David Gates - Preston Falls

Two or three times he walked over to spy, from across the street, on the building where Jean worked. Once, he even went into the lobby, bold as brass, and bought a cellophane bag of Mr. Nature nuts and raisins at the newsstand. It made him nervous, which apparently was the point. For a couple of weeks after his truck died, he'd walk down to Houston Street, stroll east on the downtown sidewalk and glance across at it, parked on the uptown side, each time with more tickets under the wiper. One day he saw the curbside window had been smashed. The next time he walked by, the wheels were gone and it was resting on four brake drums. And the last time, a bright-yellow VW bug, obviously a restoration, was parked where he thought the truck had been. All this walking was definitely beneficial. He'd stopped feeling short of breath, so maybe he didn't have a heart condition, and his big sloppy thighs were firming up. On Columbus Day, avoiding the fucking parade, he hiked up to 108th Street and actually managed to get into the building

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where he and Jean had first lived together. The lock on the street door was broken, and there he was in the same old brown-painted, gas-smelling hallway, with the fluorescent fixture hanging askew from the ceiling. He climbed up to the fourth floor, not even breathing hard, but when he got to the actual door of their old apartment, 4D, he had this flash of Twilight Zone fear that the thirty-year-old Doug Willis might suddenly come barging out, running some desperate, now-forgotten errand.

Then there was the day he was supposed to be back at Dandineau— that was a weird day. Halloween, as it happened. He got up way early and walked to the station; on the platform he clung close to a steel pillar, ready to dodge behind it, running his fingers over the round rivet heads. From Grand Central he walked all the way downtown without breaking a sweat and stood in the lobby of the building across the street from his office. To outfox the security guards, he glanced from time to time at his wrist as if he were waiting for someone. As if he had a wrist-watch. Every few looks, out of sheer deviltry, he'd check the underside of his wrist instead of the top. He didn't see any of the old gang, unless you counted a woman from Personnel he'd always half thought he might want to. . whatever, despite her fake fingernails. She came out the revolving door, leaned against the building and smoked a cigarette, then flicked it away and went back in. He could have walked across the street, stepped into the elevator, and bingo: back in his life. Instead he took the A train uptown, with the idea of going to the Cloisters and looking at that triptych he thought he remembered they had there, some Flemish thing with weird perspective? He stood in the front of the lead car, forehead against the glass, peering ahead into the tunnel, and each new lighted station coming up far ahead, with the little people on the platform, was like a new level of understanding he could reach, if he could only get "Take the 'A Train" out of his fucking head. He was really no crazier here than he had been in Preston Falls, just more free. You sort of rose up as shit around you fell away. And the less you talked to people, the less you yourself were anybody in particular and the bigger and the more — what? — the more inclusive you got.

By 181st Street he was so panicked he got out of the subway and found a working phone and called Champ. Got his machine. "Hello, I love you. ." He hung up without leaving a message. But it got him back to the old one-two one-two, simply being able to make the worldly judgment that it was asshoHc to put cute shit on your machine. If he could

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climb down so readily to this level of thinking, why not cross over to the other platform, take the train to Chambers Street and just go in to work? It was only like ten in the morning. For one thing, at a hundred and a half a week for just his room at the Birlstone, he was now down to— okay, whatever he was down to. Point taken.

That was a Monday. Tuesday morning, after Champ would have left for work, he called the apartment again, to leave a message saying he was safe and would Champ pass the word to Jean — but he got a busy signal. On Thursday he called a third time. (He had such a good grip on what day it was because every morning he got the Times at the little market a quarter mile south on Route 9.) This time he waited through Jim Morrison and past the beep, but hung up when he couldn't think how to start. He shouldVe written something down. Poor Champ was going to think the CIA was after him.

So on Friday afternoon he decided just to surrender himself in person. Easier on everybody. And of course in the back of his mind, cocaine was calling; maybe Champ would have some. Or could get some. Actually, spatial shit like "back" and "front" wasn't all that useful as a model for the mind. On the walk to the station, he shrank from every Cherokee he saw — a lot of fucking Jeep Cherokees in Chesterton, boy — and made it onto the 6:05 without being spotted. A couple of hours later he was buzzing Champ's buzzer, hoping that maybe, Friday night. Champ might be out someplace. Or hoping that he wouldn't.

"Is this even the right exit?" Champ says, putting his turn signal on. "It looks funny,"

"Chesterton, Route 9," says Willis. "Same as it ever was."

"I don't know. Shit, maybe I'm wrecked."

"Yeah,may^e."

"Look," Champ says, "I still think we should stop someplace and call. She's going to fuckin' shit her britches. You want me to call?"

"It's too late. What time is it?"

"That makes no sense. If it's too late to call —"

"What, you think we should put it off?"

"That's what you want to hear, right?" says Champ. "Look, I'll go in with you, how's that?" He pulls up at the light behind a BMW. "Look at that motherfucker. Watch, this'll fry his ass." He hits his brights and the BMW's inside lights up. The rearview mirror gleams white, and you can see that the guy driving is bald on top.

"The fuck are you doing?'' says Willis.

"I have to wait on these assbags all day."

"You're going to get us fucking arrested."

"Failure to dim," Champ says. "Book 'em, Danno." The light changes and the BMW bolts away, squealing left on Route 9. Champ turns right, northbound. "Oh Mother dear, I sadly fear, our Beemer we have lost. What, lost your Beemer? You naughty — fuck, what rhymes with Beemer?"

"Reamer?"

"You naughty reamer. That's stupid. Unless they were like reamin' the guy. So anyway, you want me to come in? I don't care. Jean thinks I'm the shit of the earth anyway. I can teU her we went to Atlantic City for a couple weeks."

"Atlantic GV3;?"

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"Well, fuck, it sounds better than some motel a mile up the fuckin' road. How sick is that}"

"Look, in the first place, you were talking to her on the phone all week, so how could you be in Atlantic City?"

"I don't know; it doesn't fuckin' matter," Champ says. "All you have to do is go in and eat shit, that's all that's required. You were shacked up with somebody, you were drunk on your ass, you had some shit to work through — who the fuck knows. You can recoup this, you really can. Plenty of guys do a lot crazier shit, and they're back, you know, in their life and everything."

''That's depressing," says Willis. "Here, take a right — right here." Champ puts on his blinker and they swing onto Vance. "This is good," Willis says when they get to Crofts. "Just drop me here and I'll walk over."

Champ pulls over to the curb. "You're going to fuckin' skedaddle, I know it."

"Would you do me a favor?"

"This is a favor. Or didn't you notice?" Champ puts the car in Park. "Yeah, okay. What?"

"Would you wait for me at the corner of Bonner, for maybe fifteen minutes? It's like two blocks up. Or maybe actually, give it twenty. There's McDonald's and shit just up Route 9 if you want to go get coffee or something and come back. Dunkin' Donuts."