“There a porter or somebody who can get it out of here?”
“Not at this hour.”
We stood there thinking about it. Then Mark said, “You know, that mattress is done. You can’t fix a mattress like that. It’ll stink of alcohol forever.”
“I know.”
“The pillow too. Total loss.”
“Right.”
He walked over to the window, opened it as wide as it would open. “Good it’s a single bed,” he said. “Never work with a double.”
“You think?”
“What else, man?”
I let him take charge. He was a good fifteen years younger than I, and I’d been sober a little longer, but he seemed to know what to do and that was more than I could say for myself. We stripped off the bed linen, and Mark had me help him lug the bare mattress over to the window. When we had it balanced half in and half out, he sent me downstairs to make sure no one was underneath the thing when he shoved it out.
I walked past Jacob and out onto the pavement. I looked up, and there was my mattress, hanging out of my window. An older man wearing a suit and a tie had just emerged from McGovern’s, and I waited while he walked toward me with the careful gait of a man who’s drunk and knows it. He looked up to see what was holding my attention, decided it was nothing he had to be concerned about, and walked on by. The sidewalk was clear now, and I called out to Mark, and my mattress came sailing down at me and landed at my feet.
I got hold of it, dragged it over to the curb. I went inside and asked Jacob which rooms were vacant. There was a single on my floor, at the rear of the building. He gave me the key.
The room had been serviced since the last guest had departed. It was a little smaller than mine, but had the same iron bedstead, and the same size mattress. Mark and I took the mattress, linen and all, and carried it the length of the hall to my room, and placed it on my empty frame.
“Like it’s been there forever,” Mark said. “Just one thing missing.”
I fetched the pillow from the vacant room, and set it on my bed. We took my pillow and my sheets, balled them up, and put them in the service pantry. There was a big trash can there, and it got the contents of my wastebasket, the empty bottle and the glass. I locked the vacant room, and we stopped downstairs at the desk to return the key.
“It’s a funny thing,” I told Jacob, “but there’s no mattress on the bed in that room.”
“There ain’t?”
“No,” I said, “but I’m sure the porter can rustle up a spare from the storeroom first thing in the morning.” A couple of bills moved from my hand to his. “For his trouble,” I said. “And for yours.”
“Don’t see no problem there,” he said.
Outside, Mark looked at my old mattress and nodded his approval. “I always wondered what it would be like to throw one of those out a window.”
“And?”
“One minute it was there,” he said, “and then it wasn’t. It was sort of satisfying, actually. Made more of a noise landing than I thought it would.”
“Nobody on the street seemed to notice.”
“Well, New York,” he said. “That dude at the desk. Jacob? He was pretty cool about the whole thing. He high on something?”
“He has a fondness for cough syrup,” I said.
“Well, shit,” Mark said. “Who doesn’t?”
XL
THERE WAS TIME for a quick bite before the meeting, and Mark suggested a deli on Broadway. “We’ll take the bike,” he said.
It was eight or ten blocks away, and we got there in a hurry. When we were seated and had ordered our pastrami sandwiches, I excused myself and made a phone call.
Jim was still at the shop. “I was supposed to call as soon as I got rid of the booze,” I told him, “and it slipped my mind completely.” I brought him up to date, and he asked me how I felt now. “A lot better,” I said.
He said he might be late for the meeting, but that he’d see me there. I went back to the table and told Mark I’d never been on a motorcycle before. “You’re kidding,” he said. “Never?”
“Not that I remember,” I said, “and I think it’s something I’d remember. Even in a blackout, that’s the sort of thing that would cut through the fog.”
“You should get one, man. Seriously.”
The pastrami was good, the french fries well-done. I liked the place, and wondered how come I’d never happened on it before. It wasn’t that far from my hotel, and I had to have walked past it dozens of times over the years.
Mark told me parts of his story while we ate. There was a lot of heroin in it, and a lot of hectic trips back and forth across the country. He’d spent a lot of time in Oakland and San Francisco, and sometimes he missed it. “I’ll hear California calling,” he said, “but I’ll hear a needle calling, and it’s the same voice, you know? So I figure for now I’ll stay right where I’m at.”
A couple of times over the years I’ve had dreams in which I was capable of flight. I soared over the rooftops, banking and turning effortlessly, reveling in the simple delight of it all. After our meal I got a second ride on the back of Mark’s Harley, from the deli to St. Paul’s, and it had an unreal quality that brought those flying dreams to mind. I had slipped into a zone of unreality when I opened my hotel