James Siegel - Epitaph

It took him twenty minutes or so of skirting nervous chickens and nervous stares, of peeking through open doorways and broken windows, to understand that the reason they couldn't tell him where 1320 Magnolia Drive was, was because there wasn't a 1320 Magnolia Drive. It wasn't there. And, since the map clearly showed that there wasn't another Magnolia Drive in the greater Miami area, that meant it didn't exist. And neither, at least according to what little he could get out of the local inhabitants, did Mr. Samuels. They'd never heard of him.

So, William thought. What does that mean? He didn't know. He didn't know, of course, a lot of things. What he didn't know, in fact, far outweighed what he did know, which was next to nothing.

Follow the list-Samuels to Shankin to Timinsky-but what if the list is bogus?

He was stuck in a swamp, literally and figuratively that's where he was stuck, the way out just as muddy as the way in. Already, he was sinking.

Yet for all he didn't know, he did know one thing with absolute certainty. For in walking back to the car, the old black man had joined him, sidled up to him as if to talk about the weather or the Dolphins or the price of oil.

But he wanted to talk about something else.

"You know his bruddar?" the black man said.

"Brother? What brother?"

"Mista Samuels. Mista Samuels's brudda was here lookin' for him too. You know him?"

"Yes," William said. "I think I do."

Okay, so he did know one thing then, didn't he?

That Jean had been there first.

FivE dAys bEfoRE. Ten A.M. the doors swung open and William sprang into action. Sprang being a very relative term for a man pushing eighty-shuffled into action was the way Jilly would put it. Four sweeps from right to left, four sweeps from left to right, the ripped-up OTB tickets eventually forming one big burial mound of yesterday's dreams. There were cruises to the islands in that pile, pool tables, second homes, pink Caddys, and golf trips to Myrtle Beach. No more though. Now they were just fodder, ready to be recycled into tomorrow's desperate fantasies. And William was just the man to do it.

"You missed a spot," Jilly said, already buried in Gold's Sheet. Jilly, who'd deigned to give William the benefit of his handicapping skills now and then-which, truth be told, bore a remarkable resemblance to Gold's handicapping skills-then deigned to give William a job. Sweeping up the losing tickets three times a week for some cold, off-the-books cash. William hadn't said no.

"Pamela's Prizes," Jilly said. "Tom's Term."

These were either horses Jilly liked or horses he called dogs, or horses he'd never heard of. This was the way Jilly communicated-in horsese, and William, who was used to people not exactly talking to him as much as around him, kept sweeping.

"Sammy's Sambo.

"Lucy Lu."

Besides, Jilly had once told him he should make like Mr. Ed.

"Mr. Ed?" William hadn't understood.

"Yeah. Mr. Ed never speaks unless he has something to say."

The implication being that William had nothing worth saying, William kept his trap shut and went about his business.

The first regular of the day-the first regular besides him-was a neat little Italian man named Augie, who was reputed to be connected, mainly because everyone he knew seemed to have the as their middle name. As in Nickie the Nose, or Roni the Horse, or Benny the Shark. Augie always coming to OTB with the morning paper tucked under his arm, which he'd dutifully hand to William, who'd retire to a quiet corner of the room to read. This morning he doffed his cap to Jilly, commented on the weather-hot, isn't it-and put the Queens edition of the Daily News into William's grateful hands.

And that's, more or less, how William found the obituary.

It had become a habit of his, reading the obits, a recent habit, like falling asleep in the middle of conversations and clipping toothpaste coupons. Sooner or later, after the race results and discount ads, he'd find himself buried somewhere in the back, where beloved fathers and cherished wives lay among the crematorium ads and latest dew count. And sometimes among the cherished and devoted, he'd find his friends, or at least people he knew.

Not that this was the reason he read them. He read them for the same reason people scan travelogues on countries they're about to visit, to get to know the territory, to become familiar with it. He was getting on, that's all, beyond getting on, and he wanted to see what the end of the road looked like.

And whose name should pop up among the newly expired this morning but his, stuck between a local alderman and a onetime exotic dancer. Ralph Ackerman and Tushy Galore, and sitting uncomfortably between them: Jean Goldblum.

Jean, he'd thought, now there's Jean too, and memories came traipsing into his tired old brain and put their feet up for a chat. One memory in particular, one memory in full vivid Technicolor, that he had no intention of sitting down with.

Out buster

Of course the memories didn't listen to him-they never did. The truth was, these sneak attacks were becoming old hat. There he'd be preparing his dinner- okay, preparing usually meant folding the aluminum foil of his TV dinner left or right-but still, and suddenly he'd be staring into Jean's pinched little face, or bothering Santini for the sports section. His oven half open and the frozen peas starting to give his thumb frostbite and Jean sitting there asking him to do him a favor, just a quick little snap-and-run at a local hump motel-if he wouldn't mind of course.

I said scram.

Or sometimes it would happen smack in the middle of a conversation with Mr. Brickman, who was always barging through his door asking him to go somewhere. A park, a diner, a lawn chair on the sidewalk-it didn't much matter, all with a cheeriness William found frankly irritating. After all, William had already signed his armistice with life, signed it in blood, as with an enemy who-let's face it-was sooner or later bound to win, and here was Mr. Brickman just about bursting into a chorus of "The Sunny Side of the Street." And William would tell him that he didn't want to go to the park, no thanks, not interested, only to find himself telling Rachel something instead-to leave the light on because he'd be coming home for dinner and please not to forget to walk the dog.

This old age thing could be downright embarrassing.

For instance: Jilly was staring at him as if he had Tourette's syndrome. Which meant William had either said something horrifying or simply looked it. Maybe he'd cried out oh no at the news, or worse yet, oh yes. He didn't think he had, but it was entirely possible.

"Something wrong?" Jilly finally asked him, Augie turning around to stare at him too, William not used to all this attention.

"Yes," William said. "I just remembered something I have to do."

"Oh yeah?" Jilly again. "What's that?"

"Yeah," Augie echoed, "what's that?"

"A funeral," William said. "I have a funeral to go to."

The funeral home was stuck in Flushing, which William made it to by taking the number seven bus from Astoria, to the number five bus to Roosevelt Avenue, to the number eight bus to Kissena Boulevard, then hiking it through a kung fu town of Chinese takeouts and Korean fruit stands. No easy task when you're seventy-something, and wondering exactly why you'd bothered to make the trip in the first place.

The second he'd stepped off the number eight he'd been assaulted by a cacophony of alien sounds. Asians here, Asians there, Asians everywhere-all speaking Asian too. He might've been somewhere in China for all he knew-the most familiar thing he passed was a Chinese cleaners with a lone woman behind the counter, her head laid in her arms as if sobbing.

William was unaware he'd left Chinatown and entered San Juan until he almost walked into a bunch of Puerto Ricans in sneakers, ankle pants, and rolled-up T-shirts who were lolling against a couple of stripped cars, radios perched on their shoulders like parrots all screaming at once.