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I stepped back and she closed the door, her eyes still on my face.
I turned and went down the street.
I had just stepped off the bottom of the brownstone steps when I heard a voice call out behind me. It was a woman’s voice. I kept walking. The voice called again and I slowed, but did not turn. A moment later someone put a hand on my elbow. Only then did I stop and look around.
It was the woman from apartment 407 above, her eyes almost wild, her mouth gasping, on the point of tears.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and almost pulled back but then gathered herself to say, “This is crazy. You don’t happen to be, I know you’re not, you aren’t Charlie McGraw, are you?”
I hesitated while her eyes searched my face, looking for some halfway familiar feature among all the oldness.
My silence made her uneasy. “No, I didn’t really think you were,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Who was he?”
“Oh, God,” she said, eyes down, stifling something like a laugh. “I don’t know. Maybe a boyfriend, a long time ago.”
I took her hand and held it for a moment. “I wish I were,” I said. “We should have had a lot to talk about.”
“Too much, maybe.” A single tear fell from her cheek. She backed off. “Well, you can’t have everything.”
“No,” I said, and gave her back her hand, gently.
My gentleness provoked her to a last question.
“You’re sure you’re not Charlie?”
“Charlie must’ve been a nice fellow.”
“The best,” she said.
“Well,” I said, at last. “So long.”
“No,” she said. “Good-bye.” She spun about and ran to the steps and ran up the steps so quickly that she almost tripped. At the top she whirled suddenly, her eyes brimmed, and lifted her hand to wave. I tried not to wave back but my hand went up.
I stood rooted to the sidewalk for a full half minute before I could make myself move. Jesus, I thought, every love affair I ever had I ruined.
I got back to the bar near closing time. The pianist, for some obscure reason, hating to go home was probably it, was still there.
Taking a double shot of brandy and working on a beer, I said,
“Whatever you do, don’t play that piece about wherever she may go, wherever she may be, if no one wants her now, please send her back to me …
”
“What song is that?” said the pianist, hands on the keys.
“Something,” I said. “Something about … what was her name? Oh, yeah. Sally.”
Nothing Changes
There is this truly wonderful bookstore by the ocean where you can hear the tide under the pier, shaking the shop, the books on the shelves, and you.
The shop is dark and has a tin roof above the ten thousand books from which you blow dust in order to turn pages.
And it is not just the tide below but the tide above that I love when storm rains shatter that tin roof, banging it like orchestras of machine-gun-cymbal-and-drum. Whenever it is a dark midnight at noon, if not in my soul, like Ishmael, I head for the storm beneath and the storm above, tambourining the tin and knocking silverfish off forgotten authors, row on row. With my smile for a flashlight, I linger all day.
Pure hyperventilation in storms, I arrived one noon at White Whale Books, where I walked, slowly, to the entrance. My anxious taxi driver pursued with his umbrella. I held him off. “Please,” I said. “I want to get wet!”
