There Are Doors

The crisp air of morning had already been softened by the sun. He strode along with his topcoat folded over his arm, glancing into the store windows he passed. His department rarely got a window—windows went to the clothes people, mostly—but when it did, he was the one most often assigned to set up the display; he was professionally interested, or so he told himself.

As he looked, he wondered what to do with the money from Mr. Sheng’s package. Prudence (his mother’s ghost) advised him to bank it against a rainy day. Caution whispered that Internal Revenue might check his deposits.

How could he explain? And there would be no explaining the fact that he had not reported the income when he had filled out his 1040A. Instead he had asked for a refund, because he always had Accounting withhold more than he needed to cover his income taxes. No, he thought, even the IRS could not blame him for not reporting the money on that return; it was for last year, and he had bought the money this year.

Or had he? There had been something oddly old-fashioned about There, now that he considered it. Most of the buildings had looked old, and even the ones that had seemed new had been old in design, built of conservative brick, with windows that slid up and down like windows in a house. The cramped little cars had felt modern enough—old cars were bigger, with fins on their tails and doors as thick as a bank vault’s. So There had modern cars, except for their long-handled gear shifts; but the TV had been all black-and-white.

He tried to recall the date on the paper in which he had read about their escape and about Joe’s match with some other boxer whose name he could not remember. It was gone, faded to invisible ink.

Maybe he could take a Caribbean cruise, like on Love Boat. No, because you were supposed to fall for somebody, and he could not fall for anybody except Lara, and he had already fallen for her. He might think he had, as he had with Fanny, getting laid for two or three thousand dollars.

He laughed at himself. There had been a time when he had gone to singles bars one or two nights a week, a time that had ended when he realized the women were looking for husbands and not for love. (No, never for love.) If he just wanted to get laid, that could be arranged a lot cheaper.

Men in blue hardhats and International Orange safety vests were at work not far from the building. Hard-edged black wires traced languid curves in the street. He stopped a workman and rather timidly asked what they were doing, and the man explained that they were taking down overhead lines that had been replaced by underground cables.

He nodded, said thank you, and stood looking at the street, recalling the significant door that would not open for him again. A meter maid touched his arm and pointed out the Downtown Mental Health Center. “It’s right over there, sir. Would you like me to take you?”

“No.” He shook his head and realized with a start that he had been crying, bawling in public for the first time since he had been a small boy. Jerking the red handkerchief out of his breast pocket, he mopped his streaming eyes and blew his nose. When he felt presentable again, he went inside.

A board beside the elevators listed Dr. Nilson’s office on the fourth floor. He discovered that he had known that already; no doubt it had been part of the listing in the telephone book. He rang for the elevator and went up.

There were three patients in the doctor’s reception room: a thin and gloomy woman, a fat boy of sixteen or so who grinned at nothing, and himself. He chose a chair, necessarily between the other two, and wondered what they thought of him, how they would describe him. As a neat little clerk, perhaps—not that he felt so neat this morning.

There was nobody at the reception desk. The telephone rang six times as they sat waiting, but no one answered it.

When it had stopped ringing, he rose and examined the desk. Its top held a potted plant, a green blotter, and a silver ball-point pen embraced by a pink koala bear. The flat drawer under the desk top contained pencils, a ball- point office pen, a gross of paper clips in a small cardboard box, and some rubber bands. False drawer fronts on the left concealed an electric typewriter bolted to a swing-up typing stand. He lifted it to see whether there was anything hidden behind it, and the gloomy woman stared at him disapprovingly.

No wonder you’re so down, he thought. You won’t let anyone have any fun.

False drawer fronts on the right slid up to reveal bins for white and yellow paper, for stationery with the Downtown Mental Health Center letterhead, matching envelopes, carbon paper, and flimsy second sheets.

That was all. If the person who had used the desk had ever stored personal possessions in it, she had taken them with her. He reflected that even a desk dictionary might have revealed her name, scrawled inside the front cover. But the desk dictionary, if it had ever existed, was gone.

There was nothing beneath the blotter, no labels pasted to the telephone. The toy koala was cute and mute. He pulled out the stationery, the white bond paper, and the yellow paper, and ruffled through them, thinking vaguely that something might have been concealed there. There was nothing, and the carbon paper (all unused) and second sheets were just as sterile. The pen in the drawer was plastic, the kind given away by office-equipment dealers in search of business. GOOD TIGER INC, with an address and telephone number, took up half the pen’s sides. The others read: DOWNTOWN MENTAL/HEALTH CENTER/ LORA MASTERMAN. He slipped the pen into his pocket and sat down.

A lanky woman with a wisp of beard marched out of the inner office, crossed the waiting room as if they were invisible, and went out. The buck-toothed woman with whom he had spoken the day he had discovered Lara was gone looked through the doorway, saw him, and said, “Please come in, Mr. Green.”

The fat teenager stood up. “Now wait a minute!”

The buck-toothed woman told him calmly, “Mr. Green’s case is something of an emergency, Mr. Bodin, and I reserve the right to see my patients in whatever order I choose.”

He said, “In a minute, he’ll tell you I took this pen from your receptionist’s desk, doctor.” He held it up so she could see it. “I thought I might want to make some notes about what we said, and I forgot to bring one of my own.”

“That’s perfectly all right, Mr. Green. Won’t you come in?”

Her office was smaller than Drummond’s, and much plainer. He sat down when she did and asked, “What’s the matter with me, doctor?”