Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (39 page)

The usual woman answered: “594-3120.”

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Leary, please.”

But instead of the usual warbling ring followed by Leary’s voice, I heard the woman speaking again.

“I’m sorry. We don’t have any Leary here.”

“No Leary?” I said. “Do you have another number where I could reach him? It’s important.”

“I’m sorry, but I have no listing of any kind for a Leary.”

“But I’ve called him at this number before. Just a few weeks ago. There must be some new number for him. Or someone else I could talk to.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help you. Please check the number you dialed.”

“594-3120,” I said impatiently. “Listen, where am I calling exactly?”

“This is 594-3120.”

“Yes, but what organization is this? Who—”

“We have no one at all by the name of Leary.”

“Do you have a David Jenkins?”

“No, I have no Jenkins either.”

“I can absolutely assure you that they will want to hear from me. Tell them that Mr.—”

“We have no procedure for taking a message for anyone not in the directory.”

I hung up, stunned. It had seemed so obvious that they would want to hear from me. It should be the thing they wanted above all other things. It was their whole job, as far as I could tell, to find me. They should have had someone waiting by the telephone full time, just in case I should call, ready to hang on my every word. And instead they had inexplicably cut themselves off from me. I tried to think what it could mean. Suppose I had wanted to surrender? How would I reach them? Somehow, it demoralized me far more than being driven out of the Academy Club. Well, the call had been a stupid idea anyway. Self-deception. It was only the feeling of isolation that had made me want to talk to them — all the rest was rationalization. They had done me a favor, really, by forcing me to recognize it. I shouldn’t be talking to anyone. Not anyone at all. On my own.

Keep moving. Think about it later.

I got myself out of the Midtown Athletic Club and back onto Fifth Avenue. Too many pedestrians at this time of day. I had to choose some place to go, and I desperately wished I could think of something safer than another club. At least there were a lot of them: they could hardly watch them all. If I were careful and always cleared out at the first sign of danger, I should be all right. I decided, almost at random, to try the Seaboard Club first. It was smaller than the Academy Club, but it had a good kitchen and some guest rooms. Walk into the trap.

Arriving at the entrance on East Forty-eighth Street, I noted with relief that there was a single swinging door that seemed to have been there for fifty years and no sign of any alarms or indeed of anything that had been altered in the last generation or two. The doorman, visible through the glass door panel, appeared to be about seventy. I walked in behind a member who was rather older than that and slipped off into a back stair to begin, without much enthusiasm, my reconnaissance of the building.

I had the idea that I would gradually establish the same sort of secure, regular routine here that I had enjoyed in the Academy Club, and with that aim, I set out to learn the geography and staffing of the building and to get my hands on the necessary keys. I did manage to get into the kitchen, but I slept for three nights out in the open on a couch in the main lounge, never managing to get inside a guest room. On the third morning I awoke to find workmen sealing the windows shut on the ground floor, and I walked immediately out the front door.

I stayed two and a half days at the next club, until, while waiting patiently outside the closed door of the manager’s office for a chance to slip inside, I saw Tyler limping down the corridor toward me. I think I must have been relieved to see him alive, but all I felt was dread as I hurried out onto the street.

I kept moving from club to club, but everywhere I went, new locks would appear on kitchen doors, new exit doors would be installed, and new security guards hired. On an employees’ bulletin board in the depths of the Republic Club, next to some sort of printed announcement about disability insurance, I found this notice:

To All Republic Club Staff:

Several midtown clubs have recently reported problems with unauthorized after-hours use of their facilities by an unknown intruder. The intruder is apparently able to enter clubs during the day, posing as a member or a guest and remaining in the building undetected during the night. The intruder is believed to be a male Caucasian, approximately 30 years of age.

All Republic Club Staff are asked to report to the Manager
immediately
any sign of unauthorized use of Club facilities and any theft of food or other Club property. Staff are reminded that the House Rules require that all guests be accompanied by a Club member at all times. No
member or guest is permitted to remain in the Club premises after 11 p.m. It is the responsibility of the evening staff to ensure that the Club is empty before leaving.

I slept someplace different almost every night now. I could not tell how well they were keeping track of me, but more and more I felt that they were right behind me, that people noticed at once that I was there. They noticed the used towels, the wrinkled sheets, the missing food. They heard doors closing, water running, toilets flushing in those cavernous buildings in the middle of the night. Every time I set something down, the little tap would make me jump as if a gun had unexpectedly gone off. Each step I took seemed to make a horribly distinct depression, a perfect footprint in the carpet. Even the faintest, translucent, undigested fiber in my intestine seemed like a flag floating grotesquely in midair. Every sound I made, every movement, seemed excruciatingly gross and obvious, the crudest sort of blunder, and everywhere I saw people watching and listening.

I was out in the streets much more now, as I scurried from one hiding place to another, and I was becoming much better at moving among other people, darting around them as they floated obliviously past. But to me they were all as remote and unreal as a dream. They might as well have been robots or hostile aliens peering malignly out of dead human forms. It had been seven, perhaps eight weeks — I tried to work out the exact number of days, but you begin to lose track and it becomes difficult to concentrate on the calculation — since I had spoken to another human being. That is the most difficult thing about this existence, never exchanging a word with anyone else, the lack of connection. Things seem to drift apart, lose all substance and perspective, as if you were not quite sure whether the wall at the other side of the room is miles off in the distance or so close that you might reach out and touch it. The world fills up with your gigantic, dull thoughts, and when you try to make yourself think clearly, you feel as if you were trying to run underwater.

I knew I had to do something, or I would soon not be able to make any sense of anything at all. I could not go on scurrying from one hiding place to another like some rodent scrabbling into the corners and crevices, nibbling at leftover food, while they blocked up the exits and poked and harried and starved me, until finally they wore me down.

Scuttling through the streets of Manhattan, I could see all around me, for miles in every direction, enormous buildings full of rooms and apartments, into which people locked themselves, safe from the world. There they would eat, drink, bathe, play music, sleep — all hidden from the rest of humanity. I remembered my own apartment, to which I would never be able to return. The trouble was I could not go out and rent another apartment for myself. I needed help, but I did not dare confide in anyone. I had to trick someone into helping me. Since Jenkins would be watching more or less closely my friends and the people I worked with, I would have to turn to someone he could not connect to me, someone I had known only casually, or a long time ago.

I spent several hours in the Ivy Club studying alumni directories and telephone books until I had several promising names. And although I did not expect the calls to be traced, I set out to make each one from a different club, to be safe.

My first call was to a Charles Randolph, whom I had encountered probably a dozen times in my life and spoken to for a total of maybe twenty minutes, probably about golf and interest rates. But we did have some friends in common, and I had an impression of him as an open, jovial sort of person. I thought it likely but not certain that he would recognize my name. I rang Swanson Pendleton, the downtown law firm for which he worked, and a woman’s voice came out of the telephone.

It was the first time anyone had spoken to me in weeks — months — and I could hear the voice with extraordinary clarity: it seemed almost tangible, a solid object I might reach out and touch, but I could somehow not make myself focus on the meaning of the words. She had said the name of the firm. Swanson Pendleton. She was speaking again, saying, “Hello. Hello?” over and over.

“Hello,” I said. How long had she been waiting for me to answer? She was talking again, asking me whom I wanted to speak to.

“Could I speak to Mr. Randolph, please?”

There was another voice now. Mr. Randolph’s office. Asking something.

“This is Nicholas Halloway.”

The telephone was silent for a moment, and suddenly a male voice boomed out.

“Nick Halloway! I’ll be damned. How the hell are you?”

“Hello, Charley.”

“I’m really glad you called. I was just thinking about you the other day.”

I was bewildered by the effusiveness of his response. I was calling him precisely because we did not know each other this well.

“I haven’t seen you in months,” he was saying.

“Actually, no one’s seen much of me lately. I’ve been under a lot of pressure what with one thing and another. Not much chance to get out—”

“Hey, that reminds me. While I think of it, we’re having a bunch of people over for drinks on the twenty-seventh. Around six-thirty. If you’re still in the city, why don’t you come by.”

“Thanks very much. I’ll probably be out of town, but if I’m here I’d love to. Listen, I’m calling to ask a favor, actually. I’m mainly out on the West Coast these days, and last month I finally decided to sublet my apartment. As it turns out, I have to spend the next few months here in New York, and I’m calling you on the off chance that you might know of an empty apartment somewhere. I’d be delighted to pay anything reasonable…”

“Right offhand I don’t… Let me think… There’s bound to be someone who’s away for the summer. Why don’t you give me a number where I can reach you, and I’ll ask around.”

“Actually, it’s probably easier if I get back to you. I appreciate—”

“By the way, just what
are
you doing, anyway? I’ve heard all sorts of things. First, people were saying you’d joined the Hare Krishnas, and then I got grilled by the
FBI
for your security check. The Hare Krishnas require a security clearance these days?”

Jesus.

“The FBI?” I asked stupidly.

“I guess it was the
FBI
. It was for a security clearance, anyway. Isn’t that the FBI? They must have interrogated me for over an hour. ‘When did you first meet him?’ ‘When did you last see him?’ ‘Who are his friends?’ That was the big thing: the guy wrote down the name of every person I could think of who you might conceivably have ever said hello to. Incredible. Are you infiltrating the Hare Krishnas or something? Do you wear one of those robes? I’d like to get a look at that.”

“Charley, I have to run now, but—”

“I guess you can’t talk about it. But I’ll tell you, everyone is really curious about what you’re doing. You’ve turned yourself into a celebrity. Why don’t you try to come by on the twenty-seventh. There’ll be a lot of people you—”

“I think it’s just that day that I have to go out of town. It’s a shame—”

“Well, just come by if you’re here. And I’ll ask around about the apartment. Tell me, would there be any Hare Krishnas going in and out? That might make a difference.”

“Absolutely not. Listen, Charley, thanks a lot. I’ll be in touch with you.”

I hung up and mentally crossed off most of the other names on my list. Jenkins was being more thorough than I had imagined. Why a security clearance? Why not just say I was wanted for some crime? Arson, for example. Assault with a deadly weapon. But probably this way they were getting more cooperation and attracting less attention. Anyway, I had some names they were not likely to come up with.

At the next telephone I found myself telling one Ronald Maguire, “You probably don’t remember me, but my name is Nick Halloway.” I paused a moment to give him a chance, but there was nothing but stony silence, so I went on. “We worked together one summer painting houses on the Cape.”

“I spent a summer on Cape Cod,” he said.

“Beautiful place. That was the time of life. Wonderful summer.”

“Yes. How can I help you?”

“Those were the days, all right. I’ll tell you, Ron, I think of those days often, and many’s the time I’ve been on the point of picking up the phone and seeing what’s become of you.” There was no response from the other end of the line, so I plunged bravely forward. “What
are
you doing these days, anyway?”

“I’m chief financial officer for Gurney Shoes.” He said it absolutely flat so that you couldn’t tell whether it was a cause for jubilation or despair.

“Gee, that’s great, Ron. That’s really exciting.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

Friendly devil.

“Actually, as long as I’ve got you on the phone, there is something I could ask you. I gather you’re living in Manhattan. You don’t by any chance know of an empty apartment in Manhattan I might sublet for a month or two this summer, do you?”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know of anything like that.”

“Well, it’s not important. I thought you might just happen to know of something.” I was about to say a final farewell to Ron when an idea occurred to me. “Golly, Ron, I almost forgot my main reason for calling. I’m doing some work for the government that involves a security clearance, and someone might be calling on you at some point to ask a few questions. Standard stuff. Just as a courtesy I wanted to let you know and apologize for any inconvenience.”