However, at the moment, his adrenal glands were streaming heavy doses of spirit-elevating hormones, and he felt sharp again, electrified. As I sift through the history of his mind, his brief visit to Roosevelt is a bright atomic spike on the dull flatline of his last year, a landmark I can use to orient myself. As familiar as I am with his inner workings, even I sometimes get lost in the wasteland.
He felt it powerfully, the resurgence of his logic, a crackling essence that he’d thought was gone forever, evaporated like the angel’s share. It marshaled his intelligence into a clear, cold liquid that coursed through him, an unstoppable natural force. He felt like he’d pinned a witness on cross. It has been so long. Oh god, the clarity, just this side of madness.
Down the hall he found a janitor’s closet, and inside, a heavy canvas coat hanging on a peg, a knitted cap sticking out of the grease-blacked mouth of one pocket. He pulled on the coat, flipped up the collar, tugged the hat low over his brow, and practically floated to the elevator.
At that late hour, the old man in the enormous coat found decent cover among the other passengers—orderlies, insomniac patients in paper shoes, interns, blurry-faced attendings who’d been pulled from their warm beds. No one gave him a second look.
The doors opened and Albert got off. On the other side of the lobby, an eager young fact-checker from WPIX named Bobby, elevated to on-air correspondent for the night, armed with a mic and a winning attitude, was conducting man-on-the-street interviews, playing goalie at the revolving doors: And what’s your name, ma’am? And are you a patient? Have you thought about how you’ll get home? Have you ever seeeeen weather like this in New York?
At first Albert felt a flash of recognition, a remnant from days when news crews parried their silver microphones at him as he loomed over the city from atop the steps at 60 Centre. They’re here for me? he thought. Damnit, why? Remember, damnit. The confusion that followed (so much for all that adrenalized logic) had a familiar shape, as though he’d awoken in a dim hotel room, unable to recall in the dark where he was—he thinks first of home, no, he’s somewhere else, turns on the lights, a hotel room, there’s my suit on the door, it’s freezing in here, it’s Chicago. Albert stood now at the edge of the light, casting about the lobby for the clue that would retract the tumblers locking tight his mind just enough to crack the door, let in a breath of air. But no.
Like bald tires spinning on ice. Unable to catch his breath. The obvious one: thrusting, thrusting away like a damn piston, but no release.
No, honestly, it wasn’t like any of those things. This defeat, this inability to catch the tail of whatever thought was eluding him, was excruciatingly nothing except itself. The loneliness of being adrift in his own mind, urging his brain to catch, like an engine on a cold morning. No, not that, either. An empty white room? How else am I to explain his predicament, where one moment there is sanity and understanding and in the next it’s been vaporized? Funerals are for the living; these metaphors are for my own comfort.
He took stock. Evidence on and around his person suggested that he intended to exit the building. A sequence of events initiated by a former he, the one who got on the elevator, a lost self. He stepped forward, falling in closely behind an orderly pushing an empty wheelchair, borrowing the man’s momentum, matching the pace of his footfall on the marble floor, shrugging off ambitious young Bobby as he reached for his arm, the wailing siren, Sir, sir, sir. The orderly swung to the side and parked the wheelchair, and Albert, caught in the no-man’s-land between exit and eager young reporter, Sir! lunged at the crossbar on the revolving door, which, frozen in place, wasn’t budging until, Sir! on the other side of the door came two men whose added effort, Sir! cracked loose the icy seal and with all of them leaning against the grindstone at once, there was the sweet luffing pop of the weather strips as they brushed the glass cylinder, Sir! Sir! hissing advancement, the wind battering him as he emerged on the snow-washed brick. Bobby pounced on the new arrivals, a pair like a circus bear and his handler, No, no interviews, the older, smaller one said, but Bobby persisted until the bigger of the two, holding a towel to his forehead, screamed, Getthafuckouttamyway loud enough to rouse even the deepest sleepers draped over the lobby chairs, and he and his handler were allowed to proceed to the desk while Bobby was left spinning his microphone by its cord and eyeballing the lobby for the old and weak.
Out in the blowing snow, Albert looked for a cab, but the arcing drive down to the street was empty. Albert thought: Satan’s fiery red hell. And with that, his memory recovered enough ground for him to orient himself. Southward, south to the water.
The coat was heavy but the wind cut right into it, and he huddled behind a concrete pillar. What was he supposed to do, walk from here? If so, which direction? All he saw were dim outlines and snow.
Remarkably, his grandson, the impetus for this entire escapade, had been absent from his thoughts since he’d placed the phone call that set in motion his creaky machine, as if a final settlement had been agreed upon and his accounts, so long out of balance, had been paid in full. As he cowered from the wind, a strange thought bloomed, perhaps unfolding to fill the space vacated by the boy. Strange, because
