The Blizzard Party

open to the living room, his body all juts and doglegs inside the uniform that fit him like a set of drapes, indicated that he was suffering a hell of spasmodic agony, to suggest that we could be left alone, and I, concurring, said something along the lines of, Thank you, Peter, as though I were dame of the manor in a perfect little Fieldian table setting of a screenplay. He took his leave hitchingly, and the cop, whose name, no kidding, was Postman, Officer Postman, a low-grade amusement on par with the doctor named Nurse or the funeral director named Lively, just a little distraction from the news at hand, of course, forgive me, because I was listening with one ear, as they say, comparing his dialogue to the teleprompter scrolling in my head, checking for deviation from the déjà vu, and my concerns shifted quite naturally to allowing him to complete his assignment with minimum delay, which, by the way, flying colors, old boy, direct, calm, and collected, no euphemisms, just the facts, ma’am, presented from his breast pocket, right, the precinct’s card, the left being somewhat obscured by a terrace of gold bars atop the badge, the black-banded badge, certainly not in honor of Vik but some lawman recently departed, and I would of course, if asked, assign him high marks on professionalism, and though I wanted to ask if he’d been to the apartments of Cynthia and (the former) Evan Mask or Megan and (the former) Terrance Plenge, both located within the boundaries of the Twentieth Precinct, I restrained myself from undertaking that foray into the social macabre (if I cared enough one way or another I could just ask Cynthia or Megan if Postman had been their guy lo those many years ago, and had they, too, noticed the third finger, right hand, shortened by a single segment north of the knuckle, shop class/band saw, or perp/knife, or possibly something that had happened in the lengthy interregnum, goddamnit, Vik), and I showed him out, transferred the card from my right to my left hand so that I might present him with a firm handshake, with thanks, upon his exit, restraining myself from doing anything so bald as ushering him out or hurrying him on his way, because, after all, he’s only doing his job, good news/bad news, pretty hairy stuff, plunging into these estrogen-soaked apartments where virtually anything could happen, these women, even all these years later they’re grieving, you know, they’re not moving on, they’re not in their right minds, got to keep your wits about you, man, anything could happen, anything, shoot, stab, grope, smack the messenger, you’ve gotta stay on your toes with those gals, better send in old Postman, he knows his way around an NOK.

Yes. This is why we’re here. They’ve found Vik. The snowdrift of photos on the bed. His shirts piled on the floor. And oh dear, yes, I have excavated from the back garden of my mind, grown over with weeds, that most unsound idea, nestled among the glimmers of hope, as they say, doses of magical thinking, the pathetic possibility that Vik had, on that day of all days, emerged from the subway and because of the remarkable and well-documented atmospheric clarity had been drawn toward the splendor of the Jersey City skyline, and in an entirely uncharacteristic display of nonchalance toward our financial well-being, instead of turning left into the North Tower, strolled right on down Vesey, all the way over to the river, where he’d boarded a ferry, aflame with the same poetic inspiration that had consumed him the night of the blizzard, and upon disembarking on the other side and seeing over his shoulder the dark poppy bloom, and having been spared the executioner’s blade, had decided to keep going west, ever west, traversing the continent, boarding a ship at San Francisco bound for Guangzhou, from there walking westward across the provinces, up into the mountains, passing through Burma, over India, Pakistan, into Iran, and that until the moment Officer Postman arrived he’d been walking, while I’d been mentally tracking him, advancing his pixel a micrometer a day, ever traveling, ever safe.

Or, or, bear with me, or that he’d been mugged in a dark corner of a subway station on that terrible morning, received a blow to the head that erased his memory, and caught up in the chaotic aftermath of the attack had been deposited in a hospital where, unable to identify himself, he was eventually discharged to the care of the state, and after a brief stay at Bellevue allowed to reintegrate into society because despite his identity problem he retained his working knowledge of finance, and within a few years had established himself at some off-the-grid firm, probably in Boston because who would stay in New York after that, perhaps awaking in the middle of the night with ghostly images of my face floating on the backs of his eyelids.

Or—or! Or perhaps he’d simply been one of the survivors, one who got out just in time and seized his chance to start anew, and was living now in Phoenix, running a smoothie shop, feeding his neighbors’ cats when they went out of town, contemplating, wondering, missing me but convinced it was all for the best. I would have preferred it. I would have preferred anything to this. Well, that little tin box had been excavated from the garden and its contents deemed inadmissible. News flash, Hazel: your husband is dead.

Part IV

26.

In my bag were five reel tapes, recordings of Turk’s father’s voice, made in 1961 by a doctoral student doing a rotation at Pickering. His daily rounds there were considerably more agreeable than the hand-to-hand combat he’d endured the previous year at Bellevue, though lacking the smorgasbord of schizoid antisocial behaviors available at the public institution, and he’d invented a side project to keep himself engaged between circle group meetings.

Curious, he’d thought, the narrative leaps made