What a piece of work it was, what a beaut, what a come-on, what a baited trap.
What a Rorschach test, what a piece of palmistry, what a numbers game that anyone could sum and win with. Men, women, old, young, dark, light, tall, thin. 'Listen, look! This means YOU.
It applied to anyone who had ever loved and lost, meaning every single soul in the whole damned city, state, and universe.
Who, reading it, would not be tempted to lift a phone, dial, wait, and whisper at last, late at night: Here I am. Please, come find me.
I stood in the middle of the linoleum floor of Fannie's apartment and tried to imagine her here, the ship's deck creaking underfoot as her weight shifted this way and that, as Tosca lamented from the phonograph, and the icebox door stood wide with its enshrined condiments, her eyes moving, her heart beating like a hummingbird trapped in a vast aviary.
Christ. The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse had to be the editor of a paper like this.
I checked all the other advertisements. The telephone number was the same in each. You had to call one number to get referrals to all the ads. And that phone number belonged to the publishers of, damn them to hell forever, Janus, the Green Envy Weekly.
Fannie had never in her life bought a paper like this. Someone had given it to her or… I stopped and glanced at the door.
No!
Someone had left it for her to find with the red ink circling this one ad, so she would be sure to see.
SOMEONE WHO LOVED YOU, WITH A FULL HEART, LONG AGO.
'Fannie!' I cried in dismay. 'Oh, you damn, damn fool.' I waded through broken shards of La Boheme and Butterfly, then remembered and stumbled back to slam the icebox door.
Things were no better on the third floor. Henry's door was wide open. I had never seen it open before. Henry believed in shut doors. He didn't want anyone having a sighted advantage on him. But now.
'Henry?'
I stepped through, and the small apartment was neat, incredibly neat and clean and filed, everything in place, everything fresh, but empty.
'Henry?'
His cane lay in the middle of the floor, and by it a dark string, a black twine with knots in it.
It all looked scattered and impromptu, as if Henry had lost these in a fight, or left behind when he ran.
Where?
'Henry?'
I handled the twine, and looked at the knots. In a line, two knots, a space, three knots, a long space, then a series of three, six, four, and nine knots.
'Henry!' Louder.
I ran to knock on Mrs. Gutierrez's door.
When she opened it and saw me, she welled over. Tears dropped from her eyes as she saw my face. She put her tortilla-scented hand out to touch my cheeks. 'Aw, poor, poor. Come in, oh, poor, sit down. Sit. You wanta eat? I bring something. Sit, no, no, sit. Coffee, yes?' She brought me coffee and wiped her eyes. 'Poor Fannie. Poor man. What?'
I unfolded the newspaper and held it out for her to see.
'No read inglese,' she said, backing off.
'Don't have to read,' I said. 'Did Fannie ever come up to phone and bring this paper with her?'
'No, no!' Her face changed color with memory. 'Estupido! Si. She came. But I don't know who she call.'
'Did she talk a long while, a long time?'
'Long time?' She had to translate my words for a few seconds, then she nodded vigorously. 'Si. Long. Long she laugh. Oh, how she laugh and talk, talk and laugh.'
While she was inviting Mr. Night and Time and Eternity to come over, I thought.
'And she had this paper with her?'
Mrs. Gutierrez turned the paper over like it was a Chinese puzzle. 'Maybe si, maybe no. This one, some other. I dunno. Fannie is with God.'
I turned, weighing 380 pounds, and leaned toward the door, the folded newspaper in my hands.
'I wish I were,' I said. 'Please, may I use your phone?'
On a hunch I did not dial the Green Envy number. Instead, counting the knots, I dialed the numbers of blind Henry's twine.
'Janus Publications,' said a nasal voice. 'Green Envy. Hold.'
The phone was dropped to the floor. I heard heavy feet shuffling through wintry mounds of crumpled paper.
'It fits!' I yelled, and scared Mrs. Gutierrez, who jumped back. 'The number fits.' I yelled at the Green Envy paper in my hand. For some reason Henry had knotted the Janus publication's number onto his remembrance twine.
'Hello, hello!' I shouted.
Far off in the Green Envy office I could hear some maniac shrieking because he was trapped and electrocuted by a bin of wildly berserk guitars. Awrhinoceros and two hippos were dancing a fandango in the latrine to rebut the music. Someone typed during the cataclysm. Someone else was playing a harmonica to a different drummer.
I waited four minutes, then jammed the phone down and stormed out of Mrs.
Gutierrez's, raving.
'Mister,' said Mrs. Gutierrez, 'why you so upset?'
'Upset, upset, who's upset!' I cried. 'Christ, people don't come back to phones, I got no money to get out to that damn place, wherever it is in Hollywood, and there's no use calling back, the damn phone's off the hook, and time's running out, and where the hell is Henry. He's dead, damn it!'
Not dead, Mrs. Gutierrez should have said, merely sleeping.
But she didn't say and I thanked her for her silence and stormed down the hallway, not knowing what to do. I didn't even have money for the stupid red trolley car to Hollywood. I…
'Henry!' I shouted down the stairwell.
'Yes?' said a voice behind me.
I whirled around. I yelled. There was nothing but darkness there.
'Henry. Is that…?'
'Me,' said Henry, and stepped out into what little light there was. 'When Henry decides to hide, he truly hides. Holy Moses Armpits was here. I think he knows that we know what he knows about this mess. I just skedaddled out my apartment door when I heard him prowl the porch outside my view window, I just dropped and jumped. Left stuff, I don't care, on the floor. You find it?'
'Yes. Your cane. And the string with knots for numbers.'
'You want to know about them knots, that number?'
'Yes.'
'I heard crying in the hall, day before Fannie's gone forever. There she is, at my door. I open it to let all that sadness in. Not often I see her upstairs, it kills her to climb. I shouldn't've done it, no, shouldn't have done it, she says, all my fault she says, over and over. Watch this junk, Henry, take this junk, here, what a fool I am she says, and she gave me some old phonograph records and some newspapers, special, she said, and I thanked her and thought what the hell and she went down the hall crying for herself being a fool and I just put the
