Patrick Flanery - I Am No One

With these thoughts spiraling round, I made dinner and poured myself a glass of wine. I had just sat down to eat and watch the news when I heard the sound of steps on my gravel driveway, a person walking towards the house at a fast and determined pace, followed by the sudden ringing of my doorbell. I put down my fork on the tray, placed the tray on the floor next to the couch where I had been sitting, and walked out of the living room to the front hall. In the foyer I pulled aside the curtain in the window next to the front door and looked out onto my porch where a young man stood fidgeting in the light. It was Michael Ramsey, as ever in black, his face thin and wind-chapped.

I opened the door but the screen door was still between us and although it was little more than flimsy aluminum and mesh I knew it was secured because I always leave it locked when I go away and I had not yet been through the front door since arriving. Ramsey pretended to look surprised but there is no such thing as coincidence three times in one week, particularly in New York, and I knew that, whatever he might say, he was at my house for a reason, just as he had been at Caffè Paradiso the previous Saturday and at Meredith and Peter’s the day before.

Although not naturally inclined to rudeness, in fact my parents were so assiduous in their training I find it difficult to interact with anyone, even clerks or cashiers in stores, without saying ‘Hi, how are you doing today?’, faced with Mr. Ramsey for the third time in a week, and confronted by him there on the front steps of the place I had come to think of as my retreat from the world, I found my reserves of politeness suddenly emptied and in their place a bursting store of rudeness. ‘What the hell do you want?’

‘Hey, it’s — hey, you’re Meredith’s dad. What’s the likelihood?’

I did not answer except to raise my left eyebrow, which arches more dramatically than the right.

‘I, uh, I’m staying in the house down the road.’

‘Yes?’

‘The power’s out.’

‘Is it?’

‘I don’t have a car, and when I saw lights through the trees I thought maybe, you know, you’d have some candles or a flashlight I could borrow. Even just a wind-up radio, you know?’

‘No.’

‘No you don’t have any of those things or no I can’t borrow them?’

‘I don’t have any of those things. And if I did have candles one cannot borrow candles since they are a species of thing consumed in their use, not that batteries in a radio or flashlight aren’t as well, but it is, I would suggest, a different order of use. One may receive candles, like eggs or a cup of sugar, with the understanding that one will replace such things or else enter into a reciprocal agreement with the person who has provided them such that he may, when next finding himself without candles, eggs, sugar, or a pound of butter, come knocking on the other man’s door and ask for one of these items in kind, as repayment.’

Ramsey looked nonplussed.

‘So you don’t have a spare flashlight? It’s really dark over there. The trees, man, they’re kind of creeping me out.’

‘You walked here in the dark. I’m sure you’ll be fine. You can catch up on your sleep.’

‘Come on, Professor, you must have a spare flashlight. I just got here. I came up from the city because I wanted to get away for the weekend, you know, and my friends, they said I could stay at their place, but I don’t know, maybe they forgot to pay the electricity bill or something. I get here and there’s no power and no heat and it’s really fucking cold tonight, and I’ve been looking around for hours trying to figure out what’s wrong. They said the temperature was gonna be the same in Rhinebeck as the city, but shit, man, it’s way colder when you get out of the city’s microclimate. Have you noticed that? Manhattan’s always warmer than surrounding areas, I guess that heat island effect or whatever they call it, the cars and the subways and all that glass and concrete and steel, it produces its own, like, ten-degree boost or something. You’d think the weather service would take account of that but I swear they don’t, or their monitoring stations are, like, up at the tops of buildings and get way different readings. Shit it’s cold out here. Could I come in and warm up before I head back?’

‘It’s only a ten-minute walk. You’ll warm up on the way.’

‘That’s not very hospitable.’

‘Maybe I’m not a very hospitable person.’

‘Come on, I don’t think that’s true, you’re just — I don’t know—’

‘I’m what? You have a theory about me? You don’t even know me.’

‘Maybe you’re a little paranoid, Professor.’

‘Maybe I am. Maybe you should go back to your friends’ house.’

‘Your neighbors.’

‘Yeah, see, I don’t know them. Haven’t met them. I don’t feel obliged to help one of their guests.’

‘But I’m a friend of your daughter’s.’

‘I don’t think so, Mr. Ramsey. I think you’re Peter’s friend and I don’t think you’re an especially close friend. I get the sense you’re some distant hanger-on who turned up in their lives because you realized my daughter and son-in-law might be useful.’

‘That’s not very nice. Come on, man, can I just get warm for a few minutes? That house is fucking frigid, and if I can’t figure out how to get the gas and electricity working I’m in for a cold night.’

‘It’s not too late to catch a train back to the city. Tell you what, I’ll call you a cab.’

‘I don’t give up so easy, I’ll rough it out if I have to — if I could just get warm.’

Even through the obstruction of the screen, it was obvious he was shaking, and perhaps he was a good actor or perhaps he was genuinely cold, but whatever the case something in me began to thaw against my own better instincts and I unlatched the screen door, standing aside as Michael Ramsey walked into my house. In retrospect it is possible I had figured it out already to some extent and wanted to see how things would unfold, hoping if nothing else that inviting him in might give me answers, or that he might reveal his role in the drama unfolding around me.

‘Listen, thanks, man, I’m really grateful.’ He shivered as I closed the front door, locking it from the inside so he could not leave without momentary obstruction, as if I wanted to make him think he was my hostage as well as my guest. ‘My phone’s out of juice and I wondered if I could use yours to call my friends and ask them what’s up with the power? I don’t even know if they’re home but they said they were staying in the city tonight and they were going to come up tomorrow to join me, but, you know, I’d rather not spend the night in a cold house if I can avoid it? There must be some really simple explanation like a switch that just needs to be flipped, I don’t know, circuit breakers or whatever, maybe there was a surge and things went down, but you didn’t have any problems with your power when you arrived? Did you come up last night or this morning?’

‘I came up today, this morning. Everything was fine. The house was warm, the lights worked, they still work, as you can see, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the power supply in the area. I don’t think a transformer has blown. If there’s a problem it’s in your friends’ house. What are their names, anyway?’

‘Phil and Sara Applegate.’

It sounded improbable but I nodded.

‘They bought the place a couple years ago and completely redid it. She goes in for primitive design, you know, so it’s, like, I don’t know, colonial, like walking into the eighteenth century or something, all really simple, but shit it’s cold in there.’

‘Maybe they don’t have electricity. Maybe they only use oil lamps and candles and heat the house with a woodstove. There are people like that up here. You’d be surprised how many. They don’t want to live on the grid. They dig a well, chop wood, lead a pastoral life. I think it would be exhausting myself.’