The Waiting Room (5 page)

He nodded. "Yeah, lunch," he said just above a whisper, as if his throat were sore. We were standing in front of one of those tiny newsstands that are maybe twice the size of an outhouse and have various men's magazines clipped up under the roof edge. The man behind the counter—short, chubby, and balding—waved us away: "Hey, don't stand right there, yer blockin' my customers, go talk somewhere else."

"Okay," I said, and because I was still holding Abner's arm, I led him to the edge of the curb. "Are you living here, in New York, Abner?"

He shook his head. "No. Long Island."

"Long Island," I said. "You know you look like hell?"

He nodded. "Yes, I know."

I was getting embarrassed. It was clear that he didn't want to talk to me. But I wasn't about to be put off again. "Are you in some kind of trouble, Abner?"

He ignored that. He said, "I thought you died. In Viet Nam."

I put on a big false smile. "Do I look like I died in Viet Nam, Abner?"

He shook his head. "No." He gave me a long once-over. "No, you don't."

"Besides, I wrote you when I got back."

He thought a moment, then nodded vaguely. "Oh, yes. I remember."

"Why'd you drop out of sight, Abner?"

He grinned, again as if embarrassed. "I don't know. I guess I was trying to find myself. Wasn't everyone trying to find themselves back then?"

"Sure. But hell, Abner, I thought we were friends—"

"We were," he cut in, and looked pleadingly at me. "We still are. It's just that, back then—" Another pause; he looked very much at sea. "It's just that I was trying to break away—"

"From what?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Attachments, I guess. People. I'm sorry."

I studied him for a few moments. He was clearly in discomfort over seeing me, clearly wanted to be somewhere else. "Hell," I said, "that was twenty years ago, Abner. This is now."

"Sure," he said, trying hard to sound enthusiastic.

He was dressed badly. In Bangor he had never dressed well; he sometimes wore striped pants with checked shirts, or forgot to remove tags from new jeans, or wore colors that clashed, and I realized then that it was because he was usually preoccupied or, at least, that he was trying to convince people that he was preoccupied, so he couldn't care less about style. Now, on the corner of 38th Street and Second Avenue that chilly mid-March afternoon, it wasn't a matter of taste or style. He looked like a bum. His faded, shiny brown pants hung from him like paper bags. He carried a soiled and threadbare green cloth raincoat over his arm, his pink long-sleeved shirt had its two middle buttons missing, and his aged Wallabees were separating at the seams. I nodded to indicate all this: "You know, Abner," I said, "if this were Bangor, they'd send you to the Salvation Army for the night."

He ignored me again. "I'm glad you didn't die in Viet Nam. I'm glad you're alive," he said.

"Thanks. So am I."

Around us knots of people moved quickly and efficiently about, jaywalked with mechanical precision, stepped hurriedly into cabs. New Yorkers move as if they're in a tunnel whose walls crowd their shoulders and whose ceiling is an inch too low.

Abner said, "I've got to get going. There are people waiting for me."

"Sure," I said, and let go of his arm. "Sorry. Maybe you could tell me where you're living, Abner. I'd like us to get together, if that's possible."

He shook his head. "It isn't possible. I wish it were—God, I wish it were, but it isn't."

I got jostled a bit by a woman who used her umbrella as a kind of prod. "Move, please," she commanded, and I stepped away from her. I nodded at her as she bustled on, across 38th Street, using her umbrella in the gathering crowd every few seconds. "Lively city, isn't it, Abner?"

"Don't follow me, please, Sam," he said.

"Follow you? Why would I follow you?"

He shook his head briskly. "I don't know. Of course you wouldn't," and without another word, he hurried across 38th Street, against the light, so several cars had to screech to a halt.

I kept my eye on him. I saw him turn down 39th Street, toward Third Avenue. I followed him.

He never looked back. He moved easily through the crowds, as if he'd been doing it all his life. And although I lost track of him now and then, he was easy to spot again because he's at least a head taller than most New Yorkers.

He walked to Fifth Avenue and 25th Street, where he caught a bus. I was a street block behind him, and when I got to the bus stop I asked a young man giving away twelve-exposure rolls of Kodak film—along with invitations to use it at Nash's Nudes in the West Village—where the bus was going.

"Staten Island ferry," he said, and pushed a roll of film at me.

"Thanks," I said, pocketed the film, and, after ten minutes' worth of trying, hailed a cab that would take me to the Staten Island ferry. I'd give the film to Abner as a gesture of apology for following him.

~ * ~

It was the first time I'd ridden the ferry and I was amazed how crowded it was. I even speculated aloud, to a red-haired woman in her early twenties who was, out of necessity, standing shoulder to shoulder with me at the railing, that maybe it would sink with so many people and cars on it. She smiled thinly, said, "No, I don't think so," and looked away.

I'd been able to spot Abner a couple of minutes before. He was on a lower deck, with his elbows on the rail, his hands folded, and his head down slightly, as if he were in thought. From above he looked less like a bum and more like someone who was just mildly eccentric, as, I think, half the people in New York are. He was standing very still, although every once in a while he unfolded his hands, interlocked his fingers, and brought his hands up, so his forefingers were at his lips. It seemed, at these times, that he didn't look so much in thought as
lost
, somehow.

"I thought it would sink, too," said the woman standing next to me.

I looked at her, surprised. "Sorry?" I said.

"I said I thought it would sink once, too. When I first started riding it. It sits so low in the water, you know." She nodded toward the water. Her long red hair fell forward over her shoulders.

"Yes," I said, "it does sit kind of low in the water, doesn't it?"

She nodded, so more of her hair fell forward. "But it hasn't sunk yet, so I doubt that it ever will," she said.

Her eyes were a light green, like the underside of a leaf, and they didn't linger long on me. She looked back, at the water. "My name's Serena," she said, and looked at me again.

"Serena," I said noncommittally. "That's a nice name. "

"And yours?" she asked.

"Sam Feary," I answered.

She looked away, nodded once, slowly, as if in thought, then looked back at me and said, "Hello, Sam." She looked away again.

I focused on Abner. He was in the same spot, and in the same position, but after a couple of seconds he turned his head, looked directly at me, and appeared suddenly crestfallen, as if he had just gotten bad news. Reading his lips, I saw him mutter, "Dammit all to hell!" then he shook his head and mouthed the word "No!" emphatically at me.

I whispered to myself, "My God, what's wrong with you, my friend?! What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into?"

"I beg your pardon?" said the red-haired woman with me at the railing.

I looked quickly at her, embarrassed. "No, I'm sorry," I said. "I was talking about someone else, I was talking about him, down there," and I inclined my head to the right to indicate Abner on the deck below.

A small grin appeared on her mouth, then vanished. "Oh," she said. "I understand."

"You really don't," I said. "He's an old friend, he's someone I knew in high school—"

She looked quizzically at me. "I don't know you, Sam. You don't know me. So there's nothing at all you have to explain." She was saying,
Please, leave me alone
. So I did.

And when I looked back at Abner, he was looking up at me, grinning in a flat, sad way, a kind of "I told you so!" grin.

I mouthed at him, "I'm coming with you."

He mouthed back, "Of course you are," pointing stiffly back the way the ferry had come. "That way!"

Twenty minutes later, when the ferry unloaded, I went to where he was still standing, on the lower deck. "I thought you lived on Long Island, Abner," I said.

He nodded glumly. "I do."

"Then why are you on the Staten Island ferry?"

He shrugged. "I was trying to throw you off." He grinned weakly at me. "Stupid, huh?"

I thought a moment. "Yes," I said. "Pretty stupid." I paused. "So what do we do now?"

He shrugged again. "We go back, I guess. And we take the subway to Queens."

"Oh," I said.

And that's what we did.

~ * ~

He had a car parked in Queens. It was a decade-old red Chevy Malibu two-door, with a bumper sticker on the back that read, "This Car Climbed Pike's Peak," and another beside it that read, next to the stylized drawing of a panda bear, "Animals Love You, Too."

Abner nodded at the passenger door. "Get in, Sam."

"Does this thing actually run?" I asked. He ignored me. I got in, watched him slide into the driver's seat, toss his raincoat into the back seat, fish in his pants pockets for his keys, which was difficult because he was sitting down, and start the car, after several tries.

We rode silently for a while through Queens. At last, he said, "One day, Sam, you're going to look back on this day and you're going to say to yourself, ‘Why the hell didn't I just let him be?'"

"That sounds pretty melodramatic, Abner."

"Don't interrupt. I'm telling you the truth here. It will probably be something like the way you felt when you came home from Viet Nam. You probably said to yourself, 'God, why didn't I just go to Canada?' or, 'Why didn't I fake some kind of disease at the physical?' It'll probably be the same kind of thing, Sam."

"I try not to look backward, Abner."

"We all look backward." He took a right at Queens Boulevard and Cosco Street, pulled over to the curb, looked earnestly at me. "I'm going to give you the chance to get out now, Sam. I'd advise you to take it.

"No way, Jose`," I said. "If you're in some kind of trouble—"

He cut in, "Let me put it to you this way, Sam. What if you came across a box, some kind of box on the street—no, I'll amend that. Let's say someone mailed you a box with a note that said there was one of two things inside the box, that there was either a spider—" He stopped, apparently to search for the right words, went on, "A poisonous spider, a black widow spider, a brown recluse. Or, maybe, that there was a stack of thousand-dollar bills in the box. But the only way you could find out which one it was was to stick your hand inside. You couldn't just peek in with a flashlight; you couldn't prop the lid open and peek in with a flashlight, you actually had to stick your hand in and
feel
. Tell me, Sam, what do you think you'd do?"

"I'd probably throw the box in the trash, Abner, because I don't know
anyone
who'd send me a box with a stack of thousand-dollar bills in it."

He nodded. "That's good, Sam," he said, "because no one would." His earnest look changed dramatically to one of pleading and concern. "Please, Sam, get out of the car. For your own sake, for my sake, I'm begging you to get out of the car."

I said again, "But, Abner, if you're in some kind of trouble, I want to help you. Just please, tell me, what the hell is going on."

"Hell is a good word for it, Sam." He paused. "So you're not going to get out?"

"No," I said.

We were on Highway 12 going east out of Queens when a motorcycle cop drew up alongside us and motioned to Abner to stop. Abner nodded, and pulled off the road into a little parking area that overlooked a housing complex under construction. The cop stopped behind the car, swaggered up to the driver's door, and leaned over. Abner rolled the window down. "Something wrong?" Abner asked.

"I dunno," said the cop. "Mebbe, mebbe not." He was a typical New York cop. He had short black hair, a face that was flat, expressionless, and astoundingly average—except for a bright red J-shaped birthmark on the right side of his jaw—and his tone was clearly designed to announce that the only friend he had in this world was the .38 police special strapped on his hip. He nodded at me and said to Abner, "Who's that?"

I began, "It's none—"

Abner put his hand on my arm, glanced at me, and whispered, "Let me handle this, Sam. Please." Then he looked at the cop. "He's just a friend, Officer. Could I ask why you stopped me?"

"Sure," said the cop. "You can ask. Go ahead and ask."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I leaned forward, so the cop had to look at me. "Hey, buddy, if you stopped my friend for a
reason
, then tell him the reason, but if you stopped him just for the hell of it—"

Again Abner put his hand on my arm. "Sam, please—I know how to handle these people—"