Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

“So the person who invited you didn’t give his name?” she prompted.

She’d repeated the information, presumably, to hold Nachman a moment longer and give him a chance to say something more. Her devouring smile made him nervous, and he astonished himself by talking like a man making a police report, obsessed with facts.

“The letter was signed by a secretary. Abigail Stokes. She just gave me the name of the hotel and a date and time for the interview. To tell the truth, I didn’t really come to New York because of the interview — I wanted to visit my father, who lives in Brooklyn. I haven’t seen him in years. And since Delphic was paying for my plane ticket and hotel room, why not? The interview was set for one o’clock this afternoon, and I figured they were taking me to lunch, but nobody was there to meet me. No one at the hotel desk had heard of the Delphic Corporation, and my room had been paid for by someone whose name they weren’t free to disclose.”

He paused after his recitation of the facts, then gave her a last little personal tidbit to chew on. “So, since then I’ve been walking around feeling a bit … I don’t know what. Weirdly disappointed.”

“It is weird,” said Helen Ferris. “But why feel disappointed? You got a free trip to New York. How clever of you! The airline ticket was prepaid?”

“If I had to put down one cent to fly three thousand miles and meet a nameless person, I wouldn’t be here,” said Nachman, with indignation. “I hate to travel, but I showed up for the interview. The other party didn’t.”

“I see. You were hurt. You’re sure there was no other name at the bottom of the letter? It didn’t say something like ‘Abigail Stokes for Joe Schmo’?”

Nachman wondered fleetingly if Helen Ferris thought he was an idiot.

“No Joe Schmo. Somebody anonymous wanted to interview me for a job. I have a job. I’m not looking for another one. But I agreed to come. Why not? I figured I might even learn about cryptology, an exciting field. A good mathematician could make a lot of money fooling with codes.”

“But that’s not like you. Would you really have considered taking the job?”

“I guess not, though it might be fun to be a millionaire. I fancied myself buying things like a dishwasher, but I don’t work for money. You know what I mean. My salary check pays my bills. I work like most people, not to waste my life.”

Nachman had begun to relax into his subject. “Have you been to Santa Monica? That’s where I live. On the beach you see people with nice bodies and no jobs. Also no brains. Life is too short to waste a minute getting a sunburn. I’ve never even taken a vacation. I don’t know why anybody would want to. Anyhow, as I said, I wanted to visit my father. This was an opportunity. Expenses paid by the Delphic mystery man.”

“You don’t own a dishwasher?” Helen Ferris asked, giggling. “That’s also mysterious. I bet I know what happened. Delphic sent out a form letter signed by Abigail Stokes. The letter went to a hundred mathematicians like you. A few of them accepted the invitation and came to New York. Before you arrived, Delphic decided to hire one of these. So you no longer existed as far as they were concerned. They simply forgot about you.”

“But they paid for my ticket and hotel room.”

“Just the cost of doing business. You feel disappointed, but it isn’t the least bit personal. You mean nothing to them.”

“I’m meaningless?” This was the one clear thought that emerged from her pelting of words.

“Not to me,” Helen Ferris said. Was she teasing him? Or was she right?

“I’ve got to go,” she said, touching his chest lightly. “I’m so excited. We’ll have fun tonight.”

When they parted, Nachman wondered how long it had been since he’d last seen Helen Ferris. He also wondered who, exactly, was Helen Ferris?

She remembered him so well. She had called out his name in the street. How could he say, “Who are you?” Another man might have been able to say it. Not Nachman. In a few hours, she would expect him to show up and meet her husband. The prospect of joining strangers for dinner had something adventurous about it, even devilish and appropriate to New York. Nachman didn’t know anyone in the city who was as friendly as his old friend Helen Ferris, whoever she was. Any moment it would come to him. Her wide cheekbones and dark, roundish, somewhat fleshy face, with its maternally sexy brown eyes, looked Semitic, maybe a little Asian, but she might just as easily be Mexican or Puerto Rican. He’d known women who looked like her, but remembered none named Helen. She was quite attractive, though a little scary. You’d think he’d remember her for that reason. Had she noticed his confusion? People can tell if you recognize them or not. They see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice. If she knew Nachman didn’t recognize her, then she was complicit in his failure to admit it. Oh well, Nachman would get the question out of the way when he saw her again. It would be more embarrassing later than it would have been a few minutes ago, but he would show up for dinner and confess. The key to Helen Ferris’s apartment was in his pants pocket. Her card was in his wallet. It said Helen Ferris, Editorial Consultant, but it told him nothing about who she was.

Dinner was still a few hours away. Nachman continued walking aimlessly, trying to remember. How do you try to remember? You make yourself passive, receptive, available. If it comes it comes. A strange kind of trying. He wondered if there had been a clue to her identity in what she’d said. Unfortunately, Nachman had done most of the talking. The look in Helen Ferris’s eyes and her red smile came to him; nothing else. She refused to step from the shadows of his mind.

The late-October weather felt summery, but as the afternoon wore on, Nachman detected a quality in the breeze that was too poignant for summer, had too fine an edge. Another year was almost over. Nachman liked the poignancy, could almost see it in the changing light. The sun would soon be lower in the sky. Shadows would grow longer. Darkness and cold would invade the streets and challenge people’s energy, give steel to their thoughts. Nachman felt as if he were walking heroically into the heart of the drama, the adventure of the city, and not just because of the season. Helen Ferris was part of New York’s endemic adventurousness. The crowds, the traffic, the buildings, the changing weather, the city’s infinite complexity, its unknowability — who could comprehend it? Nachman felt exhilarated. From a certain point of view, there was even adventure in being stood up at the cryptology conference. Invited, all expenses paid, to come three thousand miles, only to find nobody who gives a damn whether you came or not. No explanation, no apology. Not even a note at the hotel desk. This couldn’t have happened in small-time towns like London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo. That’s what made New York great. Nobody gives a shit about anybody.

The truth is that Nachman was enraged. He had smiled as he talked to Helen Ferris. He hadn’t let her see his anger. She might have thought he was angry at her.

Nachman then chuckled to himself, and shook his head ruefully, as if he required a moment of private ironic theater. His mood became philosophical. After all, he was morally compromised. He’d agreed to the interview in bad faith. He had no intention of changing jobs and had wanted only to visit his father. In fact, he had planned to go directly from the airport to his father’s apartment, but when he phoned — once from the plane, then, again, from the airport — nobody had answered. His father was old and forgetful. He might have gone out. He might even have left town to visit relatives in Connecticut. So Nachman had taken a cab to the hotel. He’d visit his father tomorrow, if the old guy answered the goddamn phone. If not, he’d fly back to California, feeling he’d wasted his time.