“When that ended,” Geigan says, finally done with crunching his can and tossing it into the trash can a fair distance away (impressing them both), “you were a mess. You never left your apartment, man. When it comes to that girl you get all weird and shit.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Listen to you. No, I don’t,” he mimics Henry in a higher pitch than Henry thinks is necessary. “You’re already getting weird. Whatever. Call her if you want to. I know you’re going to. In fact please call her. How about that? You have to call her.”
“You’re crazy,” Henry says. He waves Geigan off and reaches for the door to Baxter’s.
“This way I can say I told you so when you get the shit kicked out of you again.” Geigan doubles back a couple of storefronts to the hardware store, which they passed in order to continue their break. “I’m going to Blackie’s tonight if you change your mind. Which you won’t…”
Geigan’s smugness ruins the Coke for Henry.
“Who died?” Mr. Beardsley asks Henry, who has wordlessly handed him his soda and walked past on his way to the back room to think about the phone call he is indeed going to make.
It wouldn’t be so bad, Henry thinks, if people didn’t cringe when they catch themselves in their stupid death references. Mr. Beardsley’s expression had wrinkled up in dismay at his thoughtless remark, squinching his eyes into pinpricks. He looks like a mole, Henry thinks. Like a fat little blind mole.
“It’s five o’clock,” Henry says, making his way through the racks toward the end zone, “I’m heading out.”
“Okay, sport,” Mr. Beardsley says. “See you tamale.” His chuckles reach Henry, who has rebounded from the negativity of Tom Geigan and has returned to the thought that this could be the day. The day we tell our grandchildren about, he thinks, pushing through the goal-posted front doors back into the spring air. Henry can imagine them marveling at the miracle of timing. Of fate. “If he hadn’t called me right then, on that day,” Cathy will say to the children who would never tire of hearing the story, “at that precise moment, you would not be sitting here right now. I would have married—” No. Henry doesn’t like this to be her alternative. Rather, “I would have died old and alone, pining away as I was for your father.”
And they will gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes.
They must have gotten the light fixed at Bridge Avenue, he thinks, because the wait for it to turn green is only a few seconds and for God’s sake why are people so quick to honk it’s only just turned green and so I didn’t turn right on red that’s my prerogative so lighten up.
He reminds himself to call the gutter guy when he pulls up in front of his parents’ house and sees that there is ragweed sprouting up from the chipped metal wells trimming the edge of the roof. Or I guess I could get up there and clean them out. But it’s a pretty steep pitch.
“Hi, it’s me,” he calls out. He closes the door behind him. “Mom?”
In the kitchen by the sink he checks the pill bottles. The one from Dr. Hellerson is nearly empty. On a scrap of paper by the phone farther down the counter he scribbles a note to himself that it is Dr. Clarke he should call this next time for the refill. The last time he called Dr. Hellerson for a refill the nurse gave him a lecture about Valium addiction and refused to take a message, saying that he needed to speak directly to the doctor. Between the four doctors in three different towns he had managed to help her stay afloat. But he knew this would soon come to an end. They were all becoming reticent to prescribe.
His mother wanders into the kitchen and startles him by patting his back. He had not heard her enter. Bare feet.
“Hi, Mom.”
“How was work today?” she asks, pleasing them both with her lucidity.
“Good,” he says. “Boring. How’re you feeling?”
“Good,” she says. She fills a glass of tap water and sips from it. From the looks of it she has bathed. A good sign.
“You know, Mom,” he says, broaching a subject he has had little luck with in the past, “it’s probably time to start cutting the pills in half. Dr. Hellerson said…”
“Dr. Hellerson said,” she mimics. “Dr. Hellerson thinks I’m a Valium addict.”
This surprises him. He had not thought anyone had broached the subject with her. She reaches for the bottle in his hand and says, “You know what Milton Berle says? Milton Berle says a Valium addict is a patient who takes more Valium than her doctor.”
Her laugh is more of a burp.
“Yeah, well, he said we should be halving the dose. I think he’s right.”
“Have you seen Dr. Hellerson? He’s barely able to string a sentence together,” she says. “So by Milton Berle’s standards I’m doing just fine.”
“Yeah, well, next time I need a medical assessment I’ll be sure to call up Milton Berle.”
“You’re funny.” She pats his back again and teeters into the living room. The TV is switched on, the game shows are starting and he has lost her attention.
He peeks into the room to make sure she is appropriately glued to the glow of the old set (another mental note to look into the price of a new one). He empties the remaining Hellerson pills and pulls a steak knife out of the slanted wood block. He presses the knife down along the line indentation in each one, careful to keep it straight so that each half is more or less even. Each pill is cut. He pushes them off the counter with one hand into the palm of the other and repeats the exercise with the three other bottles.
Now the trick will be to keep her from taking two halves. This is a trick to be sure but something’s got to give, he thinks. Maybe this will do it. He looks at his watch.
“I’m going now, Mom,” he says, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. “See you tomorrow, okay?”
“Bye,” she says in the offhanded way someone dismisses anything that distracts from television viewing.
Within a few minutes he is pacing in his apartment.
“Cathy? Hey, it’s Henry Powell. How are you?” Too girlie.
“Cathy. Hey there, it’s Henry Powell—how are you?” Why the emphasis on you? Plus Hey there sounds weird.
“Cathy? Hi, it’s Henry Powell. How are ya?” Ya? I’m a sixteen-year-old girl.
Should he not say Powell? He worries this might put too much distance between them, this use of last names. Better to stick with Henry.
“Cathy? Hi, it’s Henry. How’re you doing?”
Hey sounds more laid-back. I should say hey.
He takes a deep breath and reaches for the phone. He has already memorized her new phone number. It’s an easy one: numbers in more or less descending order. It rings once…twice.
“Hello?”
His first impulse is to hang up. In fact she has to say hello again before he finds his voice.
“Cathy?” Heart attack heart attack heart attack.
“Yeah? Who’s this?”
“It’s me, Henry.” What now? What now?
In the intervening pause—slight in reality but minutes long to Henry—he panics and thinks 1) she knows another Henry and is trying to figure out which one it is; 2) she’s forgotten she even knew a Henry; 3) I should have taken one of Mom’s Valiums.
“Henry? Henry Powell?”
He is so grateful for this he nearly cries “yes.” But then he reins in his excitement and relief and gratitude. “So, how’re you doing?”
“How’d you get this number?” she asks.
“What?” He had not thought this would be her reaction. Does she sound happy he has found her number? He tells himself yes, she does.
“I just looked you up, that’s all. So how are you? God, it’s been a long time, huh?”
“You know what?” she says. “I was just running out the door….”
“Oh, yeah, sure, sorry, um,” he says, cursing his bumbling reply.
“Can I call you back in, like, about an hour? I’m just running out to do one quick thing and I’ll be back.”
“Sure, sure,” he says.
“No problem. I’ll be here.”
“What’s your number?”
“It’s the same,” he says, and then tells it to her, anyway.
“Okay, great,” she says. “I’ll call you back. Jeez, wow. Henry Powell.”
“Yeah, huh? Okay, well I’ll talk to you in a bit.”
“Okay, bye.”
Henry wills himself not to look at the clock. Or at his watch. Just to be on the safe side I’ll take it off, he thinks. Put it in the drawer. But then I might forget it, he thinks. Better to leave it on and just forget it’s there.
He knows that watching the clock casts a slow-motion effect on everything. Even this thought process, he thinks. In thinking about not checking the time I’m still slowing it down. This is the longest hour since the dawn of time, he thinks.
He checks the time once more and then vows to forget it all together so he can be pleasantly surprised at its rapid progression when it does occur to him to look.
The room is so quiet, though, he can hear the second hand of the clock that is hanging on the wall. He closes his mouth and breathes through his nose to listen for it. At first it is something he does not realize he is doing but soon he is conscious of the fact that he is counting in ten-second intervals.
Stop! Stop it right now. And he will stop…right after this last…neat…minute…is counted. Okay, there. He is done. Time will have no meaning to me now, he thinks. Starting now.
Henry reaches for the book that has remained untouched on his night table for so long he is forced to unfold the dog-eared page twelve and start over from page one. Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The book everyone talked about so long ago but he never got around to reading. But the first line has to be read twice. The second line three times. By the time he hits the end of the first paragraph Henry decides the book will most likely never be ticked off the list of Books One Must Read in Order to Be a Part of the Collective Conversation and replaces it to the exact same spot it had been occupying. The list was one he had cut out of the paper, imagining it to be just the sort of thing one might need in order to liven up date conversation.
Sleep, he tells himself. Sleep is just what I will do. I will take a nap. I never take naps, he thinks, justifying this idea to himself out loud. Plus he read somewhere that the human biological clock requires naps in the afternoon. It is why Europeans take siestas, he thinks. Or was that biorhythms?
He lies down on his back across his bed. His arms along his sides and his feet hanging off the bed, he wonders what he might look like to an ant crawling on the ceiling. Splat. He imagines the ant thinking: splat went the human.
Tick tick tick goes the wall clock so he turns over so at least half of his problem is solved: one less ear to take in the sound. And maybe with one less he won’t be able to bionically hear time trickling by.
Then again he hasn’t checked in a while. All this thinking must have taken up a good lot of time.
Only seven minutes have passed. Damnation. That’s exactly why I’m not going to check the time again, he thinks.
The phone ring makes him jump.
“Hello?”
“Hey, yo, get off your ass and come out tonight.” It’s Tom.
“I don’t think so,” Henry says. He waits for his heartbeat to catch up with his mind in his realization it is not Cathy calling back.
“Why the fuck not? Come on. You can’t stay locked up forever, man. Jesus. You’re like the smelly old man.”
“Who?”
“The smelly old man,” he says, “the guy down the hall from me. Never comes out of his place unless he’s emptying the trash. Once I was stuck behind him on the stairs and I figured it was the bag of trash that smelled so rank but he dumped it and passed me on the way back up and it wasn’t the trash…it was him.”
“That’s a good story.”
“Yeah, fuck you. You’re the smelly old man now. So scrape the dirt off and get your ass in gear and come out.”
Henry pauses to consider this but worries that the phone might ring while he is gone and what if it’s her—Cathy never leaves messages. She hangs up when the machine picks up. No way. He can’t risk missing her call.
“No thanks, man.”
“You’re so pussy-whipped it’s sick.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You called her, didn’t you?” Geigan asks him.
“Shut up. No, it’s just…I…I don’t feel well. I think I’m coming down with something.”
“Come to think of it, smelly old man is sick a lot, too,” Geigan says. “Plus you’re a liar. You called her.”
“How do you know so much?”
“This is not going to go well.”
“I’ve got to go,” Henry says.
“Whatever. Smell you later.”
Henry waits a second after hanging up before picking the receiver back up. He listens for the dial tone and hangs up again.
Then he thinks of something else.
“Operator, may I help you?”
“Um, hi,” he says, “I’m wondering, ah, is there a power outage?”
“What’s the prefix, sir?”
“307.”
“That’s your area code, sir. I need the first three numbers of your local phone number.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry. It’s 339. And I’m fine. I mean my area seems fine. I can see lights on in other people’s houses and stuff. I was just wondering if…”
“No. I’m not showing outages of any kind in your area. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“No. No thanks. Thanks for checking. I was just thinking…”
“You have a good evening.”
“Yeah, you too.”
Chapter eighteen
1999
The stick figure begins flashing red, indicating a limited number of seconds in which to cross the street.
“Powell? Henry Powell?” The voice comes from behind.
The recognition does not come so easily on his end, leading to an awkward explanation. “Michael Dean,” the stranger says. A hand is extended.
The traffic starts up.
“Mike!” Henry says. “Wow, Mike Dean. How the hell are you?”
Smiles, handshakes, steps taken back from the curb.
“Good, I’m good,” Mike says. “How about you? What are you doing back in town?”
“I’m here,” he says. “I live here. What’re you doing? How’s it going? I heard you were out in San Francisco, man.”
Mike Dean is shaking his head. “I just moved back. I’m moving back, I should say. Next week the movers come so I’m staying in the city until my place is ready. I just took the train out to check on it.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Which way are you heading? I’ll walk with you.”
The stick figure is again blinking red but Henry knows: there are eleven blinks before the man in the electronic box stays permanently red. Mike looks both ways to make sure they’ve got time to cross. When his head hits center again he realizes Henry has already started across.
“What’s going on with you? What’re you up to?” Mike says, once he has caught up.
“Can’t complain,” Henry says. “How about you?”
“Not bad,” he says. “Sick of the rat race, I’ll tell you that much. Glad to be back in town.”
“Yeah?”
“Taking some time off,” Mike says. “Planning my next attack.” His sigh is more of a snicker to Henry’s way of thinking.
“What was the last plan of attack?”
“Dot coms.”
The two words explain everything.
“Heads up,” Henry says. The car doesn’t look like it’s going to wait for them to cross the street, so eager it is to tuck into the empty space in front of the stationery store. Henry hasn’t broken his stride but Mike flinches and waits for the car to park. Again he has to hurry to catch up.
“How about I take you for a beer later?” Henry asks.
They’re stopped in front
of Pier One. “Sounds great, actually. I’m heading in here. Where’re you going?”
“Baxter’s,” Henry says.
“That place is still around? Jesus, I remember getting my confirmation jacket there. I can’t believe it’s still there.”
“I work there, actually,” Henry says. He pushes his shoulders back and stands up straighter. “You want to say six? At Blackie’s?”
“Oh, sorry,” Mike says. “No offense.”
“None taken.” Straighter still. “Six?”
“Six it is,” Mike says. “See ya.”
The Pier One potpourri smell wafts out as Henry continues down the street back to Baxter’s.
The pavement blurs and shoes clicking by are now carrying bodies twenty years younger.
“Seriously, congratulations,” Mike says.
“Thanks, man,” Henry says. “I really thought you had it in the bag.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t do that. I know what you’re doing. I never had a chance. I know that. Not with the football hero in the race,” Mike says.
“Naw,” Henry says. “Look, it’s not a popularity contest.”
“What? How could you say that? That’s exactly what it is. I can’t believe you even said that,” Mike says. “You think I don’t know what everybody says behind my back? You think I don’t hear? You think because I’ve got glasses I’ve got a hearing problem, too?”
“Dean, Dean, slow down,” Henry says. “I don’t say anything about you. I’ve never said anything about you. You’re a good-enough guy. Paranoid maybe but a good guy. Jesus. Lighten up.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, class president goes better with varsity football than with computer club. I know. I’m not blind. But this way in college interviews I can say I ran for the office.”
“College interviews?”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, Powell, you don’t ever think about college interviews? Of course you don’t. I bet they come to you, don’t they?”