Richard Ford - A Piece of My Heart

The wind listed back. The train was called, and he walked back through the foyer into the arcade to get his bag. A group of well-dressed Negroes was standing at the swinging doors to the trains, talking noisily and stacking packages onto a fat woman who was taking a trip. The men all wore red carnations. He came to the end of the last row of benches and found the bag was gone. A little boy with drooping eyelids, the child of one of the Negroes, was left on the bench where the bag had been, patting his hands idly.

The Negroes began talking more loudly and one man abruptly shouted something that sounded like “bakery goods” and they all began hugging the woman with the packages. The little boy rose and looked casually over his shoulder and pursed his lips and turned back, as if he had seen what he had expected. The Negroes began shuffling out the doors, their voices softened, then silenced, leaving the sound of a teletype clicking at the end of the arcade.

He came back around to where the child was and looked at him. “Where’s the bag?” He glared up the long aisle. The boy regarded him as though he were invisible and repursed his lips. “Who took it?” he said, glowering over into the boy’s face until he could see the little amber tincture in his sleepy eyes.

The little boy smiled and produced a strand of pink gum from between his teeth and let it dangle between them like the clapper of an invisible bell. “Po-lice done got it,” he said.

He scanned the wide nave for some guilty sparkle of police shield in the shadows, but no one was visible except a redcap smoking a cigarette by the doors to the outside. A radio began playing at the end of the waiting room, and he looked back down to where he could see through the glass the rainy headlights of the taxis cruising underneath the awning, scouting fares. He felt desperate.

“Didn’t you see where the fuck he went?”

“Naw,” the boy said, and rolled the gum between his palms and returned it to his mouth.

He lurched off through the empty arcade, leaving the child, bursting out the swinging doors empty-handed. The Negroes were all getting wet, bawling and waving handkerchiefs at the steaming train. He avoided them, hustling down the platform and leaping up the silver steps into the vestibule. He shot an accusing look at the Negroes, standing in the rain crying. None of them was holding his bag. They slowly began milling back into the depot and he watched them grow smaller in the station until they were absorbed.

He sat gloomily in the recliner and watched the city slide in the rain, down the old wards he saw each commuter ride uptown to see Beebe. The car swayed smartly by 65th, gathering speed. He could make out a strip of timbers stenciled in the foreground, and farther back the dark Midway, headlights swimming into the rain on Hyde Park.

The train stopped at 103rd for no one to get off or on, and hissed and heaved out of the salmon lights, leaving the city in the underwater darkness.

“The city is put here to solve our problems,” Beebe had said, letting her fingers play in the thread of sunlight.

“My father would’ve agreed with you,” he said.

“Of course.” She smiled and ran her finger back along the icy line of shadow and light. “It brought us back together nicely. I’m sure he would’ve approved of that.”

He eased into the dark half of the bed, peering through the window into the alley, thinking about nothing.

“I’d like you better today if you weren’t so churlish,” Beebe said.

“I know the law,” he said. “I don’t have time for the Committee for Social Thought or whatever you patronize.”

“You might go,” she said, breathing mist indifferently against the cold pane. “I heard Jane Jacobs. She thinks we’d all do well to live in the cities.”

“You should try it on the south side before you make up your mind,” he said.

“I’m here quite a lot,” she said, scoring her fingernail through the mist. “I get along with the boogies just fine.”

He was silent.

“What was it your father did?” she said.

“Sold starch.”

“Were there a lot of jokes about starch salesmen having firm erections?”

“I don’t know.”

“I was changing the subject to something more amusing.” She was quiet a moment, then said, “A man exposed himself to me at the airport this morning.”

“What for?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. It was a cabdriver in the queue at Pan Am. I leaned to tell him I wanted to go downtown and there was his lingam lying on his leg.”

“Did he take you?”

“Of course not.”

“Did you say anything to him?”

“I said, That looks a lot like a penis, only smaller.’ He was reading Time magazine and covered himself and drove away. I’m sure it embarrassed him.”

“The city just hasn’t solved his problems yet. Or does it only lavish its attention on you?”

“You’re certainly cynical, aren’t you?” She looked annoyed. “Why did you start limping today? It was very strange. Who did you see?”

“Nobody.” He watched up the alley, pressing his nose to the glass until the skin numbed.

“Then why did you start limping?”

“It provokes compassion from some people.”

She craned her neck and tried to see what he was looking at in the failing light. “I’m afraid I don’t believe that,” she said.

“All right, goddamn it,” he said, exasperated. “When I walked out of the A & P I saw a man who looked exactly like me, carrying his goddamned AWOL bag to the laundromat.”

“So?”

“It scared me. He looked a hell of a lot better off than I do, a lot firmer in the belly. His eyes weren’t murky, either. I made a point to look at that.”

“Did you speak?”

“Hell, no. What am I supposed to say? What if he doesn’t think he looks like me?”

“I don’t know why you felt you had to start limping.”

“I don’t like goddamned Doppelgängers.” He stalked across the floor and slapped the radiator rung, making it gong. “This goddamn thing isn’t worth a shit for a shoeshine.”

She reclined her head to the window ledge, the light silhouetting her face at the horizon of the frame. “You have a poor tolerance for ambiguity,” she said, rubbing her nose softly with her finger and watching him skulk in the shadows.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“To continue what you’re doing when nothing is very clearly defined,” she said. “It’s a source of spiritual stamina for scientists. I think it has pretty uses for other people, such as you, for instance.”

“What the hell do I do?” he said.

“You make things terrible when they’re only slightly confusing.” She smiled at him cheerfully.

“Like what?” he said.

“Like whatever you’ve decided is so dreadful you suddenly have to start limping to signal your decline.”

“Well, goddamn it, look at me.” He waved his arms perpendicular to his shoulders, displaying his torso in the poor light. “I look Promethean,” he said, and peered at his chest, wondering if she would agree to what he saw.

“I can see you well enough,” she said.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“What is it I supposedly lack again?”

“This tolerance for ambiguity.” She smiled.

He kept his arms outward like a giant bird soaring in the gloom. “Everything I think I know is ambiguous,” he said. “I’m flying apart a mile a millisecond for that very reason, which you’d notice if your attention span were long enough.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “You do have dandruff things in your eyebrows.” She gave him a disapproving look and began examining her cuticle.