The Waiting Room (8 page)

That's the way it seemed with Abner, too, there in his dismal Long Island beach house. He was someone drenched in his own pain, someone who was reaching out to me—big brother Sam—telling me to listen, to lift him up, out of the world of confusion he'd gotten himself into.

I went to bed feeling like I was being slowly pinned to a wall by a semi.

~ * ~

I woke at just past three-thirty that morning, feeling ravenous. It came to me that although I'd planned on sending out for a pizza during the game, I never had, so my poor stomach had staged a minor revolution.

I threw back the blanket, swung my feet to the floor, and sat up.

I sleep naked, and this late March night was damned chilly, so I reached for my pants, which were on the back of a chair near the bed. I heard low, suppressed giggling from the far corner of the room.

It was very dark in the room—the only light was the diffused yellow glow of a streetlamp four stories below—but I hurried into my pants, muttered, "Christ's sake, Abner, this is going too far," switched on a reading lamp over the bed, and looked at the corner where the giggling had come from.

There were two young girls, fourteen or fifteen, both in knee-length pink taffeta gowns, each with a blue corsage in hand, standing very stiffly and solemnly between the bookcase on one wall and the radiator on the other, and I said to them, my voice rising in pitch because they'd surprised me, "Who the hell are
you
?"

Their mouths opened in unison. Two soft, suppressed giggles came out, but their bodies remained stiff, as if everything but their lips had been painted there, on the beige wall. And again their mouths opened, again two soft, suppressed giggles danced about in the room.

Below, on the street, a car horn blared.

Above me, in an apartment rented by a guy I knew worked the 8:00
P.M.
to 2:00
A.M.
shift, a radio was switched on, and a late-sixties protest song filtered down through the ceiling.

And from the corner, where the two young girls in pink taffeta stood so very, very stiffly, I caught the odor of waterlogged, decaying wood. I whispered at them, "Who in the hell
are
you?"

From above, the sixties protest song grew a little louder.

And the two girls in pink taffeta melted into the wall like ice.

I called Abner's number again from the kitchen phone; he answered on the first ring. I heard him say sleepily, "Yes? Hello," and I screamed at him, "Goddammit, Abner, who
are
these people?"

"Sam? Is that you?"

"Damn it, Abner—I wake up . . . I wake up, and I turn the light on, and there are these two
girls
in my room, and they're
giggling
at me—"

"Sam, I'm sorry; I warned you—"

"I'm coming over there, Abner, right now, and we're going to hash this out."

"You're coming here, to the house?" He sounded incredulous, happy. "That's great, Sam. Really. I'll make some coffee for you, we'll talk, we'll talk… Sam, this is very good news, I need a friend here—"

My anger began to fade under the influence of his sudden good feeling. "Sure, Abner," I sighed. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Great." A pause, then, "Sam?"

"Yes?"

"Do you remember the way here, Sam? To the house."

"Good Lord, Abner, of course I do." It was my pride speaking, and it spoke far too soon.

"Then I'll be waiting for you," Abner said.

~ * ~

I was on the subway an hour later. It was not quite five in the morning, and the train was all but empty, except for a young Puerto Rican couple necking in front of me, an older man in a stiff gray pinstripe suit in the seat to my right, and a red-haired woman at the rear of the car, seated facing away from me.

I was tired, I was hungry, and my head had started to ache shortly after I'd left the apartment. (I'd dressed like a madman, and didn't realize until I was on the street that my jacket was buttoned crookedly, that my shoes were untied, and that I'd forgotten to put underwear on.) I busied myself with reading some of the transit advertising—“Join the Coffee Generation," "Join the Pepsi Generation," "Read
The Me Generation
." I whispered that "generation" seemed to be the word of the hour.

"Sorry?" said the man in the stiff gray pinstripe suit.

I shook my head and explained that I'd been talking to myself, that I hadn't meant to disturb him.

He smiled. He had a round, smooth pink face, high cheekbones, and big, watery hazel eyes. He was thin, and his Adam's apple bobbed as he talked. "Oh," he said in a creaking, high-pitched voice, "what was it that you were saying?"

I thought of telling him it was none of his business, but he seemed harmless enough. I raised my chin to indicate the transit signs above him. "'Generation,'" I said, "seems to be the word of the hour."

"Does it? Why's that?" His congenial smile became quizzical.

Again I indicated the transit signs over his head. "I was talking about the advertising up there, above you."

He leaned my way in his seat and craned his head around to look at the advertising. "Hiram Walker?" he said. "I don't understand." He straightened, looked at me.

I forced myself to smile. My headache was gathering strength. "No, no, I mean ... if you look again, you'll see that some of the advertising has the word ‘generation' in it---"

"It's thirty-eight years, you know," he cut in happily. "A generation is thirty-eight years. Most people don't know that. I know it. I'd guess that we're"—he pointed quickly at his chest, then quickly at me—“a good generation apart—"

"Yes, sir," I said; I was growing annoyed with him. "I suppose we are."

"But I don't see what it's got to do with the advertising." He looked again. "'Be a Pepper'? What's a Pepper?" He looked back at me. "What's a Pepper?—I know what salt is." He chuckled to himself.

I nodded. The headache was very bad now; I put my hand to my temple.

The man said, "You talk to yourself quite a bit, do ya? I had an aunt once who talked to herself from morning till night, nonstop—she talked about her
life
, she talked about her children, she talked about her lovers—I guess she probably had as many lovers as a dog has fleas—and she talked about all the Presidents she'd seen come and go, 'specially Hoover, 'specially Roosevelt—Teddy, not Franklin Delano—"

"Please," I cut in sharply, "I'd rather just sit quietly."

"And she talked about her houses, and she talked about her"—I closed my eyes; I realized he was going to rattle on for quite some time—"and she talked about her cats, she had plenty of cats, and she talked about everything under the sun from morning till night—"

"If you don't mind . . ." I stopped; I was on the verge of shouting.

"And she talked about sin, and she talked about God, and she talked about—" He stopped suddenly. I heard a harsh, gurgling noise. I opened my eyes, looked.

The red-haired woman looked back; she was standing behind him, her eyes wide, hands hard on his throat, and he was groping crazily in the seat, eyes as wide as hers.

"Love," she shrieked, "is sacrifice. Love is giving, and taking.
Now
do you love me,
now
do you love me?"

The Puerto Rican couple vaulted from their seats, ran to the car ahead.

The man in the gray pinstripe suit went limp under her hands.

It was only then that I realized that the woman was the same woman I'd met on the ferry, the same woman who'd knocked at my door.

I threw myself across the aisle at her, caught my groin on the seat edge, tumbled over so her heels were near my mouth, grabbed her by the ankle, yanked hard. She fell toward the window, hit it with the side of her head, and crumpled so her thighs fell across my arm, so her stomach went into my shoulder and a gust of foul air escaped her.

I grabbed my groin and launched into a fit of panic-ridden cursing that continued a good minute or two, until, at last, I pushed myself to my feet and saw that except for the body of the man in the pinstripe suit—who had fallen over the seat, mouth open wide, feet on the floor—the car was empty.

The train stopped moments later.

It was clear that the man in the pinstripe suit was dead.

A well-dressed black man in his early thirties got on. He saw the man in the suit, gave him a quick once-over, and glanced questioningly at me.

"Bum," I managed, "dead drunk," and shrugged. The man shrugged, too, then turned and found a seat at the back of the car.

Minutes later, I was on East 57th Street and looking for another subway entrance so I could get to Queens. The Manhattan sky was a still, dark gray, only a little lighter than the old man's pinstripe suit, and the air had a grisly cold snap to it that smelled vaguely of car exhausts and tar.

I heard, from behind me, across the street, "Hey, up yours!"

And, "Yeah, up yours, too!
You
get the fuckin' heavy one!"

I looked. Two garbage collectors, a beefy white man and a tall, muscular black man, were arguing over who was going to pick up which garbage can. A yellow garbage truck waited several feet away, a plume of gray exhaust billowing around it. I called to them, "Hey, where's there a subway entrance?"

The beefy white guy called back, "You just come outta one!"

"I know. I want to go to Queens; I need a different one." It still hadn't dawned on me that I didn't know precisely how to get to the beach house. I thought a moment, added, "One that doesn't smell so bad."

Both of them laughed shortly. "Shit, my man," called the black guy, "they all of them smell, you know, but you go on down to West 60th Street and you'll find yourself one that maybe smells a little
different
."

"Yeah," I called, "sure, thanks—I hope so." I was beginning to look and sound like a complete ass. "Thanks again," I called. They stared blankly at me a moment, then got back to their argument about who was going to lift which trash can. The truck driver leaned on his horn for a couple of seconds. They continued their argument. The truck driver leaned on his horn again. The argument continued.

I called, from fifty yards down the street, "For God's sake, why don't you both pick it up?!"

In unison, they turned, leveled their gaze on me, and started walking very slowly in my direction. The truck's gears meshed, and it lurched forward several feet, gray exhaust billowing around it like a cloud.

"I was only being helpful," I called. "I was only trying to be helpful."

The white guy, the black guy, and the truck all continued slowly, methodically in my direction.

I turned and ran. When I'd made it to Fifth Avenue, I looked back briefly and saw that they were still coming my way. I looked up Fifth, saw a cab coming, and hailed it. It pulled over. I got in.

"Queens," I told the driver.

He turned, looked at me. "It's a big place, mister."

"So's the moon," I said.

"You're a real card."

"Somewhere near the ocean, then. North of Queens, near the ocean."

"It's your quarter," he said, put the flag down, and closed the Plexiglas partition between the front and back seats.

~ * ~

A good forty-five minutes later, the cabbie pulled up in front of a small shopping plaza, turned in his seat, and said, "This okay, fella?"

I shook my head. "No. I'm sorry. I'm going to a house on the beach somewhere. This isn't the beach."

He nodded to indicate the meter, which read $22.70; it clicked over to $22.90 as I watched. "You gonna be able to
pay
me, mister?"

"Of course I'm going to be able to pay you."

"You wanta check and make sure?"

"I don't need to—" I stopped, realized that I'd cashed my last payroll check three weeks earlier, had
put most of it in my savings account, and had lived quite frugally ever since. I sat up straight and looked at the meter. "How much is that, now? That's $22.90?"

"$22.90. That's right." It was clear he was losing his patience.

I checked my wallet, found three tens and two ones in it. I sighed, relieved, handed him the three tens, told him to give me a five and keep the rest. "This will be okay, right here. Which way's the ocean?"

He inclined his head to the right. "That way. Just keep walking—you can't miss it."

"Thanks," I said, and got out.

~ * ~

I have a lousy memory for places—streets, roads, houses—so it didn't surprise me very much when, an hour later, I found myself walking the shoulder of a four-lane highway flanked by industrial buildings. The highway looked like it might lead to Abner's beach house eventually, but could, I thought, just as easily lead to Pittsburgh.

It was nearing eight o'clock; the sun had warmed things up, and the highway was taking on its morning rush of traffic—cars were moving past in increasingly greater numbers and in increasingly tighter knots.