. “Some of us go to the place around the corner,” she said. “Do you want to come along?”

“I thought just the two of us.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

I told her I’d walk her to where she was going and we could talk on the way. Once we were outside and had fallen into step together, I couldn’t think what it was I had wanted to say, and so we walked a little ways in silence.

I’ve missed you , I said a couple of times in my mind. Finally I said it aloud.

“Have you? Sometimes I miss you. Sometimes I think of the two of us and I feel sad.”

“Yes.”

“Have you been getting out?”

“I couldn’t get interested. Until the past week or so.”