That isn’t how it really is, he thought.
Fanny stood, taking her coat from the back of her chair. “Well, come on. Here goes nothing.”
“Right now? We’ve got to get the check.”
“Here it is.” She held it up. “The waitress put it here when she brought the water for my tea.”
He took it from her fingers (a bit too easily, he thought) and held her coat for her. He discovered that he did not really think backing through the door would work. He was home, in his own world once more after—what? A Saturday morning adventure? Some kind of a mental seizure? Things sort themselves out. He had said that.
His coat was on a hook near the table. It was, of course, still the heavy wool one he had bought in the hotel. Too heavy, probably, for the weather here. But the package of fifties he had bought for a dime from Mr. Sheng was real money now, as the still substantial remainder of the thousand he had found under the vase in his hospital room was not.
With a second bill from the packet he paid the new cashier, another of Mama Capini’s sons, a little older and a bit bigger than the one he had met in the men’s room. As a test he asked, “What do you think about the fight?”
“What fight?”
“Joe’s fight. I thought Joe was a customer of yours.”
The cashier chuckled and rang up their total. “You been talkin’ to Guido. He’s a crazy one, that Guido.”
He started to return to their table, but Fanny whispered, “I left the tip.”
“Backwards,” he told her. “Remember, we’ve got to walk backwards.” He took an awkward backward step toward the door.
“No,” Fanny whispered. “I won’t.” She caught his arm and spun him around.
Desperately he began, “You’ll be—”
“No, I won’t. The joke’s gone far enough.” She tugged at his arm.
Lara was standing across the street, snow blowing past her face as she studied the restaurant. He started toward her, and as he did he heard Mama Capini call, “Arrivederci!” behind them. At the edge of vision he saw Fanny look back, wave, and smile as she stepped through the door.
Then he was on the street, and alone. Snowflakes sparkled in the sun, blown from the rooftops by a spring wind. Lara had already turned away; as he watched, she vanished through the revolving door of a fur store.
Recklessly he dashed into the traffic.
Brakes squealed. A white truck like a huge refrigerator on wheels slewed sideways until it nearly struck his shoulder with its own. Triumphantly, he leaped across the curb and straight-armed the revolving door.
A sale was in progress; the furrier’s swarmed with women, many of them accompanied by husbands variously impatient. He raced among them, trying to decide whether Lara had worn a hat, whether her lovely hair had been on her shoulders or piled upon her head to form the covering he half recalled having seen while Fanny faded like a cheap photo at his side.
Twice he pushed his way completely around the store. Women were everywhere, with and without hats; none was Lara.
In desperation he snatched away a clerk, rescuing her from an angry-looking customer with blue hair who was disparaging two coats to her in tandem. He described Lara as well as he could.
The clerk shook her head. “Have you tried upstairs?”
He stared at her.
“In the salon.” The clerk lowered her voice. “The more expensive things are up there, and they get a better class of people.”
A pokey elevator carried him to the second floor, wheezing like an asthmatic old man. Here the carpets were white and the lights seemed touched with blue. He located a male clerk and described Lara again, adding that it was extremely urgent that he speak to her.
The clerk asked frostily, “You don’t by any chance recall the young lady’s name?”
“Lara Morgan,” he said. “She sometimes uses the name Laura Nomos.”
The clerk did not turn a hair. “Then if you’ll come with me, sir, I can examine the book for today and tell you whether she’s been here.”
They went to the back of the store, where a ledger lay open on a desk. The clerk studied its pages. “Ms. Morgan was indeed here today, sir. At eleven thirty.” The clerk glanced at his watch. “It’s now nearly eleven forty, so I would imagine she’s left the store. Ms. Morgan left her coat with us for cleaning and storage, as I believe she always does.”
A tiny flower of hope blossomed in him. He asked, “She’ll come for it, then, in the fall?”
“Or send someone, sir, if she wants it taken from storage.” The clerk flipped pages. “Here we are, sir. She picked it up last October. But it had been with us for twenty-six months, sir.”
His Apartment
The mailbox was full, and among its bills and ads he discovered a yellow ticket advising him that still more were being held for him at the post office. A little strawberry-shaped clock he had gotten in a drugstore clung to the door of his refrigerator, its display faithfully flashing the time and date—1:38, 4 15, 1:38, 4 15, 1:39, 4 15.
It was the middle of April; he tried to remember when Lara had left him, but could not. Her note lay on the coffee table, undated save for a light coating of dust. He read it again.
Darling,
I tried to say good-bye last night, but you wouldn’t listen. I’m not a coward, really I’m not.
If it weren’t for the doors I wouldn’t tell you a thing—that would be the best way. You may see one, perhaps more than one, at least for a little while. It will be closed all around. (They must be closed on all sides.) It may be a real door, or just something like a guy-wire supporting a phone pole, or an arch in a garden. Whatever it is, it will look significant.
Please read carefully. Please remember everything I’m saying. You must not go through.
If you go through before you realize it, don’t turn around. If you do it will be gone. Walk backward at once.
Her signature was exactly as he remembered it, its first A a continuation of the capital L. He did not read the postscript (which he called the PS), feeling that he would quite literally die, that his heart would somehow burst, if he did.
A paper lay under the coffee table. March 13th—thirty-three days since Lara had gone. A night in the hospital, or perhaps two. Say two nights in the hospital, a night in the hotel with North, a night in the hotel alone. That was four nights, for thirty-three days.
He switched on the television and chanced upon a feature story about the rush to file income tax returns. April 15th; this was the day you were supposed to file. Mechanically, he walked to the post office and got the rest of his mail. His form was there, and the store had sent his W2 already—it was in the pile of papers on the bedside table. The bed was still unmade, still rumpled from the night he had staggered into it with Lara and the day he had awakened alone.
He used the short form and had nothing to report but his salary; it was complete, sealed and stamped, in twenty minutes. He had not worn the overcoat when he went to the post office, and now he debated whether to wear it when he went out to mail his return. The packet of fifties was still in the right side pocket. He took it out, wondering what Internal Revenue would do if they knew he had it; no doubt profits had to be reported, even if they were the profits of buying several thousand dollars for a dime. The brown paper wrapper was still stamped PUROLATOR COURIER, still marked with a Chinese character and the symbols for ten cents by Mr. Sheng’s industrious brush. Where was Mr. Sheng now? And his nephew, Dr. Pille? On a different channel, in another show.
Taking Marcella’s bills out of his wallet, he folded them, bound them with a rubber band, and put them in the pocket of the overcoat. Slipping the paper wrapper from Mr. Sheng’s fifties, he crumpled it and tossed it into a wastebasket, and deposited the fifties in his wallet.