Anne Tyler - Noah's Compass

That night he dreamed that he woke to a sense of someone standing over his bed. He dreamed that he lay very still, curled on his side, pretending to be asleep. He could hear soft, steady breathing. He could feel a thread-thin blade of cold steel placed lightly against his bare neck. Then the blade was raised in the air to strike the fatal blow.

Who would have guessed that a killer would make that trial move first? Like setting a cleaver against a joint of meat before lifting it to chop, Liam thought. The horror of that image caused his eyes to fly open in the dark. His heart was beating so violently that it rustled his pajamas.

There was a parking space in front of the Mission for Indigent Men, but Liam didn’t stop there. He drove on past it, past Cope Development and Curtis Plumbing Supply, and turned right at the corner and pulled in at a meter halfway up the next block. When he got out of his car he found he didn’t have any quarters-the only coins the meter accepted-but he decided to take his chances.

He walked back to Bunker Street, turned left, and slowed until he was nearly at a standstill. Already, at not even nine a.m., the sun felt uncomfortably hot on his head and the back of his neck. He came to a halt near a hydrant and painstakingly, deliberatively rolled his shirtsleeves up, flattening each fold with great care. Two men in suits strode past. He watched after them, but they didn’t turn in at Cope Development.

He studied the graffiti painted across the base of the hydrant: BLAST , in luminous white, with a sloppily drawn star before and after. He examined the word closely, frowning, as if he were pondering its meaning. Blast. A woman clipped by with a jingling sound of keys or maybe jewelry. She had a purposeful, confident gait. At Cope Development, she pivoted smartly and climbed the steps and disappeared inside.

A green Corolla approached from the other end of the block, stopped just past the mission, and backed into the parking space there.

Liam abandoned the hydrant. He straightened and resumed walking in the direction of Cope Development.

The assistant’s unfortunate fashion statements were becoming familiar to him. Even from a distance he recognized the too-long skirt (in some bandanna-type print of red and blue, today) that made her seem to be walking on her knees as she rounded her car, and the sleeveless blouse that rode up and exposed a bulge of bare midriff when she bent to help Ishmael Cope from the passenger seat. Liam was close enough now to hear the inconclusive clucking sound the car door made as she clumsily nudged it almost shut with one hip. He heard the pat-pat of Ishmael Cope’s crablike hands checking all his suit pockets before he took hold of the arm she offered.

Liam sped up.

They met in front of the Cope building. The assistant was preparing to inch the old man up the steps. Liam said, “Why! Mr. Cope!”

The two of them turned and peered into his face, wearing almost comically similar expressions of puzzlement and concern.

“Fancy running into you!” Liam said. “It’s Liam Pennywell. Remember?”

Ishmael Cope said, “Um…”

He turned to his assistant, who instantly flushed all over-a mottled, dark-red flush beginning at the deep V-neck of her blouse and rising to her round cheeks.

“We met at the gala,” Liam said. “For juvenile diabetes; remember? We had a long conversation. You suggested I come in sometime and interview for a job.”

From their instantaneous reaction-no longer confusion but outright shock-Liam sensed at once that he had made a mistake. Maybe Ishmael Cope didn’t have anything to do anymore with hiring employees. Well, of course he wouldn’t. Liam cursed his own stupidity. Ishmael Cope said, “A job?”

“Why, ah, that is…”

“I was going to hire someone?”

Ishmael Cope and his assistant exchanged a glance. Clearly a con man, they must be thinking. Or no, perhaps not; for next Mr. Cope said, in a wondering tone, “I promised a man a job!”

So this is what it had come to, was what that glance had meant. A whole new symptom, more advanced than any they’d seen before.

All Liam wanted now was to take back everything he’d said. He had never intended to cause the man distress. In fact, he wasn’t sure what he’d intended, beyond gaining a few moments of conversation with the assistant. He said, “Oh, no, it wasn’t an actual promise. It was more like…” He turned to the assistant, hoping she could somehow rescue him. “Maybe I misunderstood,” he told her. “I must have. I’m sure I did. You know how it is at these galas: glasses clinking, music playing, everyone talking at once…”

“Oh, sometimes people can’t hear themselves think,” she said.

That low, clear, level voice-the voice that had murmured “Verity” in Dr. Morrow’s waiting room-made Liam feel reassured, although he couldn’t say exactly why. He gave her his widest smile. “I’m sorry,” he told her, “I don’t remember your name.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

He knew he must look like a fool, with all these “sorry”s. He was doing everything wrong. “It’s just…” he said, “I mistrust my memory so these days; I always act on the assumption that I’ve met somebody even when I haven’t.” His laugh came out sounding false, at least to his own ears. “I have the world’s worst memory,” he told Ishmael Cope.

Which was a stroke of genius, come to think of it. Without planning to, he had arrived at the subject most likely to enlist the man’s sympathy.

But Ishmael Cope said, “That must be difficult. And you don’t look all that old, either.”

“I’m not. I’m sixty.”

“Only sixty? Then there’s no excuse whatsoever.”

This was becoming annoying. Liam glanced toward the assistant. She was sending Mr. Cope a look of amusement. “Now, now,” she said indulgently, and then she told Liam, “To hear Mr. C. talk, you’d never know we all forget things from time to time.”

“The trick is mental exercise,” Ishmael Cope said to Liam. “Work crossword puzzles. Solve brainteasers.”

“I’ll have to try that,” Liam said.

He was developing an active dislike for the man. But he gave the assistant another wide smile and said, “I didn’t mean to hold you both up.”

“About the interview…” she said. She glanced uncertainly at Ishmael Cope.

But Liam said, “Oh, no, really, it’s not important. It’s quite all right. I don’t need a job. I don’t want a job. I was only, you know…”

He was edging away as he spoke, backing off in the direction he had just come from. “Good to see you both,” he said. “Sorry to… Goodbye.”

He turned and plunged off blindly.

Idiot.

Traffic was picking up now, and more pedestrians dotted the sidewalk, all bustling toward their offices with briefcases and folded newspapers. He was the only one empty-handed. Everyone else had someplace to get to. He slowed his pace and surveyed each building he passed with an intent, abstracted expression, as if he were hunting a specific address.

What on earth had he expected from that encounter, anyway? Even if things had gone as he’d hoped-if he and the assistant had struck up a separate conversation, if she had admitted outright the true nature of her role-how would that have helped him? She wasn’t going to drop everything and come be his rememberer. In any event, she couldn’t help him retrieve an experience she hadn’t been there for. And what good would it have done even if she could retrieve it?

He really was losing his mind, he thought.

When he reached his car he found he’d been issued a parking ticket. Oh, damn. He plucked it from the windshield and frowned at it. Twenty-seven dollars. For nothing.