Evan Hunter
Buddwing
To Anita — with love
For when you’re alone
When you’re alone like he was alone
You’re either or neither
I tell you again it dont apply
Death or life or life or death
Death is life and life is death
I gotta use words when I talk to you
But if you understand or you dont
That’s nothing to me and nothing to you
We all gotta do what we all gotta do
1
He awoke.
He could not have been asleep for more than a few hours, and yet he felt curiously refreshed, coming instantly awake without passing through that fuzzy borderland he usually associated with rising. He knew exactly where he was. He seemed only mildly surprised to discover he was wearing his street clothes, but then he supposed one did not sleep in pajamas on a wooden bench in Central Park. He sat up and rubbed a hand over his face, not to wash away any weariness — more, he suspected, as a gesture of habit. Then he glanced across the path and beyond the iron railing to where the ground sloped to a small lake. The lake ended in a narrow finger capped by a huge outcropping of primeval rock, the man-made concrete of Fifth Avenue beyond and in the distance, and behind that a pale blue sky.
Who am I? he wondered.
The words flashed across his mind in brilliant, almost searing intensity for only a second, and then were extinguished by their own absurdity. He grinned at the foolishness of the thought, grinned too because it was a beautiful day. The air was mild and warm; a balmy breeze reminiscent of somewhere in the tropics played at the back of his neck. He wondered what time it was. He looked at his wrist, surprised to see he had no watch, and then again wondered Who am I? This time the question did not seem as absurd. This time the question forced the grin from his mouth.
Well, I’m
He sat waiting. He did not panic. He sat calmly on the park bench. This is New York City, he told himself. This is Central Park. That’s Fifth Avenue up there, I can see the tops of the buildings, who am I? Patiently he waited, the knowledge on the tip of his tongue. Of course he knew who he was; he was
He waited.
He felt suddenly uneasy, but he knew he would not panic. This was a temporary lapse of some kind, like forgetting the name of someone at a party, a simple block, momentary and transitory. He would not even allow his brow to furrow. He sat calmly and patiently, circling his own memory warily, like an animal preparing to spring on an elusive prey, cautiously, treading silently: I’m
But the name would not come.
Well, that’s really ridiculous, he thought offhandedly, casually, I’m
Who?
The uneasiness was spreading. He glanced about him surreptitiously, as though this stupid lapse, this inconsiderate and grotesque inconvenience, were somehow something that everyone could see. But there was no one to see. He was quite alone on the bench and in the park. It must have been really very early in the morning; he could not even hear any sounds of traffic from Fifth Avenue. The uneasiness had started somewhere at the back of his skull, not in his mind, but physically at the base of his skull, the medulla oblongata. The medulla oblongata: Biology I at high school — which high school? It had then moved across his face; he could feel it tightening the flesh over his cheekbones and then spreading to his upper lip, the lips pulling taut, lodging in his throat when his cautious circling trap did not work, and then leaping instantly into his heart, fluttering wildly there. He would not panic. He told himself he would not panic. But the uneasiness was something very close to panic now, galloping in his heart. He suddenly clenched his hands.
Look, he told himself, you know who you are.
Well, then (cautiously... he almost dreaded thinking the words again, as if, presented again with them, he knew he would again have no answer, the words reluctantly refused to come... cautiously, very cautiously, no, it was no good playing tricks, it was no good creeping up like this) well, then, who am I?
I know who I am, he thought, I’m sitting here on a park bench, this is Central Park, that’s Fifth Avenue over there, I’m in New York City, my name is
Oh.
Oh, hell, he thought.
What’s the matter with me this morning? What am I doing here, anyway? I should be
The panic suddenly leaped against the walls of his heart. With a certainty sharp and clear and fierce, he knew he should be somewhere else, and he had not the slightest inkling of where that somewhere else was. And then, knowing he should be elsewhere, fearing his heart would burst through his rib cage and explode the flesh on his chest, lie beating in fear on the path before the bench, he suddenly wanted to know what he looked like. He brought his hands up instantly. They were trembling. He looked about him again to see if anyone had noticed the trembling. But he was still alone, quite alone, and his aloneness added a new dimension to his panic, as though he were trapped somehow in a horrible unending dream where he would interminably shout the question WHO AM I? and there would be no one to hear and no one to answer.
He explored his face with the fingers of both hands widespread. He seemed to have the right number of eyes, and a nose, somewhat long, and a thin upper lip, and high cheekbones — he supposed they were high; they seemed to end just below his eyes. The skin on his cheeks seemed taut, pulled tight, and he had a beard stubble.
He took his hands away from his face and studied them intently, as though wondering whether they were faithful recorders of his features, and it was then that he noticed the heavy gold ring on the third finger of his right hand. The ring had a black stone, and the stone was cracked, but there were no initials, no crest, nothing on the cracked black stone, no clue in the shining black-though-marred surface of the stone or the encircling gold to tell him what the ring was supposed to commemorate or mean other than decoration. He tried to take the ring off his finger, but it would not budge past his knuckle. Still sitting on the bench — the panic had fled before his curiosity now, an idle sort of curiosity — he put his finger into his mouth, wetting it past the knuckle, and then forced the ring off. He looked into the gold circle. In delicate script lettering the legend From G.V. was engraved.
G.V.
Who is G.V.? he wondered, and then became amused by the possibilities of what was happening to him. He did not know who he was, and he did not know who G.V. was, and he suddenly thought it funny that he did not know who anyone in this whole wide world was. Who is President Johnson? he asked himself, and was reassured by the very logic of his question; if he knew that Johnson was the President, then he knew who Johnson was. He found himself running through a list of names in his mind, as though arranging the geographical points on a map: Chairman Khrushchev, Pablo Casals, Sarah Vaughan, Fidel Castro, Tennessee Williams, Roger Maris, Marilyn Monroe, Ernest Hemingway; they’re dead, he thought, they’re both dead. And then he wondered if he himself were dead.
Well, if I’m dead, he reasoned, I feel pretty good, so what the hell? If I’m dead, then being dead is like waking up in Central Park on a nice spring day, so being dead can’t be so bad. And then, as if the idea had been in his mind all along, as if he had only been playing some sort of hideous game with himself, he reached into his pocket for his wallet. He knew infallibly that he kept his wallet in the left-hand pocket of his trousers, the same way he knew that Lyndon Johnson was President of the United States, the same way he knew that this was Central Park. He reached into his pocket, and knew with the same infallibility that his wallet would not be there, but felt deeper into the pocket nonetheless, and then nodded in brief disappointment. As a matter of course, he checked his other trouser pockets, but there was no wallet. He had either lost it or had it stolen from him, which might after all explain what he was doing in Central Park on a Saturday morning when