Chapter 2
On my way out I left the passkey with the doorman. He didn't seem any happier now, even though he was getting to see me leave this time. I went over to Johnny Joyce's on Second and sat in a booth. Most of the lunch crowd was gone. The ones who remained were one or two martinis over the line now and probably wouldn't make it back to their offices at all. I had a hamburger and a bottle of Harp,then drank a couple shots of bourbon with my coffee.
I triedBroadfield's number. It rang for a while and no one answered it. I went back to my booth and hadanother bourbon and thought about some things. There were questions I couldn't seem to answer.
Why had I passed up Portia Carr's offer of a drink when I wanted a drink so badly? And why (if it wasn't another version of the same question) had I passed up Portia Carr herself?
I did some more thinking onWestForty-ninth Street , in the actors'
chapel at St.Malachy's . The chapel is below street level, a large understated room which provides a measure of peace and quiet that is otherwise hard to come by in the heart of the Broadway theater district. I took an aisle seat and let my mind wander.
An actress I used to know a long time ago once told me that she came to St.Malachy's every day when she wasn't working. 'I wonder if it matters that I'm not a Catholic, Matt. I don't think so. I say my little prayer and I light my little candle and I pray for work. I wonder whether or not it helps. Do you supposeit's okay to ask God for a decent part?'
I must have sat there for close to an hour, running different things through my mind. On the way out I put a couple of bucks in the poor box and lit a few candles. I didn't say any prayers.
I spent most of the evening in Polly's Cage, across the street from my hotel. Chuck was behind the bar and he was in an expansive mood, so much so that the house was buying every other round. I had reached my client late in the afternoon and had given him a brief rundown on my meeting with Carr.
He'd asked me where I was going to go from there, and I'd said I would have to work it out and that I'd get in touch when I had something he ought to know. Nothing in that category came up that night, so I didn't have to call him. Nor did I have any reason to call anyone else. I'd picked up a phone message at my hotel: Anita had called and wanted me to call her, but it was not the sort of night on which I wanted to talk to an ex-wife. I stayed at Polly's and emptied my glass every time Chuck filled it up.
Around eleven-thirty a couple of kids came in and started playing nothing but country and western on the jukebox. I can usually stomach that as well as anything else, but for some reason or other it wasn't what I wanted to hear just then. I settled my tab and went around the corner to Armstrong's, where Don had the radio set to WNCN. They were playing Mozart, and the crowd was so thin you could actually hear the music.
'They sold the station,' Don said. 'The new owners are switching to a pop-rock format. Another rock station is just what the city needs.'
'Things always deteriorate.'
'I can't argue the point. There's a protest movement to force them to continue a classical music policy.
I don't suppose it'll do any good, do you?'
I shook my head. 'Nothing ever does any good.'
'Well, you're in a beautiful mood tonight. I'm glad you decided to spread sweetness and light here instead of staying cooped up in your room.'
I poured bourbon into my coffee and gave it a stir. I was in a foul mood and I couldn't figure out exactly why. It is bad enough when you know what it is that is bothering you. When the demons plaguing you are invisible, it is that much more difficult to contend with them.
IT was a strange dream.
I don't dream much. Alcohol has this effect of making you sleep at a deeper level, below the plane on which dreams occur. I am told that DTs represent the psyche's insistence upon having its chance to dream; unable to dream while asleep, one has one's dreams upon awakening.
But I haven't had DTs yet and am grateful for my generally dreamless sleep. There was a time when this, in and of itself, was a sufficient argument for drinking.
But that night I dreamed, and the dream struck me as strange. She was in it.Portia, with her size and her striking beauty and her deep voice and her good English accent. And we were sitting and talking, she and I, but not in her apartment. We were in a police station. I don't know what precinct it might have been but remember that I felt at home there, so perhaps it was a place where I had been stationed once.
There were uniformed cops walking around, and citizens filing complaints, and all of the extras playing the same roles in my dream that they play in similar scenes in cops-and-robbers movies.
And we were in the midst of all this, Portia and I, and we were naked. We were going to make love, but we had to establish something first through conversation. I don't recall what it was that had to be established, but our conversation went on and on, getting ever more abstract, and we got no closer to the bedroom, and then the telephone rang and Portia reached out and answered it in the voice of her answering machine.
Except that it went on ringing.
My phone, of course.I had incorporated its ring into my dream. If it hadn't awakened me with its ringing I'm sure I would ultimately have forgotten the dream entirely. Instead I shook myself awake while shaking off the vestiges of the dream. I fumbled for the phone and got the receiver to my ear.
'Hello?'
'Matt, I'm sorry as hell if I woke you. I- '
'Who is this?'
'Jerry. JerryBroadfield .'
