You try to grab hold of the shower curtain as you go down but you can't get a grip.
"Are you all right?" Megan says from the other side of the door.
"Fine," you say. You are mostly in the rub. Only your feet stick out, way down at the far end of your body. It's not uncomfortable, really, except that you are a little damp around the midsection. You will have to investigate this. Find the source. In a minute.
The door opens. Help is on the way.
SOMETIMES A VAGUE NOTION
You wake up with a cat on your chest. You are on a couch, wrapped in a quilt. After a few minutes you recognize Megan's apartment. Her bed is empty. The clock on the nightstand says 11:13. That would be A.M., judging by the sunlight. The last thing you remember is an amorous lunge at Megan somewhere in the P.M.; presumably unsuccessful. You have the feeling you have made a fool out of yourself.
You sit up in bed and marvel at this strange pair of pajamas. You stand up. There is a note on the kitchen table: Eggs, English muffins and orange juice in fridge. Your clothes are hanging in bathroom. Give a call later on. Love- Megan.
At least she doesn't hate you. Perhaps you did not entirely disgrace yourself. Better not to think about it. You find your clothes in the bathroom. Everything is stiff and clean as if freshly laundered. The calico cat jumps up on the sink and rubs its head on your hip as you dress.
You should leave a note for Meg. You find a pen and a fat pad in which every sheet has MEMO written across the top.
Dear Meg-Thanks for the bed and board. Dinner was delicious. Now what? Should you acknowledge loss of full recall? I guess I nodded off a little early. The question is, what did you do before that? For that matter, what about after? What you need is an all-purpose apology. Something to cover each possible misdemeanor. Please excuse my lapse from gentlemanly comportment. Let's get together soon, maybe for lunch.
You rip this up. On the new sheet you write: Dear Megan-I'm sorry. I know I'm always saying that, but I mean it. Thank you.
The phone is ringing when you get back to your apartment. Living dangerously, you answer. It's Richard Fox, the reporter. He says he heard a rumor about your recent loss of employment. He says he liked a book review you wrote for the Village Voice a while back. Nobody reads book reviews in the Voice, but you admire the diligence exhibited by Fox's assistant in tracking the thing down. He mentions an opening at Harper's that might be right for you, and says that he could put in a good word. He is too kind. He wasn't nearly so friendly when you met him at the publication party for his last book.
"I met Clara Tillinghast a few weeks ago," he says. "No man I'd care to drink with could put up with that for long. My sources tell me she had it in for you from the start."
"Short honeymoon, long divorce."
"Would it be accurate to say that she is something of a bitch on wheels?"
"I think she has treads, actually. Like a Sherman tank. But it would be a tough thing to verify."
"I guess you know I'm writing a piece on the magazine."
"Really?"
"I was hoping you might be able to give me some background. You know-human interest, anecdotes."
"You want smut?"
"Whatever you've got."
A baby cockroach is working its way up the wall next to the phone. Should you crush it or let it pass?
"I was just a little worker bee. I don't think I could tell you anything of national interest."
"Let's face it. The stagehands have the best view in the house."
"It's a pretty dull place," you say. Already it seems so far behind you, the office politics and the broom-closet affairs no more interesting there than elsewhere.
"Why feel loyal to them? They threw you out on your ass."
"The whole subject just bores me."
"Let's have lunch. Bat some ideas around. Say, Russian Tea Room at one-thirty?"
You tell him you don't have any ideas. Your information is imperfect. Everything you thought you knew turned out to be wrong. You tell him you are an unreliable source.
He appeals to the public's right to know. He appeals to your sense of vengeance. He gives you his phone number in case you change your mind. You don't write it down.
You go out for a bite and the Pest. It's almost two o'clock. Not for the first time, you wonder why all the coffee shops in the city are run by Greeks. The take-out cups have pictures of seminude classical Greek figures.
O Attic shape… of paper men and maidens overwrought …
You spread the newspaper out on the counter and learn that Coma Baby was delivered six weeks premature in an emergency Caesarean and that Coma Mom is dead.
Coming up West Twelfth from Seventh Avenue you see someone sitting on the steps of your apartment building. It looks an awful lot like your brother Michael. Whoa! You slow down. Then you stop. It is Michael. What is he doing here? He should be home in Bucks County. He doesn't belong here.
He sees you. He stands up, starts toward you. You turn and bolt. The subway entrance is half a block up. You take the steps two at a time, dodging the zombies trudging up the stairs. An uptown train with open doors waits at the platform. A line at the token booth. You vault the turnstile. A metallic voice issues from the speaker on the booth: "Hey, you!" You dash inside as the doors close. People are staring. When the train begins to move they return to their Posts and their private sorrows.
Looking out the sooty windows at the receding platform and seeing Michael standing outside the turnstiles, you duck away from the window. You don't want to see him. It's not that he's a bad guy. You feel guilty of everything. Even now, a transit cop with a walkie-talkie may be striding through the cars to arrest you.
You sit down and allow the racket of the train to fill your head. You close your eyes. Soon the noise doesn't seem like noise and the motion doesn't feel like motion. You could fall asleep.
You open your eyes and look at the ads. TRAIN FOR AN EXCITING NEW CAREER. BE AN INSTANT WINNER WITH WINGO! SOFT AND LOVELY HAIR RELAXER. BE A MODEL – OR JUST LOOK LIKE ONE.
At Fiftieth you get off and walk up the stairs to the street. Walking east, you cross abrupt thermoclines as you move between the cool shadows of tall buildings and brief regions of direct sunlight. At Fifth Avenue you stand on the corner and look over at the long row of windows fronting Saks. You cross the street to the third window down from the uptown corner.
The mannequin is gone. You count windows again. Where the Amanda mannequin had been is a new one with brunette acrylic on its head and a delicately upturned nose. You walk up and down the block, examining each of the mannequins. For a moment you think you have found it on Fiftieth Street, but the face is too angular and the nose is wrong.
You came here with a notion of demonstrating to yourself that the icon was powerless, yet you are unsettled now that it is gone. What does this mean? You decide that it has disappeared because you were through with it, and you consider this a good omen.
On Madison you pass a construction site, walled in by acres of plywood on which the faces of various rock stars and Mary O'Brien McCann are plastered. Thirty stories above you, a crane dangles an I-beam over the street beside the skeleton of a new building. From the sidewalk the crane looks like a toy, but a few months back you read about a pedestrian who was killed at this site when a cable broke. DEATH FALLS FROM SKY, the Post said.