Impelled by regret, also discovering that he was going the wrong way, he whirled around and ran after Harry. “Hey. Hey, wait up.”
Harry turned, apparently startled, his neatly folded Times slipping from his hand. He waited for Peter, with his hands at his sides.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Peter started to say, when Harry punched him in the nose.
Peter nursed his nose with a handkerchief, stunned, his eyes tearing, while Harry hurried away down the street, a nervous glance over his shoulder. A small crowd, mostly students, which had gathered in expectation of a fight, dispersed sullenly. A few jeered at the ignominy of his defeat. “That guy was half your size,” a boy said, contemptuous of failure.
Peter growled, picked up Harry’s Times. “I’ll take any three of you on at the same time,” he said. But when he looked up there was only the boy, only one of him — slight, eighteen, as fragile as tinder. “You okay?” the boy asked.
Peter shrugged, walked away, wandered to 113th Street to see if there was any mail for him, though he hadn’t received a letter from anyone in months. He growled at passers-by along the way, aware of his enemies — they pretended not to notice him.
Expecting nothing, he checked the mail — two stacks of it on a table in the hall — and discovered, in a pile of outgoing letters, a card from Herbie, a picture post card of the Grand Canyon at sunset — Addressee unknown written next to Peter’s name. Unknown or not, he pocketed the card and went out in the sun.
It was a haunted day, the streets around Columbia mostly deserted. A girl with long dark hair was giving out Progressive Party leaflets on the corner. He went by without taking one. “Don’t you care what happens to your country?” the girl called after him. “Don’t you want peace?”
He cared, wanted peace, took refuge in a phone booth. He called Lois and got no answer; then Dr. Cantor, who would not be in for another hour; then, on a whim, an old Army buddy who, it turned out, was no longer living at the address Peter had for him — the address three years old, the buddy hardly a friend, then Gloria at Bloomingdale’s — Gloria the first one to answer him in person. “What do you want?” she argued.
“Not much,” he said.
“I can’t talk now, Peter. Can you call back later, the store just opened.”
“I’ve missed you,” he said. “I walk around New York missing you.”
“Thank you.” She lowered her voice: “My supervisor’s standing right behind me, Peter.”
He improvised, not wanting to lose the sound of her voice. “I think I’m in love with you,” he said.
“Peter, I’m going to have to hang up.”
“Doesn’t it matter to you that I love you?”
“You’re a character,” she said. “You really are.”
“Why don’t you take the day off? It’s a nice day out, looks like rain. I want to go to bed with you.”
She came close to a laugh. “This minute?”
His need owned him, desperation his middle name. “This minute, this second. Tell them you’re sick. I’ll meet you at the apartment in twenty minutes.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Do it for me.”
“I can’t.” She hung up.
Peter called again and got a wrong number. “Everybody calls here asks for Bloomingdale’s,” the man said; someone, a woman, laughing in the background. “This ain’t Bloomingdale’s, friend. I haven’t been Bloomingdale’s since the day I was born.”
“Whoever you are,” Peter said, “you’re a fucking impostor.”
“And what if I am?” the voice said.
Peter knocked at the door to Helena’s room, got no answer, knocked again.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me.”
“Who’s me?” She opened the door a quarter of the way, her face, spider-webbed with sleep, making a tentative appearance. She rubbed her eyes. “What do you want?”
Peter thought to use force — a foot in the door worth two in the hall — but decided to try diplomacy first, his own ambassador. “You look lovely,” he said.
“What do you want?”
“I have to talk to you, Helena. Can I come in?”
She blinked her eyes as though she had hallucinated him. “No. I haven’t gotten up yet. Peter, I’m still in my pajamas.”
Suspicious, he tried to see beyond her into the room. “It’s important,” he said.
“Important to who? What do you mean, important?”
Ahhh! He lowered his voice: “Can’t talk in the hall. Met Harry. Explain when I get inside.” He had more than enough guile going for him, his desperate spirit swelling with deceit, but he had run out of words … The lecher in him grinned boyishly, peered through her nightgown. “You’re looking good,” he said.
“Come back later,” she said, smothering a yawn, stretching. “Later, huh?”
“When should I come back?”
Helena thought about it, tapping her foot to the music of the problem. “Oh, in about an hour or so. I’ll get dressed and we’ll talk. All right?” Her smile brushed him off as though he were a fly.
He couldn’t wait, and as the door floated to its close he thought of forcing his way in, but out of lethargy rather than choice restrained himself — his urgency a sleepwalker’s need.
To pass the hour Peter walked around the block twice, went to Chock Full o’ Nuts for coffee and a doughnut. Time moved slowly, conspired against him — the city clocks, his own watch dying in the summer heat. He couldn’t wait, he couldn’t. In the desperation of want, he knew the treachery of time.
For a while, for minutes on end, he sat on a bench on Riverside Drive and daydreamed of Helena — her warm breasts, her witch-eyes, other parts — bewitched by recollection, the taste of love on his tongue.
A boy and girl walked by holding hands; they stopped briefly to kiss, which was too much for Peter to bear. He got up, a sigh breaking the bud of his chest, and walked away. Ten minutes to outwait. (Time on his neck like a dog’s collar.) He counted slowly to a hundred and twenty — eight minutes to go.
Peter returned to Helena’s door five minutes early, carrying a daisy, another flower blooming (looming) between his legs. He knocked on the door, a drum roll of anticipation, and waited, hand in pocket, with the anxious dignity of affected ease. Wilting, he knocked again, beginning to communicate his urgency. And again, harder this time, hammering away with the side of his fist — his knuckles sore — the door shivering at his rage. He listened for sounds, knocked again, imagined Harry and Helena frozen together on the bed, paralyzed with amusement. He convinced himself that he heard breathing (his own in his ears), and knocked again. No answer. Tears of frustration hung in his eyes. He twisted the wrist of the doorknob — the door un-giving — twisted the knob back and forth, twisted and pulled until it came loose, like the head of a flower, in his hand. He looked around to see if anyone was watching, felt foolish, returned the knob to its place and fled. An old woman’s hacking cough followed him.
After two wrong numbers, he got Dr. Cantor on the phone. “I have to see you,” Peter said. “I’m going mad.”
“I’ll be glad to see you. Who is this?”
It took a while for him to answer. “Peter Becker.”
“Well, how are you, Peter? For a moment there I didn’t recognize the voice.” His own voice careful, gentle, recognizing itself. “When do you want to come in? It’s my recollection that I had a cancellation for next Tuesday at eleven. How would that be?”
“Can’t I see you now?”
“Now? I’m sorry, but I have a patient coming in in about three minutes. I couldn’t see you today without taking time away from another patient. I’ll tell you what, Peter — can you come in at nine tomorrow? I’ll arrange my schedule so that I can see you then.”