She stopped dead on the sidewalk, looking up at me, eyes wide. I suppose to the people who had to veer around us, we must have looked like lovers. “Scott, no!”
“Scott, yes,” I said. And finally told someone about how I woke up on September Eleventh expecting to do all the things I usually did on weekdays, from the cup of black coffee while I shaved all the way to the cup of cocoa in front of the midnight news summary on Channel Thirteen. A day like any other day, that was what I had in mind. I think that is what Americans had come to expect as their right. Well, guess what? That’s an airplane! Flying into the side of a skyscraper! Ha-ha, asshole, the joke’s on you, and half the goddam world’s laughing!
I told her about looking out my apartment window and seeing the seven A.M. sky was perfectly cloudless, the sort of blue so deep you think you can almost see through it to the stars beyond. Then I told her about the voice. I think everyone has various voices in their heads and we get used to them. When I was sixteen, one of mine spoke up and suggested it might be quite a kick to masturbate into a pair of my sister’s underpants. She has about a thousand pairs and surely won’t miss one, y’all, the voice opined. (I did not tell Paula Robeson about this particular adolescent adventure.) I’d have to call that the voice of utter irresponsibility, more familiarily known as Mr. Yow, Git Down.
“Mr. Yow, Git Down?” Paula asked doubtfully.
“In honor of James Brown, the King of Soul.”
“If you say so.”
Mr. Yow, Git Down had had less and less to say to me, especially since I’d pretty much given up drinking, and on that day he awoke from his doze just long enough to speak a dozen words, but they were life-changers. Life-savers.
The first five (that’s me, sitting on the edge of the bed): Yow, call in sick, y’all! The next seven (that’s me, plodding toward the shower and scratching my left buttock as I go): Yow, spend the day in Central Park! There was no premonition involved. It was clearly Mr. Yow, Git Down, not the voice of God. It was just a version of my very own voice (as they all are), in other words, telling me to play hooky. Do a little suffin fo’ yo’self, Gre’t God! The last time I could recall hearing this version of my voice, the subject had been a karaoke contest at a bar on Amsterdam Avenue: Yow, sing along wit’ Neil Diamond, fool-git up on stage and git ya bad self down!
“I guess I know what you mean,” she said, smiling a little.
“Do you?”
“Well…I once took off my shirt in a Key West bar and won ten dollars dancing to ‘Honky Tonk Women.’” She paused. “Edward doesn’t know, and if you ever tell him, I’ll be forced to stab you in the eye with one of his tie tacks.”
“Yow, you go, girl,” I said, and her smile became a rather wistful grin. It made her look younger. I thought this had a chance of working.
We walked into Donald’s. There was a cardboard turkey on the door, cardboard Pilgrims on the green tile wall above the steam table.
“I listened to Mr. Yow, Git Down and I’m here,” I said. “But some other things are here, too, and he can’t help with them. They’re things I can’t seem to get rid of. Those are what I want to talk to you about.”
“Let me repeat that I’m no shrink,” she said, and with more than a trace of uneasiness. The grin was gone. “I majored in German and minored in European history.”
You and your husband must have a lot to talk about, I thought. What I said out loud was that it didn’t have to be her, necessarily, just someone.
“All right. Just as long as you know.”
A waiter took our drink orders, decaf for her, regular for me. Once he went away she asked me what things I was talking about.
“This is one of them.” From my pocket I withdrew the Lucite cube with the steel penny suspended inside it and put it on the table. Then I told her about the other things, and to whom they had belonged. Cleve “Besboll been bery-bery good to me” Farrell. Maureen Hannon, who wore her hair long to her waist as a sign of her corporate indispensability. Jimmy Eagleton, who had a divine nose for phony accident claims, a son with learning disabilities, and a Farting Cushion he kept safely tucked away in his desk until the Christmas party rolled around each year. Sonja D’Amico, Light and Bell’s best accountant, who had gotten the Lolita sunglasses as a bitter divorce present from her first husband. Bruce “Lord of the Flies” Mason, who would always stand shirtless in my mind’s eye, blowing his conch on Jones Beach while the waves rolled up and expired around his bare feet. Last of all, Misha Bryzinski, with whom I’d gone to at least a dozen Mets games. I told her about putting everything but Misha’s Punch doll in a trash basket on the corner of Park and 75th, and how they had beaten me back to my apartment, possibly because I had stopped for a second order of General Tso’s chicken. During all of this, the Lucite cube stood on the table between us. We managed to eat at least some of our meal in spite of his stern profile.
When I was finished talking, I felt better than I’d dared to hope. But there was a silence from her side of the table that felt terribly heavy.
“So,” I said, to break it. “What do you think?”
She took a moment to consider that, and I didn’t blame her. “I think that we’re not the strangers we were,” she said finally, “and making a new friend is never a bad thing. I think I’m glad I know about Mr. Yow, Git Down and that I told you what I did.”
“I am, too.” And it was true.
“Now may I ask you two questions?”
“Of course.”
“How much of what they call ‘survivor guilt’ are you feeling?”
“I thought you said you weren’t a shrink.”
“I’m not, but I read the magazines and have even been known to watch Oprah. That my husband does know, although I prefer not to rub his nose in it. So…how much, Scott?”
I considered the question. It was a good one-and, of course, it was one I’d asked myself on more than one of those sleepless nights. “Quite a lot,” I said. “Also, quite a lot of relief, I won’t lie about that. If Mr. Yow, Git Down was a real person, he’d never have to pick up another restaurant tab. Not when I was with him, at least.” I paused. “Does that shock you?”
She reached across the table and briefly touched my hand. “Not even a little.”
Hearing her say that made me feel better than I would have believed. I gave her hand a brief squeeze and then let it go. “What’s your other question?”
“How important to you is it that I believe your story about these things coming back?”
I thought this was an excellent question, even though the Lucite cube was right there next to the sugar bowl. Such items are not exactly rare, after all. And I thought that if she had majored in psychology rather than German, she probably would have done fine.
“Not as important as I thought an hour ago,” I said. “Just telling it has been a help.”
She nodded and smiled. “Good. Now here’s my best guess: someone is very likely playing a game with you. Not a nice one.”
“Trickin’ on me,” I said. I tried not to show it, but I’d rarely been so disappointed. Maybe a layer of disbelief settles over people in certain circumstances, protecting them. Or maybe-probably-I hadn’t conveyed my own sense that this thing was just…happening. Still happening. The way avalanches do.
“Trickin’ on you,” she agreed, and then: “But you don’t believe it.”
More points for perception. I nodded. “I locked the door when I went out, and it was locked when I came back from Staples. I heard the clunk the tumblers make when they turn. They’re loud. You can’t miss them.”
“Still…survivor guilt is a funny thing. And powerful, at least according to the magazines.”
“This…” This isn’t survivor guilt was what I meant to say, but it would have been the wrong thing. I had a fighting chance to make a new friend here, and having a new friend would be good, no matter how the rest of this came out. So I amended it. “I don’t think this is survivor guilt.” I pointed to the Lucite cube. “It’s right there, isn’t it? Like Sonja’s sunglasses. You see it. I do, too. I suppose I could have bought it myself, but…” I shrugged, trying to convey what we both surely knew: anything is possible.