Up. Still that car commotion, but now just a half block off and smaller. I start for it but get just one step.
“Dennis?”
“Yes, uh, excuse me?”
“Dennis? It is Dennis. Dennis, it’s Harold. How are you?”
“I’m sorry, you have to have the wrong number. Person.”
“Dennis, stop it, I said it’s Harold. Tell me. It’s been—but it actually hasn’t been that long. By the tone of my voice, I’m saying.” Grabs my hand and shakes it. “How the hell are you? Your hand’s cold. Really, I want to know.”
“Listen, it’s possible I might look like this guy—”
“Look like him? What a laugh. You’re more than the spitting image of him. You’ve never in fact looked more like yourself. You look wonderful. But Dennis, you want to forget, go on, forget, forget. I won’t mind. In the past—well I’d be the last to admit you occasionally treated me like that and did I mind? Did I ever say it at least? At least, that much? All right, I minded a little—said it and minded—complained a little you could say—kvetched, but that’s about all I did. You might say I did more, but let’s have a drink and talk about it.”
“Honestly.”
“Honestly what? Or talk about anything but that if that’s what you want. All that’s elapsed. For instance, how you could look even better after so many years. Because when really was the last time? My memory, not good then, is now a has-been.”
“My name…You see, when you said Dennis, because my name’s—”
He laughs, grabs my arm and starts walking me to the street. “Cab,” he shouts. “Taxi.” One stops. I slip my arm out of his. A very beautiful young woman and a man are walking toward us, woman saying “New-Age entrepreneurs. You know who they are?” They’re about even with us. The man stops, shakes his head, takes her hand and kisses it.
“Thirty seconds,” Harold says to the driver. He holds up a finger, crosses it with another. “Sí—you got it—Dennis, you ready?”
“They’re going to turn-around America’s economics and social, political and moral consciousness, or in all the hip states if we’re ever so lucky. New Mexico—”
“If you say so,” he says, putting her hand to his cheek and shutting his eyes.
“If I? It’s not I, and besides, how am I supposed to have an intelligent discourse with all this kissy hand action. Because—” but she suddenly notices us before I can look away and stares briefly at me and then at Harold at length as if she knows him.
“Look, my name’s Daniel,” I say to Harold, glancing over his shoulder at the woman, as he’d seen me staring at her and stepped between us. She turns to the man.
“Anything interesting?” he asks her.
“You know that woman?” I ask Harold.
“Just something,” she says.
“What woman?”
“If you guys don’t—” the cabby says.
“It was the way you were looking at them,” the man says.
“That absolutely beautiful one who just passed with the man,” as they’d resumed walking, his head on top of her shoulder. He turns to them and then back to me.
“He’s quite handsome—maybe more stunning then she. Those incredible lashes. He could easily become an actor.”
“She was staring at you as if she knew you. I’ve seen her someplace. Commercials. Maybe a subway station ad. I don’t have a TV, but I’ve watched them. Or the movies or stage.”
“Could be, Dennis, but she’s certainly not from the stage. I know the stage and she’s not on it. I make a point of seeing all the showcases and plays. As for subways—never touch the stuff.”
“Anyway”—the woman repeatedly looking back as she walked—“my name’s Daniel. Daniel, Dennis—see?”
“Free?” a man says and gets in the cab and it drives away.
“So it’s Daniel now, Dennis. So it always was and will be. So you say you’re not Dennis, Daniel. So you were never Dennis we’ll even say. You want to say that, we will. So, as a matter of fact, there never really was any Dennis. Not in the history of American and English stage design or of mankind. It’s a name I made up out of dewdrops. So what to all that I also say. Cab,” he shouts. “Taxi.” One stops. “Now let’s have that drink. I love the unflappable way your eyes take in everything and your mind makes split-second discriminations about people and things. And you didn’t take a swing at me. Now that more than anything, because what does it say? You didn’t call me this and then that when I’d say by most people’s precepts and norms you could have gotten away with it. You didn’t mime to that divine pair ‘He your friend, for I sure don’t know him.’ You didn’t say to me ‘You’re nutsy, Buster, take a powder.’ Not a raised voice or fist and I more than most you’ll meet appreciate that.”
Cabby rolls down his window and is about to say something.
“One second, friend,” Harold says. To me: “You didn’t and you’re not and the rest of those things. You’re also sympatico.”
“Sure I am.”
“Come now, you have to admit that. You also have a nice face. Not model-beautiful like that dreamy man’s before, and a nice gleam to your eyes. I bet you were a beautiful baby. So let’s get into the cab and go to a real nice pub. Sardi’s, even. I love that joint. That it still exists for one thing: everything authentic today folds. Oh, overrated caricatures on the walls to spoil your appetite, but it’s the perpetual stimulating overheard talk, and because of its dress code, all those gorgeous clothes. I can get us a quiet table where nobody can see us or a noisy one where everybody can and join in if you wish. So it’s what pleases you, Dennis, you. I only want to please you tonight, so is it quiet or noise?”
“No tables. I don’t want to go with you.”
“Please, don’t all of a sudden get rude.”
“Scuse me, scuse me,” the cabby says.
“I’m not. But if I can’t convince you any other way?”
“All the very best drinks you want on me then—food too. Anything you want. You call it. Money, even.”
“No really, thanks.”
“I wasn’t serious about the money, of course. Took a chance saying it, but I was only seeing how you’d behave. You came off with flying colors, as I knew you would. My instincts about you were right from the start. One thing though. Yes, I think I can say it. I’m serious about wanting you to come with me and I know, beyond that hard facade, who you truly are.”
“I can’t stand here longer,” the cabby says.
“I’m sure you do, but thanks, no.”
“Ah darn. Your one fault was you were always too immovable. So I’ll be on my way.” He walks to the cab. “On my way, I won’t say goodnight, Dennis.”
I nod.
“Ah darn.” Gets in cab, is looking at me through the rear window as the cab takes off. It stops at the corner for the light. He sticks his head out the window opposite the smashed car. “I can still get out, Dennis—What’s this, your devilish business? Or you can still join me. Or the 21. First floor by the door. Elegant Nick to admit us and from then on even if you go there alone, to greet you by your family name, whatever yours is. You haven’t lived till you’ve tasted their bourguignon. They know me there as well, and it’s where I’ve changed course to. I’m a director.”
I shake my head.
“Whuh? Can’t hear ya. Harold. Harold Drissac and the Barclay Hotel. I’ll be there till check-out time Sunday morn. Phone.”
I wave, he waves, cab goes. I walk back half a block—that’ll be enough time for anyone around the smashed car to forget me—look at the traffic, buildings across the street, sky, put my collar up and walk slowly to the car. Must have been smashed by the bus or smashed into the front of the bus, as the front of the bus farther up the street’s also smashed but not as hard. When I saw the bus from the distance I thought it was just doubleparked.
“For the last time—step back?” a policeman says. The three of us step back. “All the way to the sidewalk again?” Sidewalk. Phone on the corner rings. He’s standing beside the booth and answers it. “Wohlen…Hey, hi, how’s it going, last person I expected was…Sure, what?…Ha, no, I…I gave the number for here…Now that’s a good question. After talking to you for ten seconds when it seems like ten years since we—okay, okay. Let’s see. You could hear it’s a street, but exactly where? Fourteenth and Sixth, northwest corner, last—now this is going to be harder. Minus thirty-four from one—six, twenty—we’ll forget the seconds. Seven times sixty plus that twenty-six. Three hundred—No. The last almost seven and a half hours of my midnight to eight shift. That’s putting it exactly enough. My two-way’s not operating, which I’m now glad of because you called…How? Tell me.”
I move up to the car. Two men I stepped back with before, one who’s very tall with a gray ponytail, moved up before me, so if the policeman says anything again it’ll be directed to us all. But stop. Really, what are you looking for? Just like that, why else? Not your everyday happening—not enough? Got this curiosity for the morbid, and not sudden but always. I’m a born snoop and repressed meddler, that’s all. Fires, brawls, car crashes, nonstop sirens and alarms, I usually stop or go out to look, even put on my shoes and turn off what’s cooking if I have to, but rarely this close. Want to see what might’ve happened to the passengers, but why? Blood, flesh, hair, torn cloth. For a moment I want to see what it’s like inside one of these so soon after the crash and before it’s towed off. So this is how it is, in other words. Shit? If so, then even that. I don’t know and maybe I’ve gone overboard. Urine, shit, vomit, guts, I want one to all of those? If that’s what’s there, and it’s not what I want per se, then I suppose so. To show I’m not too squeamish to look right at it for once and take a whiff, which maybe will change me somehow. The attitude: what’s to be afraid if it’s life. So that, I suppose—no, horsecrap. Know my own mind?—you bet. Oh, I don’t know if it’s all horsecrap, but I am curious to see what happened here and I might find. For instance didn’t I one night—when my dad was very sick—incontinent too—could hold in his urine but not his shit—and I was taking care of him with my mom—stick my finger in what I just wiped from him and put it to my nose and take that whiff—there, that wasn’t so bad, maybe it’ll make it easier cleaning him the next times, and it did. “Quite the crackup,” ponytailed man says, three of us inches away from the car and looking inside.
“Sure is,” I say.
“If the driver and his front-seat companion, if there was one, got out alive, I’d be surprised.”
“Maybe. Because I’ve witnessed something like this and the driver, though very banged up at the time, survived and probably at the most ended up with a scar or limp, but not bad.”
“Of course anything can happen to man, anything,” shorter man says. “You can get hit with a feather and die. Or else, as in the last war—number Two—a bullet shot into my helmet and all around the back inside and came out the hole it entered but without leaving anything but a ringing sound.”
“To you?” ponytailed man says.
“Pardon. Did I say to me? To one of my buddies. After the war—in factual accounts—I read of just as strange things that happened: bullets in your canteens or boots but all around and out. Bullets stopped by your dogtag and dropping down your shirt and burning off your chest hairs. Bullets up your gun barrel where nobody got hurt, but also where plenty got hurt with bullets up the barrel and lost a hand or eye or died. I didn’t mean me before with that helmet. Just that as an outfit like ours was you think it’s you because you’re so much one knit bunch. I remember the soldier’s name, even. Politskiun—Don. Every five years on the dot I get a chain letter from him saying break it and not only won’t I win fifty-thousand dollars this Monday but I’ll probably die.”
“Please, fellas,” the policeman says from the booth. “Hold it, hon. Please, fellas. The sergeant’s car comes along, I’m in big trouble. So now I’m telling—okay?”
“Sure,” “Yes,” “Fine,” we say.
“You want to see, do it from the sidewalk.” We step back to it. “On it this time.” On it. “Good.” On the phone: “So as I said…Accident, cat with a bus. No one killed but two nearly. And from the accordion of a car now when it’s making no more music, they were very lucky. One infant not as bad—her mouth…I do not…That’s not true…I said—now hold it a second…I’m sure to the hospital, but that was before my shift.”
Car door’s off so even from the sidewalk we can see inside. Steering wheel jammed into the dash. Underneath it an oil and gas spill. Just what he said: accordion. Its sound run out after the last squeeze. Concertina or accordion, hanging half-opened on the wall in the shape of a U. If I have a wedding—at my wedding I’ll say—I want an accordion or concertina, maybe a balalaika too. How do you spell balalaika, and with two l’s or three? Playing together—Russian or Polish music—and where I, champagne-sated, champagne Churchill preferred, if I can afford it and depending on how many guests, but question of affording it won’t enter it and no more than twenty to thirty guests, happiest I’ll ever be in my life, or close to it, which will be in the delivery room moments after my wife gives birth to our first child, would dance crazily with my bride, whirling to no special steps, instruments un-amplified electrically and players not in native dress. But “Never invite strangers to your wedding,” Hasenai says in “My One and Only Nuptial Song,” “especially musicians and actors. They’ll drink all your sake, eat all your sushi, try to make love to your bride at the party, maybe beat up the groom (substitute appropriate food and wine for your own country and scotch for mine, unless you’re a stranger whose wedding takes place in Japan).”
“Longer I look at this,” I say, “more I find it incredible how anyone got out alive.”
“Maybe they didn’t,” ponytailed man says.
“But according to—”
“What does he know? He’s only interested in making hay on the phone, can’t you hear? ‘Oh love, mushy, pussy, beat my meat, heartpiss.’ A faker.”
“That’s it precisely,” shorter man says, “only we need them.”
“We’ll be fortunate—I’ve seen it happen so I back up with experience what I say—if she doesn’t shoot down here and they don’t do it on the floor of this car, rubble and all.”
“Like I stated,” shorter man says, “everything happens to man—the works. In our platoon an officer stepped on a land mine—this, minutes after he lectured us on how to recognize them—went thirty feet into the air, was unconscious all the while he was up there, came down on his feet without knowing it and which now had no boots on and were scorched, and suddenly was awake and walked straight into a puddle to take away the heat from the burns. Later maybe because burns get infected so easily, they got infected. And because our medic was dead and we were way off no place smoking-out Italians—people tend to forget they were also our enemies then—he almost lost both legs. Lieutenant Malcolm G. Gabert his name was. I don’t hear from him ever. And I certainly, I want you to know, by my aside before, have nothing against Italians.”
“Excuse me, but that lieutenant incident sounds impossible.”
“I knew he’d say that,” ponytailed man says.
“But thirty feet up, then landing on his feet unconsciously and walking away?”
“If he hadn’t been unconscious when he landed he wouldn’t have landed that way. He would have landed in a way where he would have died, like not on his feet.”
“But coming out unscathed?”
“The scorch burns, this gentleman said—the infections.”
“Pardon me for arguing, sir,” shorter man says to me, “and I can handle this, so please let me,” to the ponytailed man, “but I saw it. I wasn’t him but I saw him. Other soldiers in other situations got killed standing a hundred feet away from even less powerful land mines that exploded, and also when they had some natural hard protection to hide behind like concrete or sturdy trees. So who can say about life? Take it from me: not you or I.”
“I don’t mean to argue either,” I say, “but a bomb’s a bomb. Sure, anything can happen in life, to a degree, so I’ll go along with your bullets in boots and so on. But if a bomb lands smack on top of you—touches your body when it explodes or just inches away, and of the force of a mine that can send a normal-sized man—he was, wasn’t he?”
“My height.”
“And you’re a little less than my height, and if it had happened to me—and when I’m talking of a bomb landing on someone I mean the mine below—I’d have died. Or at least would’ve been seriously maimed, and ninety-nine chances out of a hundred that would’ve meant among other things losing both legs or at least one of them or one of my feet. No, both feet. They can’t survive such a blast and probably not even the legs below the knees.”
“What do you want me to tell you, you’re right? Because I won’t apologize in a war where fifty million died. And if fifty million did—if forty million I’ll even say—you don’t think—or thirty, or twenty, not to say a hundred million casualties or thereabouts—there wouldn’t have been even a few thousand inconceivable freak accidents, plus the fifty to a hundred thousand that at first seemed inconceivable but you gradually came around to believe in them? For instance, a three-story stone building in an area totally arid from no rainfall for months collapsed on one of the villagers in a village we shelled and she was under the entire thing of it for ten days without air, food, drink or even mud to lick and she survived.”
“That’s only a little more possible to believe than the lieutenant incident, but still quite impossible. In ten days she would’ve suffocated, starved, completely dehydrated, but something to have died.”
“That’s what I’m telling you—impossible to believe but there it was before my eyes.”
“You’re not claiming it was God’s doing, in other words?” ponytailed man says.
“I’m saying it was an inconceivable freak, which is a combination of a miscellany of coincidences and natural life and man-made happenings. Which means it could even have been to her advantage there hadn’t been rain for months, plus her own body and what it was able to withstand and the will to survive and—”
“No, it’s beyond being a freak,” I say. “In ten days, if she came up alive—”
“That’s what she did. But she didn’t walk up, you know. First of all, where were the stairs? Second of all, she had to be lifted gingerly and carried away. Now I’m not saying she lived more than an hour after that, since we never knew how the wounded were doing in the hospitals, except for our own GI’s. It was a human miracle—just us, what we as people fall into and get out of and between those undergo, and nothing dealing with those big manipulative fingers with the strings at the ends of them of the Lord’s. You’re not a great believer by any chance, for if you are, again I deeply apologize.”
“I’m not. But air pockets. Or someone could’ve been feeding her through a tube those last few days. I’m no expert, and you couldn’t have been there all the time those ten days.”
“No tubes. And I didn’t need minute-to-minute information on her, since nothing had essentially changed till we reached her the last day. You see, she started out in the basement of the building because that’s where she went when the village was being shelled, and for ten days she was twenty-five feet under that pile.”
“Maybe you’re right. I’ve never been to war or even in one of the armed services, and I’m getting cold out here,” rubbing my hands, feeling for a coat button I might not have buttoned except for the top one. “But, come to think of it I was in a very serious car accident and nothing happened to me, while the guy I hit nearly died. But that was because my car was a big used Olds compared to his two-seater British something or another sports.”
“What happened?” ponytailed man says. “They weren’t drafting then and you happened to come of age between one of the police actions or wars, or you were deferred?”
“The truth is—you fellows aren’t federal law officers or MP’s in disguise, are you? Only kidding. No, it was so long ago I don’t mind admitting it now. I was called down for a physical and pretended something was a bit more than neurotic with me—but only after I couldn’t fail any of the physical tests—and they believed it. It was a good act, but I just didn’t want to go in then, that’s all.”
“If it was World War Two or Korea would you have acted that way?”
“I think I would’ve gone in some other capacity than gun-holding—that was the thing.”
“Someone’s got to pull the trigger,” shorter man says.
“True. Or not. And I shouldn’t have brought it up, since you did fight, you say.”
“I most certainly did; I can’t speak for him.”
“Coast guard,” ponytailed man says. “Nothing rough, but it could have been. Florida waters, snooping for subs.”
“And you probably lost buddies,” I say to the shorter man.
“I already told you.”
“Me, never, except through natural causes. One slips on the deck. Another talks tough to a hooker. My closest amigo had cirrhosis of the liver when he joined up—”
“Excuse me—and I know,” I say to the shorter man, “and I respect that, and no doubt you still carry deep feelings about those deaths and all, so now it’s my turn to apologize.”
“Forget the apologies and respects to death and how chilly it is out here—it isn’t to me anyway. Just speak your mind.”
“Speak it. Yes. Well I’ll try. Gun-holding and shooting. I could maybe to save my mother’s life or some innocent’s or mine. Definitely my mother’s and mine, if I wasn’t the one responsible, and the innocent’s if it was a child. Even if I was responsible, though if my mother was responsible I would too but without any question. And even if the innocent wasn’t a child, and in fact wasn’t even completely innocent, but a lot more innocent than the other person, though that I’d definitely have to know. The circumstances of their dispute, I mean, before I’d step in with a gun, though I don’t see any reason for my ever getting hold of one. But if I was suddenly holding one, how would I know how to use it? And if I tried to and it didn’t go off or went off wrong, I’d be asking, in stepping in for this innocent, to get shot at and killed. For my mother and no doubt myself, I’d try to use the gun even if I didn’t know how to—and I’m talking about a gun against gun or something comparable to one. That is, if nothing else worked before that or I could see that nothing would and I now had no time to do anything else.”
“A country’s the same when it’s fighting the enemy,” shorter man says. “You have to think of each of them as different families or separate lives. Your country’s your mother, the enemy’s the mugger.”
“That’s good—mother-mugger—but there’s too much involved with countries. I can’t balance it. Killing in self-defense I can. Someone comes at you, it’s ‘Hey, this is my life, what’re you doing, lay off,’ and there’s a rock there and whack, you crack him. Or a gun, and if not shooting it, then with the butt. Now if it’s a woman or kid coming at you, and a girl more so than a boy—I don’t know. Or your mother—same thing—in defending her. ‘Hey, this is my mom, what do you expect me to do no matter what she did, stand there?’—right? Really, between society’s needs and mine—and I know one takes in the other, etcetera, but so do the societies which are our enemies and so on—how do you justify my needs over its? Or my country attacking theirs or not, or defending itself, and how much to if we were responsible for the dispute?—but now I’m getting all unclear, my ideas. I’d have to write it, I’m not good at expressing it. But you can see how I feel. So what can I say? That I can probably help our army in an emergency in other ways. Translating, if we ever went to war again in the Orient. But only, I think, if what the army asks of me is right. Or the policies of our country in this particular crisis or war are right, which is probably in most cases impossible to find out, just because in any crisis the army or country, for tactical reasons, probably mostly always lies.”
“Oh, you know?” shorter man says.
“Not personally. But from newspapers I—”
“What, the Times, Post?”
“The Times, why not? And magazines. Not Newsweek or—”
“So why didn’t you try that device when you were drafted?”
“I’m sorry—I said so many things. You mean asking for alternative service?”
“Others did. C.O.’s.”
“Right—C.O.’s. Well. But look, what am I here, on military trial? No, I don’t want to joke about it, but you’re—or maybe it’s just when I get into a conversation that’s too loaded or potentially so—”
“I’m talking considerately to him, aren’t I?” to the ponytailed man, who nods and shrugs. “Considerately, not maliciously—all you have to do is listen to my voice to know. So don’t answer me if you don’t want to on anything. That’s the prerogative of all free people, which we should be, governmentally and on the street. Because what I like about our talk so far is that we’ve been so flexible, listening without friction, so please let’s not spoil it.”
“It has been easy,” ponytailed man says.
“It actually has, and honestly, no harm meant from here either. Okay. I just didn’t want to go into the army—but then, I mean, then. Maybe I shouldn’t go on.”
“Finish up,” shorter man says. “I’m interested, and no more interruptions.”
“I didn’t say much,” ponytailed man says.
“I meant from us both.”
“Because who knows what one can get into? I was younger—what the hell—it was twenty years ago and I found a way out and bolted. I didn’t know what to do with my life but knew I didn’t want to not know what I didn’t want to do with—Anyway, now I see things clearer, am a lot more confident about my life, want less, struggle more—rather I expect little than want less and what I know I’m willing to put up with for my feelings and ideas, etcetera, and so on. That was no good. I think I’d say to the army now to give me this instead of that, and take it. I would. But if they didn’t give me this but that, which was gun-holding and in basic training, bullet-dodging and latrine-cleaning, and later in the service possible man-killing, I’d say no and take the consequences—I think. Though someone has to clean the latrines, you might say. We wouldn’t be a good match, the army and I, or that’s what their psychiatrist said after I played it to the hilt to get myself psyched out, so I suppose I’d have to be put to the test. Of being called up again and what I’d do. I don’t know…”
“Too late for that now,” ponytailed man says.
“The gray shows, eh?” fingering a sideburn.
“What about the accident where you almost died? That’s one I want to hear the end of, since I’ve a long interest in everything automobile. It rules the universe, you know. TV’s too.”
“It was the other driver who almost died. And thanks for taking me off the subject—both, my hair too. It—actually, I don’t care about my hair except when the sides look like feathers coming out. ‘Bozo the Clown,’ my junior high school students, when—”
“You see? TV. So my case is closed. Continue—don’t mind me.”
“Come on, you don’t want me to. And I’ve got to go.”
“You crazy? In the middle? Man dying on the road and we’re leaving him there? You have to.”
“Okay. Colorado—the accident. Still all right by you?” to the shorter man. He nods. “A few years after the army—psyching out. Probably shouldn’t have mentioned it, but so what. And I’m driving drunk down a mountain road—coasting—I was that inexperienced with cars, having just learned how to drive, and I turned off the ignition to save on the gas—I was also that broke. Anyway, the road’s dark, though I was smart enough to keep my headlights on—running the battery, if that’s what it’s called, and I think I also liked the idea of driving soundlessly. None of this would be so clear, by the way, if it hadn’t been such an experience. But where was I?”
“Down the road—” shorter man says.
“When my car suddenly stops. No, wheels didn’t lock—that’s what happens, you’re about to say, right? when coasting with the motor off—but my fender’s been smashed against the front left wheel. Of course I had to get out of the car to see this. How’d it happen? Must’ve been in an accident, blanked out. But just before that I was singing to some radio music same time I’m yelling out the window something like ‘Hey stars, beautiful stars, look at me, city slicker in country Colorado, yippie pippie yeh,’ so not so soundlessly. But if the ignition was off, radio couldn’t be on, at least in that car.”
“That’s what I was about to ask,” ponytailed man says. “What year Olds and what style?”
“Good questions. Anyway, I’m looking at my car and think I must’ve hit a tree. When I see, back up the road a few hundred feet, a tiny car with its headlights pointing to the sky perpendicularly. But this is silly. You don’t want me—”
“Don’t start. Continue.”
“Some other cars stopped. I’ll tell you what kind of guy I was then. Worse than a young idiot and mistakes. I wouldn’t do anything like it today. Oh, little lies and mistakes today—but then, before any other car stopped, I got back in my car and tried to drive away, but it wouldn’t move. Fender against wheel. So I got out as if for the first time, since some cars had stopped behind me, and with some people walked back to the tiny car.”
“Dead.”
“I won’t say yet, for the story’s sake, but anyway, we already said he wasn’t, but his sports car was totaled. Doors still closed. Windows smashed in a way where they were still in their frames but you couldn’t see inside.”
“Safety glass. Supposed to do that. Must have been German- or Swedish-make. For glass, that far back, they were the best.”
“Door windows made of plastic and slashed but intact. Someone said ‘Shouldn’t one of us see what’s inside?’ but no one wanted to open the door.”
“You blame them?” shorter man says.
“No, but I said I think I should be the one since I was the other person involved—‘not that I was responsible,’ I said. ‘The other driver was—out in my lane, not that I like putting any blame on him now,’ I said—lying, lying. Actually, since I didn’t see the accident, I didn’t know at the time who was really responsible, but had a good idea. But say both of us were drunk or asleep at the wheel and in the wrong lanes—it’s possible. Or I’m asleep in my lane and he’s just drunk and in my lane. Anyway, most of me assumed I was the only one responsible, but the rest of me said to myself at the time ‘Well, who really knows?’”
“I take for granted you were the one responsible,” shorter man says, “based on what you said so far. But it is possible, if somewhat implausible—two drivers on the road drunk or asleep at the same time and hitting one another’s car, even if it’s probably happened a couple of hundred times in America this year. What do you say, expert?”
“One I never heard of but has to have happened. But continue,” he says to me. “You’re guilty, but of felonious car crashing or attempted manslaughter we don’t know yet.”
“I opened the driver’s door. There’s one man there, half on the seat, half on the floor.”
“His body in half?”
“From the waist down he’s on the seat, the waist up on the floor, his head on the pedals but still connected to the neck and the neck to the rest. I lifted him up, though knew then I shouldn’t—broken bones, that sort of thing—till he was flat on the seat. Glass in his head cut my hand in several places, but that didn’t matter. In fact it made things look better for me, I thought. A lot of blood, his and mine. Made sure to get some of it, but not too much as if I intentionally smeared it to elicit a sympathetic response, on my face and shirt. He was mumbling something. I said ‘What is it?’ and put my ears to his lips, thinking if it’s something incriminating about me I should be the first or only one to hear it, especially if he died.”
“That’s horrible,” shorter man says.
“Not only that, if he did die—and I hope it goes without saying that I was just about praying he wouldn’t—and someone asked what he’d said and it had been critical of me—I was telling myself then I’d say ‘He mumbled, nothing I understood.’”
“Even worse.”
“It was. But I’ll stop. I’ve said too much, besides all your time.”
“What’d the near-dying guy say?” ponytailed man says.
“Yes—momentum—go go go ahead—what?”
“He said ‘Other car did it, was on my side of the road.’ I said into his ear very low ‘No it wasn’t. You were, on his side, try to remember that, and we think driving without your lights.’ Sometimes since then I’ve thought—as I also thought with a Denver dentist I ran out on the bills around that time—that I’d call him and say ‘Listen, I was drunk and in your lane, so what can I do to make amends?’ And to the dentist say ‘How much do I owe you plus interest over the years?’ I did say I was sorry then to the accident guy, but inside more sorry it happened to us both and me the inconvenience of going to court and time away from paying work and losing my car in a car-required state when I was strapped for cash. But I never admitted to him my fault in the crash, and to the dentist—well, when I got a lawyer’s letter in New York I wrote back under a different name that I was the executor of my estate and that I’d died.”
“I don’t get that.”
“I’ll explain it later,” shorter man says.
“I used the apartment number and address of a not-so-willing friend and said the man he’d sent the letter to about the bill had died and if there was any money left after the settlement of a very negligible estate, his client was seventh in line. He sent a letter every half year asking if the estate had been settled, but I ignored them, so even to a few years later I was still irresponsible, since by then I had enough to begin paying the dentist back on time. Anyway, the accident guy shook his head, shut his eyes and looked dead and I held his hand—till the police came—while several people patted my back and rubbed my neck. I got a summons—that was automatic in an accident that bad, the trooper said, just as the other guy would have got one if he was even half alive at the time.”
“Wait a second,” ponytailed man says. “You got a summons at the accident?”
“I think so.”
“Colorado? Give me a second to think. No, on that there’s almost strict uniformity. You would have been told to expect one, if he didn’t arrest you on the scene, and then got it through the mail. So what the trooper might have told you was that the other man would have also got one if he hadn’t been near death and if you didn’t seem the main cause of the accident. Do you recall him measuring your tire tread marks on the road?”
“Really, I forget. Anyway, I showed up in court hangdog and without lawyer, since I thought the judge would be favorably disposed to that. And pretended, as with the psychiatrist, to be, despite my university connection, which only involved student-teaching to a master’s degree I never completed, a bit weak-minded and oversensitive to the point a few times of doing my sincerest best to repress real tears, and very unorganized and alone. I was living with a woman then but left her a block from the courthouse and told her not to give a sign in the courtroom that she knew me. I also saw there the man I hit, still with Band-Aids on his face and walking with a cane. I never asked nor found out if he’d walked with one before the accident. I wasn’t questioned in depth about driving while drunk, since I was able, when I got out of the car the second time—and because they also didn’t give me the balloon test, since the drunk driver they’d picked up before me got so incensed at what she called a divestment of her civil liberties that she punctured it with her fingernails. Anyway, I was able to make all my alcohol mannerisms and breath disappear. ‘Get stark raving sober,’ I told myself when I left the car, ‘you’re in trouble up to here.’ Impossible, I know. But about drinking, I said to the judge when he asked, ‘Yes, had a wine and a half at that party up the hill, but some yogurt before and a glass of milk after to coat it.’ Also, after I said I’m sorry to the guy for what had happened to us, he asked if I’d said anything to him when he was in the car—he seemed to remember it. I said ‘No, except for “Don’t worry, you’re gonna be all right,” while I held your hand and dabbed blood from your eyes.’ ‘Okeydoke,’ he said. ‘This is the Wild West so accidents like that can happen, just so long as your insurance company takes care of it.’ The judge advised me to plead nolo contendere and I got a twenty-two-dollar fine and they didn’t even take my license away for a day. That was it. I walked the two miles home alone in the rain because I wanted to save on the cab fare and not be seen with my woman friend. Story has a rather unuplifting ending, but what can I say? When I got back she called me a louse for everything I’d done that day, wouldn’t even run a warm tub for me and soon after that moved out, but more because we were broke and she’d just turned thirty and wanted to get married and have a child right away, while I—”
“You’d think they would have slapped something more than a small fine on you,” shorter man says.
“You’re right. But after all my lies to the trooper and judge, I certainly wasn’t going to ask for it. Besides, I couldn’t afford to go to jail or pay a big fine. Look, I was lucky.”
“Did you watch a lot of TV in those days?” ponytailed man says.
“No, why?”
“When you were young then. Were you affixiated, I like to call it, to the TV screen?”
“No more than most kids my age. Howdy Doody at five every afternoon. There weren’t as many stations and programs then. Mostly test patterns and Gorgeous George and Ralph Bellamy as a private eye I think and maybe not even Uncle Miltie yet. But you think there’s some connection with my lying and conniving to TV?”
“I’ve theories, but nothing proven in the lab. But the art of getting away with things or thinking you can—that can be too much TV. That jail isn’t real, for instance, but that wouldn’t apply to you, since you wanted to avoid a sentence. You said you were lucky. Well, then Mr. Lucky perhaps—a character in the early days of TV.”
“I don’t remember him.”
“Flipping a coin? Dressed sharply? Always led off with ‘Hello, suckers—life still thrilling?’ No? If you do go back to Howdy Doody days, tell me—the early Howdy or the late?”
“You mean the one before he had plastic surgery on his face?”
“So, if you go back that far—”
“Hey, you too—his operation right on TV—right? right?” and I slap his palm though he didn’t offer it and say “And the doctors in masks working over him and his convalescence for weeks after with bandages covering his face. And he was so ugly before, but interesting, remember?—but much worse after because they made his face so cute and telegenic with too many freckles. And the Peanut Gallery and Bob Smith too?”
“I sat in it on TV one day.”
“So did I. Sent away for the seat. I wonder if we were in it the same day.”
“I’m sure not. And I only went as a chaperon for my younger sister, so I have to be a lot older than you.”
“I don’t know—I was a late bloomer. My family was afraid I’d never come around.”
“That’s surprising to hear. Still, getting back—but I’ve lost track of what I was going to say, and I have to apologize about Mr. Lucky. He was in the movies, even if somehow,” tapping his head, “it still registers TV. But I’m also starting to freeze out here, so no further questions.”
“I’ve only one,” shorter man says. “Maybe you won’t like it, but we’ve proven we’re civilized here without the other person immediately thinking we’re full of disapproval, yes?”
“Fine by me,” I say.
“Good. Then what made you change? Conniving to the army, lying to the judge, that injured man, because you say you’re much different today.”
“Life—the maturing process—the over and over again—ideas. Gradually realizing what I was doing and did. You know—the repercussions—on me and others. I mean, I still lie—little ones to get by, to others and myself. But the big ones—well you know, they’re more obvious and harmful, to me and to others, so if you continue to do them—if I do—cheat, bullshit—well you know, it’s increasingly obvious you can’t. But if you do after you know how obvious it is and that you shouldn’t, then it’s also increasingly obvious to others or should be—yourself included—that they get bigger and bigger these lies and just acting like a prick, and some more obvious and harmful than others—no, that’s not it. I know what I want to say but can’t articulate it, though it should be obvious what I mean by now, or fairly.”
“I think I see. Okay, I can figure out the rest myself, so my case is closed too.”
“You’ll clue me in later if we’re still here together?” ponytailed man says and shorter man says “If you don’t freeze as you said, yes.”
We’ve inched up—at least I didn’t know we had—to the car and I’m about to say goodnight to them when the ponytailed man says “Look—on the floor by the soda can—a quarter.”
“You saw it first, you take it,” I say.
“If you believe in good luck finding coins, that one’s bad.”
“Oh, I’m not superstitious and you never know when you might need some extra change. You guys first? Sure? Sir?” to the shorter man.
“Not me. This time I agree with my new friend completely.”
“Besides, talking about being unsuperstitious, I’ve a lucky coin jar at home—even have a five-dollar bill in it—but I didn’t tell you this?”
“Not tonight.”
“It’s a stupid reference—really, unrelated. Not unrelated, just stupid. Anyway, money I’ve found over the past ten years, not that it’s brought me good luck, but who knows? According to you two I could be dead right now without it, and for ten or fewer years. And then—well I wonder what you two would be doing now if I were. Everything else would be the same, though of course my shadow wouldn’t be here and footprints if there are any, and other small to smaller things: cigarette butts I might’ve squashed with my shoes and so on—carbon dioxide in the air or a little less oxygen because of me, but I know next to nothing about those. But the car would be here, bus, weather, etcetera—that policeman, with maybe just the slightest of faintest chances my absence of from an hour to ten years would’ve changed any of that. Probably, even without me, you’d be looking at this car and possibly from this or a nearby spot. Or more probably, since you’d”—to the ponytailed man—“have ended up just as cold and I wouldn’t be keeping you here with my yakking, you’d both be inside somewhere talking about the car, or on your respective ways home, if they’re not in the same direction. Or maybe they’re even in the same building or on the same floor for all you know, though that’s much less likely, unless it’s one of those twenty to thirty apartments to a floor buildings, if they run that large. No? All wrong?”
“I’ll go along about the shadow and dioxide,” ponytailed man says. “As for this guy living in my building, except if he moved in today or had been hiding all this time—”
“Okay. But after living so long with this jar, I don’t have the heart to stop putting found money in it or empty it out to use the money or even just to use the jar.” They stare at me. “I mean, it’s an old pickle jar with a wide neck—quart-size, so really good for storing things—so the money I’d store somewhere else, if I didn’t use both at the same time: money and jar. I knew I shouldn’t have brought up the subject of good luck.” Policeman has his back to us, talking on the phone. “But I can be compulsive about not passing up found money, though not to the point where I think it’ll bring bad luck if I don’t. That someone first had to point the coin out to me—well, that variation of finding lucky money hasn’t come up till now, so I’ll deal with it when I get home or along the way, but how can I deal with it realistically if I don’t have the coin? Anyway, coast seems clear enough,” and I reach in to get the quarter, blow off the glass bits. Try to put it into my change pocket, but this pair of pants doesn’t have one, so I feel for an empty pocket, back right one first, is none, take the comb and keys out of that pocket, which is where if I have no change pocket I put found coins, stick the keys into the less crowded left back pocket, comb into the left side pocket, quarter into the right back pocket where I’ll know where it came from if I want to drop it into the jar. My notebook and Hasenai’s book of poems in Japanese—and I tap the two side pockets to make sure they’re there. Wallet’s in the right side pocket of the pants, pen in the other. Smaller notebook—which I’m not afraid to lose since there’s nothing much in it, and its metal tip has ripped, even when I’ve wedged it under the spirals or taped it, a couple of my pants pockets or other parts of the backs of my pants—in the left back pocket, handkerchief also in the side coat pocket, so everything’s there. Subway tokens? Have none. Other coins—can’t feel or find any, unless they’re at the bottom of one of these pants or coat pockets. Nail clipper, I find, when I thought I lost it weeks ago, also in the right side pocket of the pants. “So, that was my Colorado car crash yawn and selected confessions. Call it a night, gentlemen?”
“We all do kooky things when we’re young,” shorter man says.
“Really, I’m much too cold to listen,” ponytailed man says.
“A moment. Last tale. I did with you both for more minutes than I enjoyed, and if you want I’ll stand you to a real drink after—worth the wait? So everyone sit. In the army I threw—on German land but Allied-held territory—a live grenade at my best buddy ever when I got overwhelmingly sore at him for something he did, of what I won’t waste your time with, but it was dirty. Fortunately—that it wasn’t the advancing enemy with fixed bayonets charging—it was a dud, or I’m sure, for penal reasons, I wouldn’t be here speaking to you now. Though after so long and because I was born in the Village and my family would still have been here for sixteen years—my mother the last of her kin to die and in the same apartment I still live in. The same bed, in fact—I switched to theirs after she went—and please, I don’t give a blink to what people say about extremely close mother-son relationships—I loved her!—maybe I would be speaking to you right where we’re standing and same time, give or take.”
“They also broke the mold after my mother was born,” ponytailed says, “but I never did anything as angry as you. Sure, once tossed a man overboard but knew no sharks were around and he could swim.”
“All of us Peanut Gallery émigrés,” I say. “Wound up so peaceful and, well I was going to say ‘loved our mothers,’ but you couldn’t have watched it too.”
“My baby brother did. And you can’t be too sure sharks aren’t everywhere around but in your bathtub,” to the ponytailed man. “Right from the piers over there I’ve seen them—when I fished as a kid and now just to sit and think—frequently.”
“We had safety nets to keep them out—for swimming.”
“Then if they weren’t in the swimming perimeter before you set up the nets, true.”
“So,” I say, “—great talking,” and I stick out my hand.
“Same here,” ponytailed man says, “without reservation,” and shakes.
Shorter man smiles, is about to take his hand out of his pocket, says “Doubtful as I was at first when I saw you approach that it could actually happen—for I’m usually a keen judge of character and I had you down as odd and troublesome, especially after you walked back a block after your screaming-fag incident, it was a pleasure,” and I say “Thank you, thank you both,” pat his shoulder and pass the corner, policeman still on the phone but now facing the street and nodding to me as he listens, carefully pull the little notebook out of my back pocket, flip through it to make sure nothing of interest’s in it—“‘Free speech,’ the orator said, batting his adversary over the head, ‘and also freedom of action’”…“kasha tonight—make it!!”…“dahlias: 366: 4182”…“pick up ticks to Bunraku by fri and dont let May give any excuses shes not going”…“Parnassus 205 w 89 10024”…“military court of national salvation”…“dovecote”…“Grossingers mocha apricot or praline”…“trichloroethane at hardware stead of regular typewriter cleaner—savings 4-1 Di says”…“tissues, al foil, lemons, limes, Times, cake plates 24 white”…“May’s folks: demitasse set; Mom: subscription to New Yorker”—and rip it apart and drop it into the trashcan and walk uptown.