And Now You Can Go (19 page)

Near 55th Street Sarah wants to go into the St. Regis Hotel.

"They have a Maxfield Parrish mural above the bar," she says. Sarah grew up in New Hampshire, right near Parrish's studio. In college, she had a Maxfield Parrish calendar hanging above her desk—every year, the same calendar.

"It's four o'clock. Care for a cup of tea?" she asks in her ridiculous Irish accent. "Sure."

As we walk up the steps, she makes a production of putting her 3-D glasses into her purse.

Inside the hotel, we ask the concierge where we can find the Old King Cole mural. We're directed to the King Cole Bar. We pass a harpist with long golden hair playing ethereal music. Behind the bar we can see the mural—it takes up almost the entire width of the wall.

"He painted that one on a dare," Sarah says. "Parrish was boasting that he could paint anything, and Hemingway—I think it was Hemingway—said, 'I bet you can't paint a fart.'" We look at the painting: the people closest to King Cole are turning their noses away from him.

We sit on the couch, both of us facing the same direction, and order tea and scones. I overhear a woman behind me say, "I often think about what our lives would be like if we had married each other instead of John and Ellen."

And then a mans voice: "We'd probably still be having affairs. You'd be cheating on me with John and I on you with Ellen."

The woman laughs. Sarah and I look at each other. Neither of us wants to turn around and stare. We sip our tea and both tuck our hair behind our ears.

When we've finished our tea the waiter brings us our bill. With it, he encloses a postcard of the Parrish mural. Sarah insists on paying. After arguing about it, and then splitting the bill, we stand and turn to look at the couple whose conversation we've been following. They're eighty! At least. He's wearing a suit with sneakers; she has white hair that looks vaguely lavender.

I elbow Sarah as we're Walking out.

"I know," Sarah says. And then: "Oh, wait." She does that thing again where she's talking and so she apparently can't walk.

"What?"

"I forgot the postcard with the bill. I'll be right back."

I already have my parka on and it's a beautiful winter day. "I'll be outside."

I revolve through the doors and stand outside under the green awning. I watch a doorman greet a family of five as they exit a town car. The doorman's wearing a bow tie and a dark green wool vest with shiny buttons. Gold ropes have been sewn onto the shoulders of his vest and the sides of his green pants.
What an awful outfit
, I think. On his head, he sports a black hat that adds six or seven inches to his height. It looks like a magician's hat.

I watch as he tips his hat and enters a doorman booth that sits between the two revolving doors. The booth is gold and looks like a time machine. On the sidewalk, more men in dark green vests and tall hats are hailing cabs for departing guests, opening doors and lifting luggage out of trunks for those arriving.

That's when I see him. He's in a green vest, green pants, hailing a cab for a man and his daughter.

He's wearing the same Armani glasses. It's him.

He works at this hotel, helping tourists and businessmen, wishing them an enjoyable stay. It's him.

I pull the hood of my parka over my head. I'm not wearing the same blue coat. But would he recognize me if he saw me, anyway? My hair is different now.

I want to run down the block, run and run.

Or I want to go up to him and tap him on his gold-roped shoulder.
Why didn't I see him when we entered the hotel
? Maybe he just started his shift. Or he was in the gold booth, the time machine. Was
he working the day we met, that day in the park? Afterward, did he run back to work
? This all seems important, though I don't know what difference the answers would make.

As I'm standing watching, the older woman with the lavender hair descends the stairs. The man from the park says hello to her, waves down a cab, opens the back door, and closes it behind her.

Then the woman's companion conies out and the man from the park gets him a cab. "See you next week," the man from the park says. It's that same voice.

"What's wrong?" Sarah says, behind me. "What do you mean?"

"Your eyes are tearing." "I just got a shock," I say.

"What happened?" She looks around. Her eyes float right past him. She would never make the connection and I don't want to point it out to her. I need to think. I don't want anyone— not even Sarah—to tell me what to do.

"Doesn't that booth look like a time machine?" I say. "Maybe we're in the past—or the future." I try to laugh.

Sarah ignores my observation; she doesn't even look in the direction of the booth. "What happened?" she asks again.

"Someone reached into his pocket for cigarettes, and I thought he was reaching for something else," I lie. "It was the same motion. This has happened a million times and still it makes me jump."

"Oh, El." Sarah takes the 3-D glasses out of her purse and puts them on my face, her long fingers securing the cardboard arms of the glasses over my cold ears. We walk down the carpeted steps, right past the man. I look at him through the glasses, but he doesn't register that it's me. I'm so surprised by his nonrecognition of me that for a moment I wonder if maybe it's not him after all. But I look down, and the laces of his dress shoes are tied in double bows.

"Where to now?" I ask Sarah. I'm walking and whispering— I don't want him to hear my voice.

"I should get a wedding gift for this weekend," Sarah whispers. "What kind of gift?"

"I don't know. Maybe a waffle iron. I'm really into waffles."

As we walk, words soar through my head like kites and I try to latch on to one, I think of lines I recited to the man when we were in the park. I try to remember the last stanzas of the Larkin poem, the ones I forgot then, the ones I still can't remember, even now.

We find a store that sells kitchen supplies and look inside for a waffle iron. There are all sorts. Some are round and others are square. Some are heavy-duty German machines, others look portable. They're all lined up on two long shelves. I walk down the aisle, opening and closing each of them. I put my hand inside the industrial-looking one and close it tight. When I remove my hand, I'm pleased to see that the waffle iron has left an imprint on my palm.

I'll have to look the poem up. Maybe that will help. Maybe this is just some grown-up version of the junior-high scavenger hunt I was sent on and if I keep looking I'll find the answer. I open and close waffle irons, searching.

"El?" Sarah says. "What's going on?" "Just trying to make the right decision."

"I already found one." She points to the box in her arms. It's the industrial one.

The bag's too heavy for her to carry, so we each hold one handle as we walk back to my apartment. When our fingers get too indented and red from the handles, we switch sides.

As we walk we pass a little girl with straight blond hair and blue eyes that are a fraction too close together. I stop and stare after her.

"Too old," Sarah says.

Near my apartment building I see a young woman walking by herself in a coat that looks like it was purchased in Florida or California—someplace where thin coats suffice. She looks the age I looked a few months ago. I wonder if I should do it, if I should tell the cops about the man hailing taxis, for her sake.

While Sarah takes a shower, I look through my wallet for the number of the police officer I'm supposed to call if anything comes up. In the living room, I spot the Q-tips my roommate keeps on top of the TV. I use one to clean out my ears. Then I take another one and use it to extract the dirt and glove lint from under my fingernails.

I dial the number. The officer answers the phone and I have to remind her who I am. "I go to Columbia? The incident took place in the park, near 108th Street last December," I say, wondering which detail will trigger her memory.

"Yes, of course," she says, and her voice softens.

I think of the photographs that I saw on her desk. One showed her and a son whose front teeth were missing. Another showed her and her father, who, she said, had also been a police officer. Her father was in a wheelchair.

"What can I do for you?" she asks now.

I ask if there have been any more incidents like the one that happened to me. She says no.

"Had anything like what happened to me happened before," I ask, "to someone else?"

"No," she says. "Your guy didn't do that to anyone else. You were the first, or maybe the only one."

"But when I looked through pictures—"

"Those were the mug shots we have of people who have committed all sorts of crimes. Drug dealing, auto theft, larceny."

"Thanks," I say.

"No problem," she says. "You know where to find me if something comes up." "Yup," I say, and pause.

"Anything else I can help you with?"

I pick up one of the pipes on the table, sniff it, and inhale its sharp smell. I try to remember exactly what the gun smelled like but can't.

"No," I say. "Bye."

I go into the kitchen. The poster is still sticking to the fly strip. Now that I've seen him again, I can tell exactly how the police drawing of him is off. It doesn't show the width of his nose. It doesn't show his thin upper lip.

"I know where to find you," I say to the poster, and flick it with my finger. I have no idea what to do with what I know.

. . .

That night, at the subway station, we meet up with the ROTC boy and G. P.

"The first time I found out our compadre here was a poet I was totally shocked," G. P. says. "I was with some guys from the hockey team and we saw a poetry reading advertised and his name featured. We went because we were sure it was a joke. But then he gave this reading that lasted an hour and made us all feel it here." He pounds his own heart through his black ski parka. The ROTC boy isn't paying attention: Sarah's showing off her new shoes for him, turning her ankles this way and that.

G. P. wants to play pool. "There aren't enough pool tables in D.C.," he says.

We go to a bar on East 15th that has pool tables and a chalkboard for signing up. With violet chalk, the ROTC boy writes: Jack Mehoff, Haywood Jablowmie, Mike Hunt. Others at the bar complain.

The ROTC boy and Sarah are on one team; G. P. and I on the other. We lose. "You suck," G. P. says to me.

I look over in time to see the ROTC boy kissing Sarah's neck, congratulating her. Her dimples tighten as she smiles, which makes me happy. I go to the bar and bring them each back a beer. "Guinness," I say.

"That was too fast for a true Guinness," Sarah says.

The ROTC boy looks at her like all he wants in the world is for her to say yes.

G. P. and I sit at the bar in the other room. We both know what's going on with the ROTC boy and Sarah, and neither of us wants to get in the way.

G. P. orders us blue drinks. "What's in it?" I ask him. "Blue stuff," he says.

G. P. gestures in the direction of the ROTC boy and says, "Once, before a game, we painted our entire bodies blue."

I ask why.

"I don't remember," he says. He looks perplexed. He takes off his brown sweater and I silently hope he'll put it back on. His muscles are much too big, cartoonish.

He tells me how he's finishing law school at Georgetown. "Do you know why some white-shoe firms give all their employees twenty dollars every Wednesday?" he asks.

I don't know why.

"Because it used to be that Wednesday was the maids day off. The twenty was so the lawyers could take their wives to dinner."

"Is that what you'll use the money for when you get married?" I ask. The ROTC boy told me G. P. was engaged, getting married in June to a woman from some panty hose fortune. They're honeymooning in Australia.

"Cheryl, my fiancee—" I nod. "Cheryl," I say.

"—is finishing law school too, and she'll be working for a firm as well," he says. "So maybe we'll treat each other."

I smile. He sips his drink. "Where's home?" I say.

"Delaware," he says. "Or, as I like to call it, 'Dela-where?' " He waits for me to laugh; I don't.

"I was just there for Christmas," he says. "How was that?"

"Some parts good, some parts bad."

I think which part I want to ask about.

Before I can decide, he says, "I was mugged."

"Really?" I turn in my bar chair and my knees knock his. I adjust.

"Yeah, I had to use my fathers car when I was home, a Beemer, and I went out with some friends of mine to a bar in a not-so-great neighborhood. I left at four and the guy followed me home in his car."

"Wow," I say. I ask for more details, how the man approached him.

"I was trying to get into the house, my parents' house, and the front door is always jammed. So I was cursing to myself and wiggling the key when I heard someone behind me."

He tells me how he turned around and there was a guy, not more than nineteen, who was black and apologetic, holding a gun.

"Where was the gun?" I ask. "Was he pointing it at you?"

"No, not really. It was just lying flat in his hand like it was something I'd dropped and he was giving it back."

"What'd he want?" I ask.

"Money," G. P. says, patronizingly. "It's not a dumb question," I say. "Well, what else would he want?"

"Tour family's furniture, your moms diamonds," I offer. "Tons of things."

"Yeah, well this guy just wanted money. He said he needed to buy Christmas gifts for his family."

I chew on my straw.

"So I open my wallet and all I have is a tenner. The kid shakes his head like that's not going to do it, like he's selling me something and I'm trying to offer him too low a price. I tell him we should check the trunk of my dad's car—he always has tons of shit in there. The kid seems to think this is a good idea."

G. P. orders two more blue drinks and tells me how there was nothing in the trunk. "Well, what are we going to do now?" asked the boy with the gun. G. P. suggested they go to an ATM machine. The kid said he wanted three hundred dollars, the maximum withdrawal. They got into the father's BMW.