Still, he would take better chances this time, he told himself as he wandered the streets of the Village, warming himself with recollections, a tourist of his own life, replanning the past. How many deaths can you die? he asked himself. “A million” was the answer, but who was counting? Coughing, the weather getting to him, he walked over to the Fifth Avenue Bar for a drink. It was gone; an office building had replaced it. He made accommodation — it was a new possibility of himself — and settled for a small bar on Bleecker Street, which may or may not have been in business fifteen years ago. He didn’t ask. (He didn’t dare.)
After three drinks he called Lois at work — a nervy gesture, impelled by a sudden, unlikely and remarkable confidence. Hadn’t she told him that she didn’t want to see him again? Ah, but Peter, a man of mission, believed only what he knew.
“Let’s have lunch,” he suggested, the suggestion making itself.
Lois seemed distracted. “Who is this, please?” “This is Peter. Let’s have lunch.”
“Hello. I’ve been thinking about you all morning. For some reason I didn’t recognize your voice.” She laughed nervously. “How are you, Peter?”
“Let’s have lunch.” His confidence was wearing thin.
“Today?”
“Why not?”
“I can’t today. I already have an appointment. What about tomorrow?”
Tomorrow? Tomorrow? He considered the question in all its metaphysical implications. He wondered, as if it mattered, what day it came out on — the issue resolving itself on what today was, Wednesday or Thursday — he hadn’t bothered to notice. His appointment book, if he had one, without days or dates. Tomorrow, when you had most of today to do, seemed a long way off.
“Peter?”
“Yeah? All right, tomorrow.” Though he tried, he was unable to disguise the pain of his disappointment.
“You were so silent, I thought we had been cut off.” She lowered her voice. “I worry about you,” she said.
“I’m all right,” he tried to say, the bones of his grief choking him. What good was confidence if it didn’t preclude pain?
“I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult,” she said.
“You haven’t.”
“I can’t hear you, Peter.”
“You have a right not to want to see me,” he said.
“Peter, I didn’t mean that. It was just seeing you … You understand.” Another nervous laugh. “Are you all right?”
“Who me? Never been better.” Through the glass of the booth he watched the thin Italian at the bar mix a whiskey sour, shaking it between his hands as though it had a life of its own. “Lois, I’ve decided I’m going to stay in New York,” he said, his excitement born and dying in the same sour breath.
“Don’t you think I knew that?” she said.
“You know everything,” he said.
She was immune to irony. “Peter”—she broached the subject with conspicuous tact — “do you have any plans? What I mean is, I may know of a job for you if you’re interested. You’ve had some editorial experience, haven’t you?”
He cleared his throat. “There was this magazine in San Francisco that ran four issues that I worked on, called Vision. I was art editor. It folded when I quit.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure you can do it.”
“I can do anything,” he said, “only …” The idea of working a full-time job, a restraint on his freedom to do nothing, depressed him. “I’m writing a book,” he announced. It sounded a bit foolish — why had he even brought it up? — a matter of identifying himself, a need.
“You’ll still need a job,” she said, “unless you’re independently wealthy.” She laughed politely, a little embarrassed at the joke. “What kind of book are you writing?”
He couldn’t explain over the phone. “A book.”
“I told you I was painting again, didn’t I?” she said. “Off and on. I mostly do it as a means of relaxation. Oscar says it’s good for me.”
“Is it good for Oscar?” he said, getting back at her. Then, the new Becker censoring the old: “I’m glad it makes you happy.” Though he meant it straight, it came out ironic.
“Peter,” she scolded. “There’s an opening here for a copy editor, at the magazine end of this place. It’s not a great job, but until you get your bearings in the city … I’ve already put in a word with the editor for you — Bob Grimes; he’s a nice guy, I think you’ll like him.”
“I’m putting myself completely in your hands,” he said, a conscious attempt at avoiding irony. “Any way you want to rehabilitate me is just fine with me.”
“Don’t be a bastard.” She whispered it.
The operator interrupted: “Five cents for the next three minutes.”
“You misunderstand me,” he said. He scavenged in his pocket for a nickel and came up with a subway token, lint, and three pennies.
“It’s not hard to misunderstand you,” she said gently. “Should I tell Bob that you’re not interested in the job?”
“Do you want me to take it?”
“Give me your number, Peter. I’ll call you back.”
“I appreciate this, Lois.” A heavy click. “Lois?”
A dial tone, the death of a connection between them.
He told a woman at the bar what it was like to be a forest ranger. “My job was mostly going around on a horse from place to place counting deer pellets,” he explained. “And this horse they gave me kept throwing me and running away. Sometimes I would lose a whole day just trying to find my horse.”
“That’s very interesting,” she said, and she might even have meant it.
When he called Lois back — an hour and three Scotches later — some girl (her secretary?) told him that Lois was out for lunch, and would he care to leave a message? His speech a bit thick, he asked the girl, whoever she was — he liked the sound of her voice — if she would have lunch with him, since both of them seemed to be free at the moment. The girl thanked him, said she was sorry — even sounded sorry — that she had already been out for lunch. Another time.
“What’s your name?” he asked. Then, sobering some: “You don’t have to answer.”
“Diane,” she said. “Why should I mind answering?”
He hardly remembered the rest of the conversation, but a few minutes after he had hung up it struck him that he had made an appointment to have a drink with the girl. What was he — out of his mind? If he wanted Lois back — why else had he returned to New York? — he had no business making dates with girls who worked in her office, even if it was innocent. Avoid rashness, he warned himself, and had another drink. Avoid innocence.
He left the bar at three o’clock in full control of one or two small areas of himself, and went about the cosmic business of killing the rest of the day. Time hardly moved, but he wasn’t around much to notice it. Tomorrow, he promised himself, tomorrow he would start fresh.
And the next day, no longer tomorrow, he did. It was a surprise even to himself. He started fresh. He woke early, only a little hung-over, shaved, dressed, and with uncharacteristic efficiency found a place to live: a semifurnished two-room apartment on West Seventy-third Street, at only (a bargain in New York) eighty-nine fifty a month, tsouris extra. Paying the rent — two months in advance — left him very nearly broke. (Thirty-seven dollars between Peter and his last fifty cents.) To his surprise he didn’t worry about it; yet a part of him, a remnant of the old Becker, was a little nervous.