City of Strangers (16 page)

She feels better as soon as she steps into the gelid night: what a difference it can make, a sudden change in temperature. It will be a few minutes before the car she called arrives. Only now does she realize how warm it was inside, the heat collecting in her neck and cheeks, and she closes her eyes as the cold rinses it out of her. She just wants to be home. The earlier anxiety about David, and about Paul, returns only briefly; it slides away.

The car's here. Pale, fiery reflections swim through the licorice-black surface. It doesn't take long to reach her block, but the one-way goes against the driver, and he would have to circle around to pull up to her building. She tells him not to bother – she can manage half a block on foot. It isn't even eight o'clock and all she can think of is sleep. Maybe after taking off her shoes and changing into something more comfortable, she'll feel better. She'll cook something. Put on the TV. On the sidewalk behind her she hears footsteps, and the sound startles her – she didn't realize anyone was nearby. It's a young man. His head points downward, and he grips a brown paper bag. He doesn't wear gloves. He's just a delivery boy, walking slowly and shuffling his steps, and probably having trouble finding the right address. Claire has a mother's stab of worry: this young man, wearing only a light jacket, isn't dressed properly for the weather.

At the threshold of her building, not quite having summoned the energy to rummage in her purse for her keys, Claire pauses. She half expected to find Paul drunk and asleep on the step again. The delivery boy is a few doors behind her. He looks at the building in front of him, and at the one across the street; he takes a few paces in the other direction. She's surprised to realize that it is Paul she would like here, only to walk with her these last steps to her door, not David, not anyone else. She would have preferred not to know that. She wants to silence her mind. But she has to think of something. Her restless brain cannot keep quiet. A writer she once read likened the mind to a bowl, but this strikes her as false – a bowl can be emptied and cleaned and put back on the shelf. Some tap in her mind is always open, always running. Only at the end will it leave her alone. Even then it might not. Sometimes she thinks that it seems unlikely we die: such a voluble thing as a mind, surely, cannot simply be shut off. On a different night this might grant her some solace, her proof against death.

Around her the cold air closes its grip. Claire shivers, and hurries to find her keys.

He didn't keep track of how long he remained on the train. He changed lines several times, slicing briefly into Queens, and eventually disembarked in the low hundreds of Manhattan. In the harsh, unchanging light of the tunnels, time lost structure, and even though he checked his watch Paul couldn't feel the meaning of the hours as they fell away. All afternoon and into the evening he then wandered on foot, shifting his path between the avenues, switchbacking along the cross streets, as the sky accelerated into darkness. He sat somewhere and bought a sandwich, but his appetite had deserted him, and he was able to finish only a few bites; so he went to a cafe and had a coffee, trying to kill the hours, even as he knew that there was no point: no hour would bring the waiting to an end. So he had another coffee, and another, and when he finally left his veins were tense and his eyes had trouble staying in focus.

In the wider city anonymity acts as a kind of shelter. Something in Paul sags at the thought; it is a desperate man who must depend on the safety of crowds. Terence has become the lump you avoid having a doctor look at. Finding himself near Central Park, he takes a seat on a bench and watches people emerge from the gloaming. Lamps, firm and white, dot the paths just within the walls, as even as items on a shelf; the deeper recesses – brown, black, purple – swell roughly.

It isn't his fault. He intervened to protect a stranger and next acted in desperation, on the wrong end of a lopsided fight, then only to save himself. Nor has he done anything, beyond the initial encounter, to provoke Terence, who in his obstinate pursuit is as unpersuadable as a wild animal. But he isn't. He is a person. He has his reasons. Without sitting him down and subjecting him to psychoanalysis, there's no way of knowing what misdirected neural traffic, what traumatic episodes and shaping incident, have created him. Was it a woman? The absence of a woman? Parental neglect? Poor environment? Damaged genes? It doesn't matter. Terence can't be fixed.

Inside his jacket Paul's phone vibrates. He reaches for it absently and answers without looking at the number. No one's there. Then a woman's voice surfaces, so faint at first that he doesn't recognize it.

'Paul? He says . . .'

There are sobs, and then the sound of the phone falling.

'Claire? Is that you?'

'Paul,' she says when she has the phone again. 'Paul, he knows who you are. He says he knows you. Please, please hurry.'

He can't make out what she says next. Then, with a stat-icky rustle, she is gone. A new voice, a man's, comes on the line.

'Funny, I wouldn't of guessed you for a Paul.' In the background is the sound of glass shattering. 'Claire and me, we're just having a beer, talking about you. I'm a little clumsy, I dropped the bottle. I'll have to clean that up later, sweetheart. We'll wait for Paul to get here and give me a hand.'

His voice has grown distant: he's moved his mouth away from the phone and is speaking directly to Claire.

'What do you want?'

'You just better get over to your girlfriend's place before I get clumsy again and slice out her eyes.'

The taxi driver, braked at a red light, asks three times for the exact address before Paul, incensed at the man's poor memory, responds. He told him when he got into the cab, or at least he assumes he did. He boils inwardly with frustration. Up the avenue, as far as the eye can see, glows an endless hovering parade of red signals, crisp and clear in the foreground, and scuzzily indistinct further south. Midtown traffic rises to the level of moral atrocity. He feels the agony of ambulance drivers, immobilized in a tideless sea, staring into the indifference of hundreds of taillights, and considers abandoning the cab, running all the way to Claire's. But fifty blocks stand between here and there; he hasn't run that far in years. The cab sneaks ahead through another two intersections. At the next red light Paul's teeth clamp down automatically when the driver jerks to a stop. He should be using this lull to his advantage. He should make a plan of attack. But he has difficulty concentrating; the only coherent thought that will form is shame at how helpless he's become.

He tries Claire's phone; no answer. He briefly considers calling the police, but if they rush into the apartment, Terence may act rashly – he promised as much. Paul's one chance is to offer up himself and lure this maniac away from his wife. He doesn't know what happens after that. Traffic clears and the car begins to move. His heart tears itself apart as they approach Claire's block.

Paul thrusts two twenty-dollar bills across the divide, much more than is owed, and jumps out. In front of the building, he calls Claire's phone again: still no answer. The quiet of the street makes it impossible to think that anything is happening here. Someone comes out, and Paul uses his chance, squeezing in before the door can close. He climbs the stairs two at a time. Only when he reaches the apartment does it strike him that Terence might be armed; he may have a gun. Surely he knows how to get one on short notice. But the time for thinking, for hesitation, has passed. Paul tries the knob and finds the door slightly ajar. As he quietly pushes it open, he realizes that he doesn't know what to do with his hands, how to hold them, what posture to assume.

The room is dark; his eyes adjust slowly. Illumination comes only from a far doorway, where he can see a patch of tiled floor – the kitchen. Hardly breathing, Paul steers himself there, moving as quickly as he can while remaining silent, nearly silent. As he approaches he hears breathing, and, as it thickens and condenses, he recognizes the sound of quiet sobbing. Only when he's about to step into the room does he see how foolish he's been. Terence isn't going to wait in the light. This new fear starts as a little throb and then rises up, spreading under his skin, thrashing around in his blood. He turns abruptly. No one's there.

'Claire?'

In the other room, the sobbing rises in pitch, broken by loud moans. It is a mark of exhaustion, a sign of someone who has been crying a long time, who must use a certain amount of muscular effort to continue. Then the sound stops altogether. Paul steps inside. On the floor is a spray of green glass. A second bottle of beer sits on the table, open but still full. He scans the room, expecting Terence to come leaping from behind the door, from inside a cupboard. The air bristles with his presence. From a woodblock on the marble counter he pulls out a medium-sized knife; then he finds Claire.

She is a knot in the corner, a gnarl of anguish. She's wearing a coat and appears to want to swallow herself in it; with her head buried in arms and bent knees, she doesn't hear him. Paul, afraid to touch her, waits. Lifting her head from its nest she starts: on her face is a look of horror, as if she can see no difference between Paul and the man who was just here. He sets down the knife and helps her up.

'Where is he?' asks Paul. Every part of him is coiled, tight, hard. Claire makes no reply.

'Claire?'

'I don't know.'

'Where is he?'

'He left. I think he left.'

Paul steps into the darkened living room again, then makes a circuit of the apartment. He opens the closet in her bedroom. Terence is gone.

'Are you hurt?' he asks when he returns to the kitchen. He searches her for signs of physical vandalism. 'Did he do anything to you?'

She shakes her head, then says: 'He – he touched me.' With her finger, Claire marks a soft path from her eye's bottom pout to the corner of her mouth. Paul waits, and then places an arm across her shoulders.

They go to the living room. She sits on the sofa. He wanders around in search of the light switch, and when he looks at Claire, she offers no direction. He gives up, and, anyway, he can see well enough by the glow from the kitchen. The place looks nothing like those they shared during their years of marriage, and the years before that. The furniture has the vague ordinariness of apartments in films. The art on the walls, which he didn't notice when he was here Sunday night, must have been acquired since the divorce. A pair of unwashed wineglasses stands on an end table.

They sit in the dark. Slowly she recovers her composure, and the story starts to come out. She held the front door for Terence, who because of the bag in his hand seemed to be a delivery boy, although she already felt a little wary of him, and when his footsteps followed her up the stairs, her wariness brightened into fear.

'I told myself I was being silly. I've lived in this city long enough not to become afraid every time I hear someone walking behind me.'

She reaches for one of the glasses on the table and drinks what's in it, screwing up her face at the taste, but drinking it all the same.

'When I tried to shut the door, he was there. His foot was. This heavy black boot, like a dog's snout, jammed into the door. I screamed, or I tried to, but he put his hand across my mouth. Suddenly we were in the kitchen. I was sitting. He put that bag on the table. I could hear glass inside, the sound of bottles, and even as this was all happening, I was thinking, "Why on earth has this man brought drinks into my home?" I had no idea what he planned to do.'

Claire turns the wineglass in her hand, then sets it back on the table.

'And he wouldn't stop talking.'

'What? What was he saying?'

Claire shakes her head, brushing away his question. 'He only left after Morris knocked.'

'Morris?'

'He lives upstairs. You don't know him. Sometimes he stops by after work. That man told me to stay here and answered the door. I was so terrified he'd do something to Morris. They spoke for a minute – I couldn't hear what they said. God knows what Morris thought. That man waited for him to go, then he left. Maybe he thought Morris would call the police.'

After a moment Paul asks, 'Did he have a weapon?'

'I don't know – I assumed he did.'

'No knife? No gun?'

'What is your point, Paul?'

He realizes how he must sound. 'I'm sorry.'

Claire waits before continuing. 'When he left, he said, "See you around." God, I can still hear him.' She closes her eyes as a shiver blows through her; one after another her limbs and features mutter with common disgust. 'I feel sick just thinking about it.'

She grows silent, then looks at Paul.

'I don't think I'll ever be able to get him out of my head.'

Ben listens to the sound of his wife showering. They got home an hour ago from Shabbat dinner with friends; feeling extravagant and insatiable at the end of a tiring – an unbelievable – week, he ate too much and drank more wine than he meant to, and now he feels the exhaustion sink through him. Next week has to be different. He has to make a change, find some other use for his time. Beth has left the bathroom door slightly ajar, which isn't a habit of hers, and the gap is wide enough almost to seem intentional. He considers crossing the room and closing the door, in case she merely forgot, but decides that it doesn't matter.

Rolling over in bed, he stares out the window, not really seeing. On the phone today his lawyer explained that the government will likely move forward with its case. He remains steadfast in his claim that events will unfold in Ben's favor, but his statements brim with the overzealousness of false confidence. Twisting the sheet between his hands, Ben fiddles with the notion of guilt, as if contrition can be a choice. Once again he can't feel it; it eludes him. He's no different from hundreds of other men, his deeds – small exchanges of information, routine chatter – indistinguishable from theirs. His happened to come to the government's attention at a bad moment. He had a piece of knowledge; he used it. That, he wants to tell his inquisitors, is how the world works. The city is full to bursting with rapists, killers, drug dealers, ordinary hoodlums, the jails aren't big enough to hold them all, and instead they come after him, a man with a career and a family, a belief in God, and want to make him pay. Because of them he may lose the ability to give his wife and son everything they deserve. For doing his job, for doing it better than most. For success. For that.

A moment elapses during which he is pinned on his back by the warm weight on his chest, the shock: he is a desperate man, he stands at the mercy of others. This was never supposed to happen. He meant to live ambitiously but carefully. A trial – even the threat of one and the agreement to a plea, if it comes to that – would be a slow-motion catastrophe. One way or another it will leave him reduced: if not with nothing, then certainly with less. He flops onto his stomach. It does nothing. The anxiety has entered his arms and legs, they twitch and crinkle, and he would like to be free of his body, the labor of his heart. The difficulty is that he's not moving, he's not doing anything. What can he do? That is the problem – there is nothing he can do.

He breathes through the fabric of the pillowcase, faintly sweet from the laundry – even the simple enjoyment of a simple thing is threatened; he cannot think of fresh laundry without thinking that he might lose such a privilege. Yesterday Paul provided him with an easy target for this frustration. It wasn't truly his brother's fault. For perhaps an hour last night after leaving the restaurant Ben was furious with him, but the feeling quickly subsided; it was replaced by something unfamiliar, a soft embarrassment at having allowed himself to be so easily provoked. He'll call his brother, if not tomorrow, then next week, maybe not to offer an apology, or to ask for one, but just to talk. It will be easier now, with their father finally gone.

He shuts his eyes, tries to push it all down, not wanting to burden his wife with his woes.

They had a small fight, if it can even be called that, on the drive home from dinner tonight. Voices weren't raised. Obliquely she mentioned once more her displeasure that he hasn't spent more of the day with her, since he isn't at the office, and he tried to explain, again, that it isn't easy for him, that he needs to boil off the adrenaline he'd otherwise use up at work. She's still upset, too, that he asked her not to come to the funeral – another exclusion whose necessity he had tried and failed to illuminate – which made it difficult to win her commiseration over Paul's behavior afterward. After a period of brittle silence, he made an attempt to change the subject, bringing up their son, whom he'd wanted to mention anyway.

'I spoke to Jake today. He aced his first paper in that European history class.' When his wife did not respond, he added, 'I miss him.'

'He visits too often,' she said. 'He needs to have his own life. We need to have our own lives.'

'I know, I know, I know.'

He is restless. He pushes back the sheets and glides from bed, and at the window his eyes snag on the view of the city. It would be possible to calculate down to the decimal point the value of this view when considered among the many other desirable elements – street address, floor space, ceiling height – that determined the price he paid for the apartment. That number wouldn't be a small one. He paid it to be able to look out upon the city that's his. He loves New York. At night the steel and glass vanish and all that remains is light. Towers blaze, vanilla and silver, and below them, like impure runoff, are lesser lights, rough and granular: the blue beer logos in bodega windows, the lamps coming on and off in taxis, the slurred glare of intersections. Further on is the great neon confusion of midtown, where digital semaphores flash and bicker, just below Central Park, that one reservoir of darkness. It is a view replicable nowhere else in the world. He is looking down at all of this, this city of light, but feels instead as if he is a former angel gazing up.

Just as he returns to bed, lying once more on his side, he hears his wife emerge from the bathroom, and, before he can turn to face her, she says: 'I'm sorry.'

Beth sits on the edge of the bed, still dressed in her robe. Her hair glistens under the light. Ben realizes that he didn't hear the hair dryer; when she showers before bed, his wife usually comes out of the bathroom already wearing her nightgown. Tonight, it seems, she's been diverted from long-held routine by the need to make peace. A pinch, a tiny convulsion, grasps him from within.

'I'm sorry too. Let's just forget it. We'll have lunch tomorrow.'

'I'd like that,' she says, touching his arm. Then, reaching behind her head and twisting her wet hair into a rope, she says, 'Stephanie's become a striking young woman, hasn't she?'

Stephanie is their friends' oldest daughter, a senior at Columbia. She made an appearance tonight at dinner, wafting through on a self-contained breeze, eating a few forkfuls and having a glass of wine before going off to rejoin her roommates, or work on her thesis, or see a film downtown; Ben wasn't really listening and cannot remember. His wife's question doesn't appear to require an answer. They might as well be talking about the weather, as far as he can tell, which is fine by him, an easy conversation to release the earlier tension.

'She must get such looks,' Beth continues. 'It has to be nice.'

'She isn't the only one who can get a look,' says Ben. He enjoys this, the gentle banter of people whose relationship can be measured in decades, and even feels at the corners of his eyes the first, soft tug of sleep. At last: the evaporation of difficulty, the return to normalcy. Thinking of the sturdy marriage he's been a part of putting together, he can picture the years ahead with uncomplicated pleasure.