I looked up at once. “What is it?” I said, a little angrily.
“I thought…” he stumbled. “We thought something was wrong. That you were sick. Dead.”
“I must have fallen asleep,” I said. “Is it Fourteenth Street yet?”
“Blocks back,” said the man who had come up the aisle.
The bus stopped and I got up quickly.
“Excuse me,” the man next to me said as I moved past him, “but you sleep like a dead man.”
“Excuse me,” I said, “but I need the practice.”
I went up on the roof of a ten-story building and climbed onto the ledge.
A crowd gathered and someone below ran off to get the police. I was too high to see their expressions, but I can imagine that they were seeing me as if I had been an ominous sky they scanned for warnings of a storm.
As I waved once and screamed and jumped backwards out of sight onto the tar and gravel rooftop, I could sense their shocked, massed inward suck of air. Never mind what you read about crowds at a motor race or a prizefight; people do not want people to die.
I took an elevator back down to the ground floor and went out into the streets to join the crowd.
“What’s happened?” I asked someone.
“Some guy was trying to kill himself. He fell backwards and probably knocked himself out. A cop’s gone up to get him.”
“They’ll put him away,” I said. “Suicide’s a serious crime.”
I went down into a subway station and boarded a train for the first time in my life. My hands cautiously in my lap, I sat on the wide wicker seat that ran along the length of the carriage and rode out to somewhere in Brooklyn. I got off the train, crossed the platform and got on another train going back. I sat next to a young girl about thirteen years old. She carried one of those little brass and plastic suitcases kids pack their leotards and ballet slippers in when they’re going for a lesson, and she was reading Mademoiselle. As the train tunneled under the river I pitched forward suddenly and groaned. I grabbed my chest and rocked it, frantic as a mother with a dead infant. I leaned heavily against the child. “Today’s the day,” I gasped, “a man died in your arms on the subway.”
On Fifth Avenue I saw a very well-dressed man carrying an expensive briefcase.
“Please,” I said, rushing up to him, “I’ve just swallowed cyanide. I was trying to kill myself but I’ve changed my mind.”
“Oh, my God,” the man said. “Oh, Jesus. Quick, let’s get a cab. Taxi,” he called. “Taxi! Here, take my arm. Taxi. God damn it, taxi. How much did you take? Where’s a hospital? The driver would know. Taxi! Taxi!” He waved his briefcase like a leather flag. “TAXI!” he screamed.
“In New York there must be fifty thousand cabs,” I said, “but do you think you can get one when you really need it?” I pulled away from him and disappeared around a corner.
I went up to the Bronx and walked around until I came to a park. I was wearing good clothes — I didn’t want anyone to think I was a bum sleeping one off. I found a deserted gravel path and stretched myself out face down across it. Soon I heard someone coming up the walk; from the squeaky crunchy sounds it must have been either a housemaid pushing a perambulator or a kid on a tricycle. Then I heard someone cooing as if to a child, and I knew that it was a housemaid. She didn’t see me until she was almost on top of me; then she screamed. I thought she would run away, but she came up to me and turned me over.
“Mister,” she called. “Mister. Please. Oh,” she yelled, turning away from me, “there’s been a murder. Help! Help!” Leaving the baby carriage, she ran off to get help.
When I could no longer hear her cries I rose, brushed myself off and walked away.
I was sitting in a cafeteria on Seventh Avenue when a woman came in leading an old man. She brought him to a table next to mine, pulled the chair out for him, and took his hand and guided it carefully to its wooden back. “It’s just behind you,” she said very softly.
The old man lowered himself tenderly into the seat as if he were tentatively sitting down in a tub of hot water. He might have been an old man at the beach, with his back to the waves, sitting in the sea.
The woman leaned over him. “What do you feel like having, Papa?” she asked gently.
“I think an egg salad sandwich,” he said. “Tomato soup. Do they have pie? Pie. Coffee.”
“I’ll bring it right back for you,” she said.
When she left him to go through the line, the blind man pulled himself closer to the table with great care. He put his hands out experimentally, feeling for the salt, the pepper, the bottles of ketchup and mustard and sugar. He frowned as if he might have forgotten to tell the woman something, and then sighed resignedly. I had the impression that his blindness was fairly recent. He took off his hat and set it down too close to the edge of the table. In one of his clumsy motions of orientation he brushed it off and it fell to the floor.,
The woman came back with the food and set it down in front of him. She picked up the hat and put it back on the table without saying anything. “Do you think you’ll be all right?” she asked as she hovered over him. “I have to see Sybil before she leaves the office.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “What am I, an old blind man?”
She put a tablespoon in his hand and moved the soup in front of him. “I won’t be long,” she said. “Her office is in this block.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said.
“Well then, twenty minutes.” She took a cigar out of her purse and put it in his breast pocket. “There’s a cigar for you when you’re through.”
When she had been gone for about five minutes I looked hastily around the cafeteria. We were almost alone. I waited for another minute and then leaned toward the old man and slammed a chair down violently. The blind man was startled and turned his head uselessly toward the sound. I bent down quickly beside him at a level with his stomach and grunted twice. I stamped my heels clumsily on the tile floor.
“Is anything wrong?” the old man asked. “Is anything wrong? Ruth?” A little tomato soup had spilled from the spoon in his shaking hand onto his vest.
I drew back soundlessly as the old man called again. When there was no answer he shook his head and scowled in frustration. He pushed the soup away from him, splashing some onto his sandwich, where it soaked into the bread like blood. He fumbled for the sandwich, found it, and pulled it without appetite toward his mouth. I waited until he had finished half of it and then rose from my seat quietly and went around behind his chair. “I’m a detective,” I said.
“My credentials.”
“What is it?” he asked nervously.
“It’s none of my business, of course, but I don’t see how you can just go on eating. Well, maybe you’re used to it. Fourteen years on the force and I’m not.” I turned away for a moment and lowered my voice. “Better call the morgue, Harry. This is their baby.”
“What is it?” the old man said again.
“I’ll have to ask you a few questions,” I said. “You’re our only witness.” “What is it?”
“Did it seem to you that the deceased acted peculiar in any way? I mean, did the deceased do anything that may have looked funny to you?”
“Is someone dead?” he asked, frightened. “I don’t see,” he said. “I heard a noise. What was it?”
“You’re blind?”
“Yes. Yes. Who is it? Is it a woman?”