When he saw the activity up ahead, he knew he had come uptown at least as far as the forties, and he knew if he ran a step farther he would collapse and die without ever seeing the sun. He did not want more confusion and noise. He almost turned and began running downriver again, but something drew him toward the huge black-and-white hull of the ocean liner poised against the sky; something drew him toward the sound of disembarking passengers, the honking of taxicab horns, the shouts of porters and customs officials. As though this were the sun itself, he moved toward the throng of people fluttering about the dock, and then he stopped running.
He stood with his arms hanging and his shoulders loose, sucking in great gulps of air. There was sound everywhere around him, voices in English and in Italian, a poodle barking from the open window of a parked black Cadillac, squealing children, the gunning roar of engines. He saw a woman coming through the dock gate, and a man ran to embrace her, and he suddenly felt more alone than he ever had in his life. The passengers were all pouring into the street now, all being embraced and kissed and greeted, and he stood on the edges of the throng, breathing raggedly and watching the exchange of love, and all at once he began weeping.
He wept bitterly. He was still struggling for breath, and each swallow he took ended in a convulsive sob that almost choked him. He stood unseen and unheard on the edge of the boisterous crowd, weeping. A ship’s porter shouted, “Presto! Le valige della signor!” and a cab driver yelled, “Anybody for Idlewild? Idlewild here, who’s going to Idlewild?” A baby suddenly began crying in its mother’s arms, and a man testily snarled, “I thought you arranged for transportation.” A fat woman in a mink stole erupted with a cheery “Yoo-hoo! Arthur! Yoo-hoo! Here we are!” Here we are, he thought, and the tears streamed down his cheeks.
He wept for himself, he supposed, and he wept for all the dead people in the world who would never again know the warmth of human arms around them, never again feel the brush of welcoming lips against their cheeks, never again hear a fat woman in a mink stole yelling “Yoo-hoo! Here we are!” He came very close to recognizing the truth about himself in that moment. As he sucked air into his lungs and into his body — perfume, oxygen, carbon monoxide, fumes of Diesel, body odors, river smell, a trace of whiskey — and heard the sounds of life around him, standing on the edges of life, the rim of the sun, he suddenly wished to re-enter it and hold it close, and this was when the masquerade almost collapsed. His name almost materialized in his head and on his tongue; he almost knew exactly who he was and how he had happened to awaken in the park this morning. In another moment perhaps, in another five seconds, the knowledge would have rushed free and clear, erupting from where it was hidden. He would have known.
A look of frozen expectation must have covered his face. He stopped breathing abruptly, as though afraid this truth balanced precariously on the edge of his consciousness could be toppled into the abyss by the smallest breath. He hung poised, waiting, dreading the knowledge, but ready to welcome it the way these returning passengers were being welcomed everywhere around him, longing to be a part of them again, desperately wishing for re-entry; it would come, it would come at any moment, he knew, he knew; he waited with his teeth clenched and the tears running down his face.
He saw Grace.
For a moment, he thought, No, I am not really seeing her, I am only afraid of the truth. But then his heart leaped in recognition, and he began moving toward her quickly. She is not Grace, he thought, don’t you remember, won’t you remember? He was moving toward her rapidly as she stepped through the crowd and around it, walking with a group of people who were laughing and pounding a young man on the back as he struggled toward a taxi with his luggage. Buddwing almost cried out to her. Wait, he told himself. Listen. You’d better face this. You’d better face it now. He hesitated.
They had put the boy into the taxi, and two girls and another boy climbed into it beside him. The cab pulled away, leaving Grace and five other people on the dock. He noticed that she stood slightly apart from the group, as though not really a member of it. Another cab pulled up. Buddwing expected all of them to get into it, expected Grace to drive away leaving him only with this insistent, clamoring, edge-of-mind knowledge that threatened to crack his skull wide open, that and thirty lousy cents, not enough to follow.
The cab moved away. Grace was still on the dock, standing alongside a young man in a tweed jacket. The young man took her arm. Together, they began walking east.
Who else can she be? he thought, and he began following them.
Behind him, he heard a little girl say, “Daddy, that man is crying.”
12
She looked much the same, yes, perhaps a bit thinner, her blond hair a little shorter, but she was Grace, yes, and he felt an enormous sense of peace settle over him as he began following her and the young man. They seemed in no particular hurry to get wherever they were going, which was why, he supposed, they had not taken a taxicab with the rest of their group. They strolled idly, enjoying the mild spring evening, chatting, laughing occasionally, their laughter drifting back to him where he followed some fifty feet behind them.
The presence of the young man did not disturb him, although he felt somehow it should. As he watched them strolling, there seemed to be the same lightness he had felt when sitting in Washington Square Park, a correctness about the situation which, rather than excluding the young man whose arm she held, made him an integral part of it. Watching Grace and the young man, he had the peculiar feeling that he was watching himself, that she was chatting with him, Buddwing, that she was turning her head every now and then to laugh at something he had said, that she was not really with the young man at all. He smiled. He felt his position to be both superior and advantageous. He could, in effect, walk side by side with Grace in the presence of the young man, and at the same time he could follow behind and observe her from a distance.
Her hair bothered him a little because Grace had always worn her hair very long, flowing past her shoulders and down her back, and this girl wore it clipped short like a rolled gold helmet, evenly cropped at the nape of her neck. She was thinner, too, a lot thinner than he had first thought, moving with casual angularity in her sweater and skirt and high-heeled pumps. But he supposed she was Grace, after all, because her walk seemed somehow familiar and well-remembered, as did the way she held her head, the way she placed her hand gently on the young man’s arm to emphasize a point.
He followed them down 44th Street, and then the young man stopped on the steps of a building between... Eighth and Ninth, he supposed it was, and he and Grace chatted there while two Puerto Rican kids impatiently waited for them to get off the steps so they could resume their game of stoop-ball. Buddwing understood now why they had not taken a cab along with the rest. The young man obviously lived here, fairly close to the docks, and Grace probably had felt like walking, maybe she had some shopping to do, or maybe she just enjoyed walking in the spring air, yes, he remembered Grace liked to walk a lot. They finally shook hands in farewell. The young man went into the building and Grace continued walking east toward... yes, it was Eighth Avenue, and then crossed the avenue, heading toward Broadway.