“But they paid for my ticket and hotel room.”
“Just the cost of doing business. You feel disappointed, but it isn’t the least bit personal. You mean nothing to them.”
“I’m meaningless?” This was the one clear thought that emerged from her pelting of words.
“Not to me,” Helen Ferris said. Was she teasing him? Or was she right?
“I’ve got to go,” she said, touching his chest lightly. “I’m so excited. We’ll have fun tonight.”
When they parted, Nachman wondered how long it had been since he’d last seen Helen Ferris. He also wondered who, exactly, was Helen Ferris?
She remembered him so well. She had called out his name in the street. How could he say, “Who are you?” Another man might have been able to say it. Not Nachman. In a few hours, she would expect him to show up and meet her husband. The prospect of joining strangers for dinner had something adventurous about it, even devilish and appropriate to New York. Nachman didn’t know anyone in the city who was as friendly as his old friend Helen Ferris, whoever she was. Any moment it would come to him. Her wide cheekbones and dark, roundish, somewhat fleshy face, with its maternally sexy brown eyes, looked Semitic, maybe a little Asian, but she might just as easily be Mexican or Puerto Rican. He’d known women who looked like her, but remembered none named Helen. She was quite attractive, though a little scary. You’d think he’d remember her for that reason. Had she noticed his confusion? People can tell if you recognize them or not. They see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice. If she knew Nachman didn’t recognize her, then she was complicit in his failure to admit it. Oh well, Nachman would get the question out of the way when he saw her again. It would be more embarrassing later than it would have been a few minutes ago, but he would show up for dinner and confess. The key to Helen Ferris’s apartment was in his pants pocket. Her card was in his wallet. It said Helen Ferris, Editorial Consultant, but it told him nothing about who she was.
Dinner was still a few hours away. Nachman continued walking aimlessly, trying to remember. How do you try to remember? You make yourself passive, receptive, available. If it comes it comes. A strange kind of trying. He wondered if there had been a clue to her identity in what she’d said. Unfortunately, Nachman had done most of the talking. The look in Helen Ferris’s eyes and her red smile came to him; nothing else. She refused to step from the shadows of his mind.
The late-October weather felt summery, but as the afternoon wore on, Nachman detected a quality in the breeze that was too poignant for summer, had too fine an edge. Another year was almost over. Nachman liked the poignancy, could almost see it in the changing light. The sun would soon be lower in the sky. Shadows would grow longer. Darkness and cold would invade the streets and challenge people’s energy, give steel to their thoughts. Nachman felt as if he were walking heroically into the heart of the drama, the adventure of the city, and not just because of the season. Helen Ferris was part of New York’s endemic adventurousness. The crowds, the traffic, the buildings, the changing weather, the city’s infinite complexity, its unknowability — who could comprehend it? Nachman felt exhilarated. From a certain point of view, there was even adventure in being stood up at the cryptology conference. Invited, all expenses paid, to come three thousand miles, only to find nobody who gives a damn whether you came or not. No explanation, no apology. Not even a note at the hotel desk. This couldn’t have happened in small-time towns like London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo. That’s what made New York great. Nobody gives a shit about anybody.
The truth is that Nachman was enraged. He had smiled as he talked to Helen Ferris. He hadn’t let her see his anger. She might have thought he was angry at her.
Nachman then chuckled to himself, and shook his head ruefully, as if he required a moment of private ironic theater. His mood became philosophical. After all, he was morally compromised. He’d agreed to the interview in bad faith. He had no intention of changing jobs and had wanted only to visit his father. In fact, he had planned to go directly from the airport to his father’s apartment, but when he phoned — once from the plane, then, again, from the airport — nobody had answered. His father was old and forgetful. He might have gone out. He might even have left town to visit relatives in Connecticut. So Nachman had taken a cab to the hotel. He’d visit his father tomorrow, if the old guy answered the goddamn phone. If not, he’d fly back to California, feeling he’d wasted his time.
As for the sense of adventure, the weather and all that, it was a fantasy, a kind of lie. Nachman had been trying to give value to his trip. He could kid himself only so long before self-contempt made him see things as they were. Only a fool would accept an invitation to meet somebody who had no name. Nachman was a fool. That was now an established fact. Good. He felt much better.
A few hours later, Nachman entered a building in Chelsea. The doorman, who had been given Nachman’s name, said, “Go right up. Apartment 14-B.” The elevator was brightened by three half-mirrored walls. Nachman could see himself from head to waist in triplicate. Three half-Nachmans made him feel less, rather than more, visible. The reflections seemed mental rather than physical, mere versions of himself. He felt suddenly claustrophobic, as if the elevator were overcrowded.
Below the mirrors, there was a walnut-stained surface embossed with carved flowers. A brass strip marked the place where the wood met the gray industrial-carpeted floor. The elevator door was two panels of brown enameled steel. They slid separately, one behind the other. Nachman studied the light fixture directly above his head. A fat bulb glowed through a bowl of cloudy glass that was subtly textured with incisions radiating from the center. The elevator spoke for the building, thought Nachman — a confusion of materials suggesting luxurious waste. It carried him slowly to the fourteenth floor, then stopped with a jerk. Nachman had the familiar sensation of a lightness in his belly and lead in his feet.
Nothing about Helen Ferris had come to him. Nachman supposed he must have known her when he was a graduate student at U.C.L.A. He’d had quite a few acquaintances then, men and women with whom he’d since lost touch. There had been parties where he’d fallen into intense and transitory intimacy with people to whom he’d only nodded as they passed on campus later, avoiding eye contact. Wait a minute. Hadn’t he once left a party with a dark girl who had been too drunk to drive? Hadn’t he driven her in her white Jaguar to her parents’ house in Beverly Hills? Hadn’t they … what? The elevator doors opened. No, her name was Dolores. She looked nothing like Helen Ferris. The elevator doors slid shut behind him, and the elevator descended, taking Dolores to oblivion.
There were four apartment doors, two on either side of the hall, which was carpeted in the same way as the elevator and was stunningly silent. Dim lights, set in elaborate brass sconces, trailed along the walls. Nachman found the door marked 14-B. He looked at a brass-rimmed eyehole as he pressed the black nipple-like bell. He heard a muffled gong inside the apartment. He waited. Nobody answered. He pressed the bell again and waited. Nobody answered. The key worked. The door opened into a large room.
“Hello,” said Nachman, careful not to shriek. “Anybody home?” No one responded. He stepped inside, shut the door, and realized that he wasn’t alone. An odor of perfumed soap lay on the air, which was faintly moist and warm. He heard water running and glanced at what he guessed was a bathroom door. It was partly open. Someone was taking a shower and had heard nothing because of the noise of the running water. Nachman was reluctant to shout. People taking a shower feel defenseless and are easily frightened.