“Just takes a little practice,” he said easily, and the hotel manager was gone: without a change in a thread of his suit or hair of his head, it was Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford who stood smiling at me now, and I knew this man had played a lot of cards in his time and knew his way around more than this lobby.
I had my story ready; wallet, checks, credit cards stolen at the airport. But I was a coin dealer: gold only, U.S. and Edwardian English coins. Here from Chicago a couple times a year, usually staying here or at the Algonquin. Something that bothers me a little is that I enjoy lying. Once I start, the convincing details flow out effortlessly; I don’t even have to think. Tomorrow, I went on, bringing my folded money belt from my coat pocket and setting it on the counter to let the other coins inside it clink, I’d be selling each of my coins for—I wasn’t sure of this—several hundred dollars apiece. Take as many as you like for security and, please—so this cabdriver doesn’t kill me—advance me a hundred in cash.
G.R.Q. Wallingford Stumpf knew what these coins were, and he simply nipped the top coin off the stack, saying, “One is more than enough,” and now the coin appeared on the back of his hand between knuckle and finger joints. And by slightly moving his fingers as though playing a piano, he made the coin walk back and forth across the backs of his fingers, flip-flopping heads to tails, tails to heads, back and forth so easily. I’d have given him the gold piece to be able to do that. “I’ll give you a receipt for this,” he said, the coin disappearing into his closing palm, “and you can sign for the hundred.”
I felt marvelous signing the receipt. Each of my hard-earned nineteenth-century dollars had become worth about forty here. I had over twenty-five thousand dollars, and from my hundred dollars’ cash I gave the cabby a ten for the six-dollar fare, and added another ten. “That’s for being a good boy.”
“Welcome to New York, boss,” he said. Then Michael Stumpf accepted my invitation, and we went into the Oak Bar for a nightcap.
In my room I turned on the television, clicking slowly through the channels just to enjoy the novelty of it again; what I saw had not improved. Then I got out the Manhattan phone book, looking at the new cover with some interest. Sitting on the bed, the phone book on my lap, I opened it, and found the Danziger listing, a fairly long one. I hesitated, then moved my finger down the column . . . and found it—Danziger, E. E.—and smiled. Should I call him right now? I wanted to, but it was far too late. I’d phone in the morning and invite him to lunch; I’d be glad to see Dr. D, and knew he’d be glad to see me. I was tired, as though I’d traveled for hours, the two drinks I’d had downstairs helping the feeling along. I switched on the air-conditioning, mostly for the pleasure of being able to, and got to bed.
The light out, I waited, knowing sleep would be along quickly. A police car or ambulance howled down in the streets somewhere. Should I have come back? Was it wise? A car drove over a manhole cover, wump-wump, and I smiled, and in my head sang, I’ll take Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten . . .
8
RUBE PRIEN SAT in the windowless little street-level office of the Project; sat on the edge of the worn oak desk, swinging a foot, looking around: at the out-of-date wall calendar still reading Beekey’s, at the framed photographs of long-gone moving crews. He was nervous, therefore irritable; hated waiting. He stood, walked a step or two to the street door, and opened it wide, turning back to the desk. He sat down and hopped right up again, back to the door to almost close it, leaving it ajar by an inch. He studied this narrow gap of daylight, then opened the door perhaps half an inch more, and returned to his desk.
Outside, approaching along the walk on the same side of the street, Dr. E. E. Danziger walked toward this door fairly rapidly, a tall, thin, elderly but not-quite-old man in a dark topcoat and tan felt hat. This was late morning, temperature around fifty, the sky a high-up even gray. He glanced at a band of faded black-and-white lettering—BEEKEY BROTHERS, MOVING AND STORAGE—running around the roofline edge of the great blank-walled brick building that filled the block just ahead. It looked the same: Was it possible that it was? That for the past three years the Project had gone on very well without him?
Now he stopped at the corner of the building to look at the weathered gray door there, and thought he knew why it stood invitingly ajar. Thought he knew that if he accepted this tacit invitation, pushing the door open and stepping in, he would seem to have agreed that he belonged here still, still had the right to walk in. But he was not going to make this meeting so easy for Ruben Prien; the major had some crow to eat.
Without stepping closer he reached forward and with a big blunt forefinger pushed the door hard enough to swing it wide, but he stood where he was, looking in at Rube hopping quickly from the desk, smiling that sudden fine Rube Prien smile, mouth opening to welcome him. But Dr. Danziger, face blankly unresponsive, spoke first. “May I come in?”
It flustered Rube; Danziger saw him blink. “Of course, of course! Come in!”
Walking in slowly, Danziger said, “Oh no; there’s no of course anymore about me coming in here uninvited. You threw me out, didn’t you?” Then, voice neutraclass="underline" “How are you, Rube?”
“I’m fine, Dr. Danziger. And you’re looking good.”
“No I’m not. I was old when you saw me last, and now I’m older.” He looked carefully around the little anteroom. “Looks the same. No change.”
“Oh, it is, it is. Dr. D, we could still go have lunch somewhere. Be a lot pleasanter to talk.”
“No. I’m not ready to break bread with you, Rube: I’m still puzzling out my feelings.”
“Oh?” Face uncomfortable, Rube stood wanting to ask his guest to sit down, wanting to be hospitable, to get this off dead center, but not quite daring.
“Of course. I felt confused when you phoned. Wondering as I heard your voice whether I hated you. Should I refuse right then and there to ever even look at you again? Or come here and look my fill, indulging my hatred, feeding it. And thinking of revenge.” He smiled. “Or vengeance; I like that form better, don’t you? And yet as we spoke, I thought maybe what I felt wasn’t hate but only powerful dislike. So unforgiving I wouldn’t be able to take the sight of you. Or, if I could stand it, would still rather not. Or maybe, as you continued, your voice so happy to be speaking to me again, I wondered if perhaps the passage of time had only left a permanent but healed-over scar. The pain finally gone so now I could—what? —tolerate the sight of you? Come here and look at you with only simple distaste now? Curiosity with the lip curled?” Rube’s courteous smile remained and—he managed this—seemed without strain. “Or maybe none of those. When I thought of Rube Prien these days was it, I asked myself, with only a kind of mental shrug? A feeling of: Oh well, it was all some time ago, so what the hell.”
“And what did you decide?” Now Rube indicated a wooden upright chair. “Sit down, please, Doctor.”
“No, I want to go upstairs and look around. See the Project again. It’s why I decided to come. And therefore decided also on an attitude of tolerant curiosity, Rube. On viewing you with an air of faint cold amusement. That’s what I’m doing now, if you can’t tell. Looking you over, a little amused at your presumption. Wondering how the hell you could possibly have the nerve to speak to me even by phone. Let alone ask me to lunch! So—speaking calmly, Rube, tolerantly amused at your presumption—what the hell do you want?”
“Your help. And, if it’s possible . . . to make a beginning at restoring a friendship that at least I still feel.”