Lawrence Block - A Ticket To The Boneyard

Later we were in the living room. I stood at the window with a cup of coffee, watching traffic on the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. A couple of tugs sported on the river, maneuvering a barge around. She was on the couch, her feet tucked under her, eating a quartered orange.

I sat on a chair across from her and put my cup down on the coffee table. The flowers were gone. She had tossed them shortly after I'd left Sunday, not long after his phone call. It seemed to me, though, that I could still feel their presence in the room.

I said, "You won't leave town."

"No."

"You might be safer out of the country."

"Maybe. I don't want to go."

"If he can get into the building—"

"I told you, I spoke to them. They're keeping the service entrance bolted from inside. It's to be opened only when one of the porters or doormen is present, and it'll be refastened after each use."

That was fine, if they stuck to it. But you couldn't count on it, and there were just too many ways to get into an apartment building, even a well-staffed one like hers.

She said, "What about you, Matt?"

"What about me?"

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," I said. "I came pretty close to throwing a fit in Durkin's office. He as much as accused me of — well, I told you all that."

"Yes."

"I went there intending to accomplish two things. I was going to swear out a complaint against Motley. The son of a bitch worked me over pretty good last night. That's what you're supposed to do, isn't it? If you're a private citizen? Somebody assaults you, you're supposed to go to the police and report it."

"That's what they taught us in tenth-grade civics."

"They told me the same thing. They didn't tell me how pointless it would turn out to be."

I went to the bathroom and there was blood in my urine again, and my kidney throbbed as I returned to the living room. Something must have shown in my face, because she asked what was the matter.

"I was just thinking," I said. "The other thing I wanted from Durkin was for him to help me fill out an application for a pistol permit and rush it through. After the routine he gave me I didn't even bother mentioning it." I shrugged. "It probably wouldn't have done any good. They wouldn't issue me a carry permit, and I can't keep a loaded gun in my top dresser drawer and hope the bastard comes over for tea."

"You're afraid, aren't you?"

"I suppose so. I don't feel it but it has to be there. The fear."

"Uh-huh."

"I fear for other people's safety. You, Anita, Jan. It stands to reason that I'm at least as much afraid of getting killed myself, but I'm not really aware of it. There's this book I've been trying to read, the private thoughts of a Roman emperor. One of the themes he keeps coming back to is that death is nothing to be afraid of. The point he makes is that since it's inevitable sooner or later, and since you're just as dead no matter how old you are when you die, then it doesn't really matter how long you live."

"What does matter?"

"How you live. How you face up to life — and to death, as far as that goes. That's what I'm really afraid of."

"What?"

"That I'll screw up. That I'll do what I shouldn't, or fail to do what I should. That one way or another I'll turn out to be a day late and a dollar short and not quite good enough."

The sun was down when I left her apartment, and the sky was darkening. I set out intending to walk back to my hotel, but I was breathing heavily before I'd covered two blocks. I walked over to the curb and held up a hand for a cab.

I hadn't eaten anything all day aside from a hard roll for breakfast and a slice of pizza for lunch. I walked into a deli to pick up something for dinner but walked out again before it was my turn to order. I didn't have any appetite and the smell of food turned my stomach. I went up to my room and got there just in time to throw up. I wouldn't have thought I'd have had enough in my stomach to manage it, but evidently I did.

The process was painful, involving muscles that were sore from the night before. When I was done heaving a wave of dizziness took me and I had to cling to the doorjamb for support. When it passed I walked to my bed, moving with the deliberate mincing steps of an old man walking the deck of a storm-tossed ship. I threw myself down on the bed, breathing like a beached whale, and I wasn't there for more than a minute or two before I had to get up and stagger back into the bathroom to pee. I stood there swaying and watched the bowl fill up with red.

Afraid he'd kill me? Jesus, he'd be doing me a favor.

The phone rang an hour or so later. It was Jan Keane.

"Hello," she said. "If I remember correctly, you don't want to know where I'm calling from."

"Just so it's out of town."

"It's that, all right. I almost didn't go."

"Oh?"

"It all seemed overly dramatic, can you understand that? When I drank I was always addicted to that kind of high drama. Jump up, grab a toothbrush, call a taxi, and grab the next plane to San Diego. That's not where I am, by the way."

"Good."

"I was in the cab, heading for the airport, and the whole thing seemed bizarre and out of proportion. I almost told the driver to turn the cab around."

"But you didn't."

"No."

"Good."

"It's not just drama, is it? It's real."

"I'm afraid so."

"Well, I needed a vacation anyway. I can always look at it that way. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," I said.

"You sound, I don't know. Exhausted."

"It's been an exhausting day."

"Well, don't push yourself too hard, all right? I'll call every few days, if that's all right."

"That's fine."

"Is around now a good time to call? I thought I could have a good chance of finding you in before you left to go to a meeting."

"It's usually a good time," I said. "Of course my schedule's a little erratic right now."

"I can imagine."

Could she? "But call every few days," I said, "and I'll let you know if things clear up."

"You mean when they clear up, don't you?"

"That must be what I mean," I said.

I didn't get to a meeting. I thought about it, but when I stood up I realized I didn't want to go anywhere. I got back into bed and closed my eyes.

I opened them a little while later to the sound of sirens outside my window. It was the Rescue Squad, and I watched idly as they hauled someone out of the building across the street on a stretcher and loaded him into the ambulance. They sped off, heading for Roosevelt or St. Clare's, running with the throttle and the siren both wide open.

If they'd been readers of Marcus Aurelius they might have relaxed and taken it easy, knowing that it didn't make any real difference if they got there on time or not. After all, the poor clown on the stretcher was going to die sooner or later, and everything always happened just the way it was supposed to, so why knock yourself out?

I got into bed again and dozed off. I think I may have been running a fever, because this time I slept fitfully and came awake drenched in sweat, clawing my way out of some shapeless nightmare. I got up and drew a tub of water, as hot as I could stand it, and I lay gratefully in it, feeling it draw the misery out of me.

I was in the tub when the phone rang, and I let it ring. When I got out I called down to the desk to see if the caller had left a message, but he hadn't, and the genius on duty couldn't remember if it had been a man or a woman.

I suppose it must have been him, but I'll never know for sure. I didn't notice what time it was. It could have been anybody, really. I'd passed out my business cards all over town, and any of a thousand people could have been moved to call me.

And if it was him, and if I'd been there to take the call, it wouldn't have changed a thing.