Memory (Hard Case Crime) Read online

  Once again there was no possible response. Cole reached for his cigarettes, to have something to do.

  Benny said, “Anyway, it’s okay if I rack out on the sofa here a few nights, isn’t it? Till I find another place.”

  Cole stared at him. “Here? You can’t stay here.”

  And now they were both amazed. Benny said, “What the hell? What kind of a way is that to act?”

  “You’ve got to go away,” Cole told him; there was no question in his mind. This had nothing to do with making believe for Benny, or anything else. Cole had to have his nest to himself, that’s all.

  Benny said, “Come on, man! You waltz in with no word of warning, you don’t give me a chance—”

  “You can’t stay here.”

  “Listen, buddy, you sublet this place! You sublet it to me for while you were gone.”

  “Well, I’m back.”

  “Yeah? Well, I paid the goddamn rent this month!”

  “I can’t help that.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do? I can’t go look for a pad till tomorrow.”

  “Sleep on someone else’s sofa.”

  “You owe me twenty-five bucks, man,” Benny told him, angry and cold. “I paid a full month on this place, seventy-five bills, so you owe me one-third. Twenty-five bucks.”

  “I don’t have any money now.”

  “Yeah, well, tough. You cough up the twenty-five clams, or I don’t go anywhere. What the hell you think you’re trying to pull?”

  Cole said, “I’ll pay you when I get some money. But now you’ve got to go.”

  “And the hell I do, too.”

  I’m going to have to fight him, Cole thought, and it didn’t matter anymore what Benny thought of him. All that mattered was getting Benny out.

  He got to his feet, moving slowly from his weariness, and said, “You’ve got to go away, Benny.”

  “Oh, yeah? Who’s going to make me?”

  Cole walked around him and over to the kitchenette corner, where the formica-topped table and the four kitchen chairs stood. He picked up one of the chairs and held it like a lion-tamer. “You’ve got to pack your things now,” he said.

  Benny looked at the chair with wary disbelief and a hardening of his facial muscles. “You’ll be sorry for this,” he said.

  Holding the chair, Cole felt a tingling in his mind, as though some memory of danger or disaster lurked there, trying to come out into the open. He found he was loathing himself for holding the chair—not for wanting Benny out or trying to force Benny out, but simply for the physical act of holding the chair—and a steady repugnance was filling him. All at once, he felt a total sympathy for Benny, understood Benny’s feelings at his own unexpected arrival, understood Benny’s feelings at thus being shoved out into the night with no home to call his own, and he knew he couldn’t do it. With a feeling of great relief, of disaster averted, he put the chair down again. (In his mind, faintly, there was an image of the chair as having eyes in the bottom of its legs. When he had held the chair up, the eyes had been looking at Benny, planning him evil and harm, but now that the chair was put down again the eyes were blinded, shut against the floor.) “Never mind,” he muttered, looking away from Benny’s wary face. “Stay here tonight.”

  “That’s what I said all along.”

  “But you’ve got to leave tomorrow.”

  “Don’t you worry, man.”

  Cole turned away and went through the doorway on the other side of the kitchen table. At last he would see the rest of the apartment.

  A short hall, with a window on the left and a door on the right. A yellow bare bulb hung from a black chain attached to the ceiling, giving a soft light that soothed and smoothed the old walls. Cole pushed open the door on the right and saw a long narrow bathroom with hexagonal white tiles on the floor, square white tiles halfway up the walls, and flat gray paint the rest of the way up. The tub was old-fashioned and old, with rust in the enamel around the drain. There was a copy of Playboy on the floor beside the toilet.

  Had he know this time, in advance? The hall he had recognized in the instant of seeing it, in the way that was usual with him tonight, but it seemed now that he had anticipated the bathroom by a second or two, that he had seen the bathroom in his mind’s eye for just a fraction of time before his hand had turned the knob and pushed open the door for him to see it in reality. But he couldn’t be sure; he told himself fatalistically that it was more than likely wishful thinking.

  The hall was no more than six or seven feet long, and at the opposite end was another door, open two or three inches. Logic, rather than memory, told him that beyond this door was a bedroom, and the end of the apartment. He stood in the hall a minute longer, testing himself, trying to visualize the bedroom, but he could get no more than faint glimmerings.

  Then the door behind him opened and Benny came blundering into the small space. Cole whirled, as angry and embarrassed as if he’d been caught abusing himself, crying, “What do you want? What are you doing here?”

  “For Christ’s sake, man.” Benny took a backward step, startled and aggrieved. “What’s got into you? I gotta get my stuff, that’s all.”

  Angry in defeat this time, Cole pushed past him, heading toward the living room again, saying, “Let me know when you’re done.” He wouldn’t go into the bedroom until it was completely and indisputably and finally his.

  Benny said more things, but Cole didn’t pay attention to them. He paced back and forth in the living room, pausing to light a cigarette, and then pacing again, restless and impatient and irritated. He spied his suitcase and canvas bag on the floor, and his coat over on the sofa, and went and got them, and when Benny came back from the bedroom, his hands full of clothing and magazines, Cole was standing there holding his luggage, the coat slung over one shoulder, the cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

  “It’s all yours,” said Benny, with elaborate sarcasm.

  Cole ignored him. Nothing would spoil things for him now. He went past Benny and into the hall, where he set the luggage down and carefully closed the door. There was no key in the lock, but maybe he wouldn’t need it. Maybe Benny would keep away for the rest of the night.

  He picked up his gear again, and went on into the bedroom. It was a twelve-foot square, scantily furnished. An ancient gray rug covered most of the floor, and the exposed flooring near the walls was scratched and dull and dirty, probably years since its last waxing. The sheets on the double bed were gray and wrinkled, and the blankets were thin and harsh-looking, one green and one rose. There was a small metal bureau painted dark brown, and a small metal desk painted gray, and an antique bedside table of dark wood with gray-white glass circles marring its top, and another wooden kitchen chair like the ones in the living room. The closet door had a mirror on it. There was nothing on the walls here, no paintings or photos or calendars or pennants or anything; into his mind came a picture of his bedroom in the Malloy house.

  But this place, bare and austere though it was, contained for him the faint glimmerings of recognition, and he knew he was home. He set his luggage down again, and dropped his coat on the chair, and stood looking around. The presence of Benny in the other room, taciturn and mulish, detracted from his pleasure, but still and all he was home. Now, finally, alone.

  And now he could realize just how exhausted he was. He had no plans for tomorrow, no ideas or purposes or goals, but he was too tired to think about it. Tomorrow would be soon enough; right now, he had to sleep. And never mind the gray sheets, tomorrow would be soon enough to take care of them, too.

  He undressed. Just before going to bed, he put the kitchen chair against the bedroom door.

  15

  He awoke slowly, in gradual stages, like surfacing from some deep dark sea. He was conscious at first of himself, his body sprawled in warmth on its side, covered by the warm slight weight of the blankets, and his head burrowed into the pillow, with light a faint awareness only on his left eyelid. He stretched, not yet opening his
eyes, and his arms and legs slid out to new and cold areas of the sheets, bringing him closer to wakefulness. He smiled in sleepy content, and rolled onto his back; his eyes were still shut.

  He wondered what time it was, where Mrs. Malloy was. Was it Sunday? If it was Sunday, he didn’t have to go to work. Maybe he was supposed to take Edna to a movie tonight. No, it was probably a workday.

  He opened his eyes, and he wasn’t home; he was in a strange room with bare walls.

  He sat up, so startled that the backs of his hands started to tingle, that his throat closed, and then in a wash of relief he recognized the room, and remembered the journey, and knew he was home.

  Had Benny gone? He cocked his head and listened; nothing, no sound.

  He got up from the bed, noticing in the pale daylight that the sheets were really very dirty, gray and limp looking. What kind of person was Benny, anyway? He’d even brought a girl in here, with sheets like that.

  Cole’s body itched; he went into the bathroom and ran water for a shower. Standing under the water, he let himself relax. All the doings of yesterday had left him passive this morning; he filled his attention with physical details of the present, the feeling of the lukewarm water in the shower, the look of the narrow white bathroom, the sound of the water spraying on his back and into the tub.

  Gradually, a curiosity began to grow in him, an almost impersonal desire to know about his past. What sort of person was he, that he called this place home, that he knew such people as Benny, that he lived and worked in New York? What work did he do, for that matter? He knew he was a warehouseman back in that town, but was he a warehouseman in New York? It didn’t seem right, didn’t seem to fit what he had seen and what he felt.

  After his shower, he went back to the bedroom and dressed. He would have to explore in here—and in the living room, too—but only after he was sure Benny was gone. He wanted to learn about himself, but privately, without observers; particularly without Benny.

  Was Benny still in the apartment? Had he guessed Cole’s weakness?

  Cole hesitated a minute or two after he finished dressing, not wanting to go into the living room, afraid Benny hadn’t left yet. But it was silly to wait here, he’d have to leave this room sometime. Besides, it was his place, it was home.

  He went into the living room and Benny was there, on the far side of the room, next to the crumbling sofa. He was dressed just as he’d been last night, and he was packing a suitcase in a slow and surly manner. He looked over his shoulder at Cole and said, “Well? You still bein’ a bastard?”

  Cole was surprised. He didn’t mind Benny at all this morning, didn’t care one way or the other about him. Maybe it was because Benny was packing a suitcase. Cole said, meaning it, “I’m sorry. I was tired last night.”

  Benny muttered, but didn’t say anything out loud, and went back to his slow packing. While he kept up his mumbling and muttering, Cole walked over to the kitchenette, found a jar of instant coffee, and put some water on to boil. Cole understood that Benny craved an argument, perhaps a fight, but was unable to bring himself to do it, was waiting for Cole to make the first aggressive move. This pleased Cole, and reassured him; whoever he had been in the past, he had been dominant over such as Benny. All he had to do was keep Benny from finding out how defenseless he was now, and he’d be all right.

  “Hey.”

  Cole turned, and Benny was standing by the door, wearing an overcoat and a cap, carrying two suitcases and a blue canvas laundry bag. Cole waited; there was nothing for them to say to one another.

  But Benny said, “Just remember. You owe me twenty-five bucks.”

  Oh, that. Cole nodded, and said, “I’ll pay you when I get some money.”

  “You can leave it with Jim. You remember Jim?”

  Immediately Cole was afraid of a trap. Did Benny have suspicions after all? Was this somehow a test question? Anything Benny or anyone else might say about Cole’s memory would make him instantly alert and wary.

  What should he answer? Yes? No? If he remembered everything, would the everything include Jim?

  He couldn’t chance an answer either way. More brusquely than he’d intended, he said, “I’ll get the money to you, don’t worry.”

  “I won’t worry,” said Benny angrily, but it was hollow defiance. He pulled open the door, picked up his luggage, and stamped out and down the hall, leaving the door open.

  Cole closed it, and turned, and looked at what was finally his.

  Here was the world: A long narrow living room, a long narrow bathroom, a small square bedroom, a shallow kitchenette. There were closets to be opened, drawers to be looked into, a medicine cabinet to be seen in the bathroom, and high-hung kitchen cabinets to be mapped. There was a whole day of exploration ahead.

  Wondering where to start, his eye fell on the record player on the big scarred table in the living room. Music would be good; it would help to fill the empty spaces. The two main rooms of the apartment were badly underfurnished, barren and familiar.

  He went over and looked through the records, searching for the kind of music he had always liked on the radio at the Malloys’—soft lushness of strings, ballads hesitantly exposed—but instead he found album after album of aural brass knuckles; shrill-trumpeted big bands, hard cold self-confident male singers with booze-harshened voices, mechanically seductive female singers who seemed to be threatening the microphone with fellatio.

  Were these Benny’s records? They seemed to suit Benny’s personality better than Cole’s. Still, he knew in a way too tenuous to be called memory that these were his own records, bought by himself.

  “Did I like these?” He asked the question aloud, startling himself. But the records were even more startling. How much have I changed? he wondered, and felt a stirring of apprehension. Who had he been?

  He selected an instrumental album at last and put it on, turning the bass control full on and the treble control full off. What came out sounded like music from another apartment on another floor; it pleased him.

  Now to begin. He picked up his cup of coffee, and went on into the bedroom. The desk in the far corner seemed the best place to begin. It was very small, made of metal, about a yard wide and fifteen inches deep. On its top were a calendar from a liquor store, a coffee cup full of pencils and ballpoint pens, and a telephone. It all seemed very official; looking at it, he wondered if he had operated some sort of business in the past, something from his home. Maybe he’d been an insurance agent or something like that.

  He felt almost frightened when he sat down in the chair in front of the desk. Here is where he would begin to learn about himself, begin to find out who Paul Cole was and had been, who he was supposed to be.

  He kept hesitating. Would it all be like Benny, and like the phonograph records? His old self had liked those records enough to buy them and to own a phonograph on which to play them. His old self had called Benny friend. Would the things he’d find now be more of the same? And if it was, what could he do then? If the Paul Cole from the past was someone he could no longer like or respect or emulate, what on earth could he do next?

  A part of him wanted not to find out, wanted to get up from this desk right now and clear out of here, take a bus back to that town or somewhere else, it didn’t matter, anywhere, not worry about any of this, not know about it or care about it or even remember it existed. But his curiosity was too strong. Having found this place, he couldn’t leave it without knowing. If it turned out to be all like Benny and the records, there was nothing he could do about it. Time enough then to leave here and take that bus.

  So here was the desk. On the left were three shallow drawers and on the right a fairly deep storage well. He started with the drawers first, and in the top left he struck paydirt right away; three thick brown envelopes marked Income Tax in pencil. He opened them, and they contained carbon copies of his tax forms for the last three years, and employee’s copies of his W-2 forms, and sheafs of receipts.

  Here it all was, right her
e! The first thing to hand, and it was the whole answer at once. He touched the forms with new excitement, all hesitancy gone, going through his find like a detective caught up in the fascination of a complex case, looking for clues to himself.

  He was an actor.

  Was that possible? He frowned, starting at the wall directly in front of him, thinking back to the afternoons in the Malloy living room, watching the soap operas on television. They were actors. And was he one of them, after all?

  An actor. He didn’t know; it seemed neither right nor wrong. In actors on the tiny television screen he had always sensed some inner spark, some magnification from within, like the light of a glowworm; he sensed none of that in himself. And yet, it didn’t seem impossible that he had been one of these, and the proof of it was here in these papers.

  Reading them, he saw that Paul Cole had been in fact moderately successful. Three years ago he had earned just over two thousand dollars from his profession, with an additional fifteen hundred from a temporary office help firm and a furniture moving company. Two years ago his acting income had increased to thirty-two hundred dollars, with a further thousand dollars from the temporary office help firm. And last year he had earned fifty-six hundred dollars from acting, and had needed to do no other work at all.

  It was sometimes difficult, with just the employer’s name, to figure out exactly what kind of acting job each one had been, but with the help of the deductions page and the receipts he finally filled in most of the blanks. Three years ago he had worked in three off-Broadway plays, none of them lasting more than two months, and had been an extra for two filmed television commercials, and an extra on one live television show. Two years ago there had been another trio of off-Broadway plays, three more filmed television commercials in which he had been an extra, an industrial film for an oil company, and more work on live television; possibly soap opera itself. Wouldn’t that be odd, if he had actually played a role in one of those soap operas? But wouldn’t Mrs. Malloy have recognized him, then? No; you don’t expect to see actors in real life, and unless they’re really famous you won’t recognize them.