teenage girl living across the street? For a moment I thought Allison was going to run to the phone and call the police. But she was frozen where she stood. We were both stunned, in factrevealed as strangers to each other, silhouettes caught in Jay's strange psychic machinery. I almost blurted out that the girl was the daughter of one of his tenants, and that he appeared to be obsessed with her, but I stopped myself.
Allison, however, had seen me nearly tell her. 'You know who that girl is!' she said. 'I can see it in your face!'
I picked up my coat, feeling the Derek Jeter ball in the pocket. 'I better go.'
Allison didn't like my overly calm tone. 'What's going on?'
I didn't tell her, because I couldn't. What was going on? On my subway ride home, pressed between commuters headed downtown, I didn't know what to worry about more, H.J., or Marceno, or Sally Cowles. It made for a jangled journey, and only a block away from my apartment, hunched against the morning's cold, did I remember my lunch with Dan Tuthill that day. He was a connection to my old life, one I wanted to keep. I'd take a long shower, pull myself together, and at lunch subtly pump Tuthill for possible job leads. I quickened my pace, and as I did I saw an old man pass by on the sidewalk wearing a spectacular red silk tie that looked a great deal like the one Judith had given to me many Christmases past, back when I didn't move dead men in the night or sleep with women addicted to psychedelic fish flesh. The man lurched along in an army jacket and a wool cap, a certain triumphant energy in his eyes, as if he had stuffed his pockets with contraband, and the incongruity of the red silk tie should have warned me that, indeed, this was what had happened.
When I turned the corner I saw a swarm of homeless people, office boys, and garment workers in front of my building, several fighting over a pile of junk in the street. Someone had pulled a car up and was shoveling clothes and other household items into the trunk. I got closer. The stuff looked like- like my stuff. I glanced up at my apartment window. It was shattered, frame and all.
I broke into a run and flew into my building and up the stairs. On the third floor, I found my apartment door ajar, ripped off one hinge, the lock splintered. The sight was so improbable that I thought I'd entered the wrong apartment. They- whoever they were- had emptied the place, literally thrown everything I owned out of the two windows: the bed, the tables, the chairs, the clothes, the pots and pans, my old tennis racquet, long unused, the bank account records, the checkbook, the divorce papers, the food in the refrigerator, just all of it, the bath towels, the books, pillows, the rug, the CDs, the cleanser under the sink, the stereo, the clean socks, all the cheap junk of an ever cheaper life. I checked the closets. Empty, not a coat hanger. I checked under the sink. Nothing. In the corner the radiator whistled as the steam rose in the building's pipes. Newly naked, the apartment was reduced to its essence: pathetic, dirty, small. A hole.
But wait- they'd left one thing in the living room, with a certain sadistic flourish: a broom, propped casually against the wall. I edged to the window and looked out. My old belongings were strewn twenty yards down the sidewalk, into the gutter. Whatever had carried or bounced into the street proper had been run over many times by the belching delivery trucks that serviced the block.
In the bedroom, on the wall where my bed used to be, red-spray-paint letters looped two feet high: GIVE ME WHAT I WANT. I collapsed to one knee, staggered by my predicament.
'Nobody saw them,' came a voice behind me. It was the kindly and ineffectual super. He was holding a handful of envelopes. 'Well, they saw it was a couple of guys, that's all.'
'White guys? Black guys?'
'Like I said, nobody saw them.' He swung his eyes around the bare walls. 'I called the police, though who knows when they show up.'
He held up the envelopes. 'They broke into your mailbox, too. You expecting something?'
I shook my head, dazed by the whole event.
'You, uh-' He studied me with the intent to get to the bottom of the problem. 'So you know why they come do this to you? You know who these guys are? The police are going to have a lot of questions.' He stared at me meaningfully, in the manner of a man who has already seen far too many things in his time- bodies drained of blood in bathtubs, widows curled stiffly in their beds, kitchens set afire, drunks insensate on the stairs. 'I don't know who is in the wrong, don't know if it's them or if it's you. I don't know if you did something to make some peoples mad at you, if they're going to come back, okay?'
'I see what you mean,' I said.
'So I brought you your mail, just in case, you know-'
'In case I felt like not being here for a while.'
'You got it, yes.'
'I'll pay for the door, the window, all that.'
He nodded, unmollified, and his voice found his genuine mood: 'Why don't you get out, Mr. Wyeth? I mean now. We don't need problems here. This building is full of peaceful people.'
'I didn't-'
'The police are coming, Mr. Wyeth. They will have some questions for you.'
I took the mail from him, jammed it in my coat pocket, and hit the stairs. Outside, I saw a man holding a picture frame- Timothy in his baseball uniform, bat cocked on his shoulder, a happy grin on his face.
'Give me that,' I said. 'That's my son.'
'Fuck you, Slim.'
'This is all my stuff!' I hollered.
'Not no more.'
'Give me the picture.'
He started to rip apart the frame and I picked up what used to be the leg of my kitchen table. 'You can have all this stuff,' I announced, sweeping my hands at the clothes and shoes and kitchen chairs, all of it. 'Just let me have the picture of my son!'
'Put down the stick.'
'No,' I said.
'I'm not giving you the fucking-'
Dead Herschel on a tractor, the mysterious Jay Rainey, the disturbing nocturnal activities of Allison- I swung the table leg in frustration at all of them, catching the man in the shoulder. He howled in fury.
'I'm kill you, you fuck!'
'No you're not!' I snarled, foolish beyond any past history of myself. 'I'm going to hit you until you give me that picture, okay? Ready?' I swung the table leg like a bat. 'Right in the head, ready?'
He flung the photo to the ground, cracking the glass. I snatched it up. I wanted to poke through the trash for my checkbook or more photos of Timothy, but a police car turned the corner of the block. I slipped down the street, not much more than a vagrant now, hunted and alone.
I was a block from the Harvard Club, on my way to lunch in a new shirt, when I figured out who to call. Martha Hallock.
'Not you again?' she said. 'The Grand Inquisitor?'
'Jay's in real trouble, Martha. I'm trying to help him.'
'This I doubt.'
'He's got people breathing down his neck, Martha, and I can't reach him.' I tried to drain the fury and fear out of my voice. 'You had something to do with the deal, didn't you? These people are putting a lot of pressure on him now. And me. We need to-'
'I'm afraid you're on your own.'
'Thank you,' I said, adding, 'you fucking old witch.'
There was no response, just a series of wheezy, shallow breaths. Finally Martha's voice returned, no longer defiant, but rather somehow burdened. 'How much trouble is he in?'
'A lot,' I said. 'And I don't even know where he is.'
'Well, neither do I.'
'But you could tell me what I'm dealing with here.'
'I could-'
'But?'
'— but I don't have my broomstick.'
