Night Gallery 1 (18 page)

He clutched at her as if by this embrace he could put off death and everything else. "I'm not going to lose you, Katie. I swear to God. I'm not going to lose you—"

The lights began to fade and the figures became even more indistinct.

Lane moved away from Katie and reached for one person after the other and felt nothing. He went from face to face, figure to figure, then back to his father, reaching for him. "Pop," he said, "please . . . Pop."

There was just stillness. "Wait a minute . . . all of you," he said to the figures as they disappeared in front of him. "I can't stay here. I don't have any place. I'm an antique . . . a has-been. I don't have any function here. I don't have any purpose."

He held out his hands in front of him, fists clenched. "You leave me now and I'm marooned!" He pointed toward the window. "I can't survive out there! Pop? Tim? They stacked the deck that way. They fix it so you get elbowed off the earth! You just don't understand what's going on now! The whole bloody world is coming apart at the seams. And I can't hack it." He began to sob. "I swear to God . . . I can't hack it."

He turned, and there was Katie alongside. "Katie," said brokenly, "you're all I've got. I can't lose you . . . I've lost everything else."

And then he was alone save for a workman who had reentered the room. He looked out toward what was once a wall and saw the parking lot alongside. "Jesus, buddy," the workman said, "you wanna get yourself killed? Get the hell out of here. The whole place is gonna collapse in a minute. Now, come on," he ordered, pulling Lane's arm.

Lane found himself out on the sidewalk. The workmen had put up a cordon of rope, and there were several sidewalk superintendents who had gathered to see the final destruction—the last three walls cave in. But Randy Lane didn't wait. He walked away from the place, willing to himself that he wouldn't hear the noise. He wouldn't hear the walls come down. He wanted nothing but silence for the rest of the night. But as he approached the corner he heard something else. There were voices singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow."

He stopped abruptly and looked across the street. There was the cocktail lounge, all lit up. And there were faces at the window. He recognized Pritikin and he also saw Jane Alcott as she moved away from the window and came out the door to walk over to him. She held out her hand, and he took it and followed her.

She led him inside the cocktail lounge. It was crowded with people. He noticed Officer McDonough and a few other of the older men he'd worked with over the years.

Then Pritikin detached himself from a group and approached him. "Randy Lane," he said in a voice Lane had never heard before. "It occurred to some of us . . . your friends . . . that a man shouldn't have twenty-five years go by without being remembered . . . and thanked . . . and reminded that he is held in deep affection and sizeable esteem."

Outside there was the distant noise of a wall collapsing.

"It's to my discredit, Randy, and I ask you to forgive me for not having told you this before . . . and more than once." He raised his glass. "To the past twenty-five years, Mr. Lane, but much more important . . . to the next twenty-five."

Jane Alcott kissed him on the side of his face. Another man shook his hand. Even Harvey Doane, looking mortally wounded tossed him a salute from a bar stool.

Outside another wall collapsed; then somebody handed Lane a glass, and Miss Alcott hugged him and they began to sing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow."

Outside there was no more Tim Riley's Bar. Dust was just settling over the broken walls, the mounds of brick, the slabs of glass. Only the bar remained, gouged and bent. But from this wreckage came the soft sound of "Auld Lang Syne" sung by other voices.

A workman threw a battered sign into the back of the truck, then shut the tailgate. The sign read "Tim Riley's Bar." It rested atop a pile of two-by-fours and a couple of legless chairs. But it was the only thing that could be seen over the sides of the truck, like the forlorn banner of a defeated army.

The truck pulled away and carried "Tim Riley's Bar" with it.

And Randy Lane sipped at his beer and looked at the truck as it went by. Then he looked down into the scrubbed, shining face of Jane Alcott and noted the freshness, the loveliness, and the giving in the eyes. Not like Katie. Blonde, rather than dark, eyes set farther apart, face just a bit older as he remembered her, but a good face—a lovely face. And he felt something stirring . . . something he hadn't felt in a long time.

He smiled at her and put his glass down, then looked at the singing people surrounding him, the ones he'd have to live with and die with for the rest of his time. There was no one else. At long last he realized that.