“This is one of them.” From my pocket I withdrew the Lucite cube with the steel penny suspended inside it and put it on the table. Then I told her about the other things, and to whom they had belonged.
Cleve “Besboll been bery-bery good to me” Farrell. Maureen Hannon, who wore her hair long to her waist as a sign of her corporate indispensability. Jimmy Eagleton, who had a divine nose for phony accident claims, a son with learning disabilities, and a Farting Cushion he kept safely tucked away in his desk until the Christmas party rolled around each year. Sonja D’Amico, Light and Bell’s best accountant, who had gotten the Lolita sunglasses as a bitter divorce present from her first husband. Bruce “Lord of the Flies”
Mason, who would always stand shirtless in my mind’s eye, blowing his conch on Jones Beach while the waves rolled up and expired around his bare feet. Last of all, Misha Bryzinski, with whom I’d gone to at least a dozen Mets games. I told her about putting everything but Misha’s Punch doll in a trash basket on the corner of Park and 75th, and how they had beaten me back to my apartment, possibly because I had stopped for a second order of General Tso’s chicken. During all of this, the Lucite cube stood on the table between us. We managed to eat at least some of our meal in spite of his stern profile.
When I was finished talking, I felt better than I’d dared to hope. But there was a silence from her side of the table that felt terribly heavy.
“So,” I said, to break it. “What do you think?”
She took a moment to consider that, and I didn’t blame her. “I think that we’re not the strangers we were,” she said finally, “and making a new friend is never a bad thing. I think I’m glad I know about Mr.
Yow, Git Down and that I told you what I did.”
“I am, too.” And it was true.
“Now may I ask you two questions?”
“Of course.”
“How much of what they call ‘survivor guilt’ are you feeling?”
“I thought you said you weren’t a shrink.”
“I’m not, but I read the magazines and have even been known to watch Oprah. That my husband does know, although I prefer not to rub his nose in it. So … how much, Scott?”
I considered the question. It was a good one—and, of course, it was one I’d asked myself on more than one of those sleepless nights. “Quite a lot,” I said. “Also, quite a lot of relief, I won’t lie about that. If Mr.
Yow, Git Down was a real person, he’d never have to pick up another restaurant tab. Not when I was with him, at least.” I paused. “Does that shock you?”
She reached across the table and briefly touched my hand. “Not even a little.”
Hearing her say that made me feel better than I would have believed. I gave her hand a brief squeeze and then let it go. “What’s your other question?”
“How important to you is it that I believe your story about these things coming back?”
I thought this was an excellent question, even though the Lucite cube was right there next to the sugar bowl. Such items are not exactly rare, after all. And I thought that if she had majored in psychology rather than German, she probably would have done fine.
“Not as important as I thought an hour ago,” I said. “Just telling it has been a help.”
She nodded and smiled. “Good. Now here’s my best guess: someone is very likely playing a game with you. Not a nice one.”
“Trickin’ on me,” I said. I tried not to show it, but I’d rarely been so disappointed. Maybe a layer of disbelief settles over people in certain circumstances, protecting them. Or maybe—probably—I hadn’t conveyed my own sense that this thing was just. . . happening. Still happening. The way avalanches do.
“Trickin’ on you,” she agreed, and then: “But you don’t believe it.”
More points for perception. I nodded. “I locked the door when I went out, and it was locked when I came back from Staples. I heard the clunk the tumblers make when (hey turn. They’re loud. You can’t miss them.”
“Still. . . survivor guilt is a funny thing. And powerful, at least according to the magazines.”
“This …” This isn’t survivor guilt was what I meant to say, but it would have been the wrong thing. I had a fighting chance to make a new friend here, and having a new friend would be good, no matter how the rest of this came out. So I amended it. “I don’t think this is survivor guilt.” I pointed to the Lucite cube. “It’s right there, isn’t it? Like Sonja’s sunglasses. You see it. I do, too. I suppose I could have bought it myself, but…” I shrugged, trying to convey what we both surely knew: anything is possible.
“I don’t think you did that. But neither can I accept the idea that a trapdoor opened between reality and the twilight zone and these things fell out.”
Yes, that was the problem. For Paula the idea that the Lucite cube and the other things which had appeared in my apartment had some supernatural origin was automatically off-limits, no matter how much the facts might seem to support the idea. What I needed to do was to decide if I needed to argue the point more than I needed to make a friend.
I decided I did not.
“All right,” I said. I caught the waiter’s eye and made a check-writing gesture in the air. “I can accept your inability to accept.”
“Can you?” she asked, looking at me closely.
“Yes.” And I thought it was true. “If, that is, we could have a cup of coffee from time to time. Or just say hi in the lobby.”
“Absolutely.” But she sounded absent, not really in the conversation. She was looking at the Lucite cube with the steel penny inside it. Then she looked up at me. I could almost see a lightbulb appearing over her head, like in a cartoon. She reached out and grasped the cube with one hand. I could never convey the depth of the dread I felt when she did that, but what could I say? We were New Yorkers in a clean, well-lighted place. For her part, she’d already laid down the ground rules, and they pretty firmly excluded the supernatural. The supernatural was out of bounds. Anything hit there was a do-over.
And there was a light in Paula’s eyes. One that suggested Ms. Yow, Git Down was in the house, and I know from personal experience that’s a hard voice to resist.
“Give it to me,” she proposed, smiling into my eyes. When she did that I could see—for the first time, really—that she was sexy as well as pretty.
“Why?” As if I didn’t know.
“Call it my fee for listening to your story.”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good—”
“It is, though,” she said. She was warming to her own inspiration, and when people do that, they rarely take no for an answer. “It’s a great idea. I’ll make sure this piece of memorabilia at least doesn’t come back to you, wagging its tail behind it. We’ve got a safe in the apartment.”
She made a charming little pantomime gesture of shutting a safe door, twirling the combination, and then throwing the key back over her shoulder.
“All right,” I said. “It’s my gift to you.” And I felt something that might have been mean-spirited gladness. Call it the voice of Mr. Yow, You’ll Find Out. Apparently just getting it off my chest wasn’t enough, after all. She hadn’t believed me, and at least part of me did want to be believed and resented Paula for not getting what it wanted. That part knew that letting her take the Lucite cube was an absolutely terrible idea, but was glad to see her tuck it away in her purse, just the same.
“There,” she said briskly. “Mama say bye-bye, make all gone. Maybe when it doesn’t come back in a week—or two, I guess it all depends on how stubborn your subconscious wants to be—you can start giving the rest of the things away.” And her saying that was her real gift to me that day, although I didn’t know it then.
“Maybe so,” I said, and smiled. Big smile for the new friend. Big smile for pretty Mama. All the time thinking, You’ll find out.
Yow. She did.
Three nights later, while I was watching Chuck Scarborough explain the city’s latest transit woes on the six o’clock news, my doorbell rang. Since no one had been announced, I assumed it was a package, maybe even Rafe with something from FedEx. I opened the door and there stood Paula Robeson.