The end of the governor’s speech was the end of the evening.
As the house lights went on, the vast ballroom swarmed with noise. As I was saying goodbye to Harper, I glanced across at the podium where a crowd had gathered around the governor. Jeffries’s widow was standing at his side. I had forgotten about the letter. It was the only thing Elliott had asked me to do, and it was still sitting in the desk drawer where I had put it. I promised myself to take care of it first thing Monday morning.
Lisa Laughlin touched my arm. “It was nice to see you, after all these years. By the way,” she added, as she turned to go, “Jennifer moved back a few months ago.” She said something else, but the crowd had swept her too far away and I could not hear what it was.
Outside, a damp gray mist hung in the cool night air. A long line of limousines jammed the street in front of the hotel. Women in slinky evening gowns that trailed below their fashionable furs chattered with each other, or stood alone, distant and impassive, while they waited for their rides. Harried-looking men were waving their arms and yelling at their drivers, as if that would make things move faster. In the middle of it all, his head held high, a whistle firmly between his teeth, a man was holding up one hand to force cars to stop, while he used the other to wave the traffic through. Wearing a frayed, filthy brown coat, and tattered, moth-holed woolen gloves, his greasy hair flew in all directions as, obliv-ious of everything else, he listened intently to the voice inside his head telling him what to do.
I stood at the edge of the sidewalk, the collar of my blue cash-mere topcoat pulled close to my throat, watching this strange apparition with its empty eyes and mechanical motions. Over and over again, the screeching whistle, the arm thrust out, the other arm moving underneath it in a wide sweeping curve. Had he been dressed in a police officer’s uniform, everyone would have done exactly as he ordered and been grateful he was there. Dressed as he was, they simply looked away, as if, in a parody of his own madness, by not seeing him he would somehow cease to exist.
The cold cut through me like a knife. I stuffed my hands into the overcoat pockets and walked away. I had left my car in the garage at my office, a few blocks away. After I passed the courthouse, I cut diagonally across the narrow park on the other side.
Reflected through the cold, dense air, the dim nighttime lights from the surrounding buildings covered it with an ash white haze.
I felt a shooting pain in my left leg and had to stop. It had not bothered me for years, and now it seemed to bother me all the time. A few seconds later and the pain had gone. I tested the leg a few careful steps, and then, just as I started to resume my normal pace, I saw them, looming out of the mist just in front of me. Two men with matted gray hair and tangled gray beards, knit caps pulled down over their ears, one in front and one behind a metal shopping cart, both of them staring straight ahead, like the lookout and the pilot of a sailing ship gliding silently through the fog-shrouded sea, were stopped next to a trash can. Without a word, without a gesture, the one in back waited while the one in front lifted the lid and reached inside. He removed a single aluminum can, placed it on the concrete walkway, straightened up, pulled the cart forward, and stopped again. Without a word, without a glance, the other one, the shadow of the first, placed his foot on the can and crushed it flat. Bending down, he picked it up and placed it inside the basket. There was no wasted motion, no loss of time; they were the perfect expression of the soul-less efficiency that had, at the end, left these two lost survivors to wander through the city, searching for a few cents’ worth of waste. I watched them as they moved on to the next trash can, where they repeated the same silent motions. Then I lost them as they slipped away into the vast impenetrable night.
I rode the elevator down to the underground garage where I had left my car. Harsh yellow overhead light illuminated the center pavement and projected the shadow of anything that moved on the cold concrete walls. With the smell of damp cement in my nostrils, I listened to my footsteps echo back at me, a sharp staccato noise. Or was it an echo? I stopped, stood still, listening to the echo fade away. Nothing. I took another step, and stopped again. There seemed to be a second sound, following close upon the first. I turned around, searching the distance behind me. There was no one there, at least no one I could see. I moved quickly to my car and locked it from the inside as I started the engine. I glanced in the rearview mirror and began to back out.
As I put the car into drive, I glanced again into the mirror. Two wild malevolent eyes were staring at me. Someone was in the back seat, directly behind me. My head snapped around. It was empty. They were behind the car, not in it. I shoved my foot down on the accelerator, grabbed the wheel with both hands, and took one last look in the rearview mirror. There was nothing; the garage was empty. But someone had been there, I was sure of it.
I had seen him with my own eyes.
By the time I drove out onto the street, I was not sure what I had seen, and began to think I had just imagined the whole thing. The mind does strange things while the sun still sleeps.
Ten
It was nearly ten o’clock before I opened my eyes. For a few minutes I lay there wondering if I could fall back to sleep. Finally, I dragged myself out of bed and stumbled, bleary-eyed, into the bathroom. I stood in front of the toilet, staring down at the bowl, watching the ripples spread in the water until I was finished. Then I stepped into the shower and slowly changed the water temperature from hot to warm to as cold as I could stand it. When I was younger and drank too much, I did it to get sober; now I just did it to force myself to wake up.
I threw on a dark blue T-shirt and a pair of jeans and walked barefoot to the kitchen and made a cup of coffee. I was almost finished with the Sunday paper when the doorbell rang. No one had buzzed from the gate at the bottom of the drive, and I was not expecting anyone. Annoyed at the intrusion, I opened the door.
“Yes?” I demanded irritably.
A woman, tall, willowy, with black hair and wide sloping eyes, was standing in front of me. She was wearing a yellow dress, with a white sweater thrown around her shoulders. Her chin was tilted back at an angle, and a half-mocking smile played on her mouth.
I knew that look and, though it must in some ways have changed in all the years that had passed, I knew that face.
“Yes?” I asked again, starting to smile.
“Have you forgotten me, Joey?” she said, teasing me with her eyes. She pronounced my name in a soft, low, lilting voice, as if she did not want to let go. It was the same way she had said it on her front porch, sometime after midnight about a hundred years before, when we were both just kids and I was in love with her the way I would never be in love with anyone again.
We looked at each other, not quite certain what to say. Her gaze drifted away, and all her bright, shiny confidence seemed ready to turn and run. I put my arm around her waist and her arm encircled my neck, and for a minute we clung to each other.
“I saw your sister last night, and she told me that…”
“She called me late last night,” Jennifer explained as we stepped back from each other. “A friend of hers, someone she works with-