‘Hey, it’s — hey, you’re Meredith’s dad. What’s the likelihood?’
I did not answer except to raise my left eyebrow, which arches more dramatically than the right.
‘I, uh, I’m staying in the house down the road.’
‘Yes?’
‘The power’s out.’
‘Is it?’
‘I don’t have a car, and when I saw lights through the trees I thought maybe, you know, you’d have some candles or a flashlight I could borrow. Even just a wind-up radio, you know?’
‘No.’
‘No you don’t have any of those things or no I can’t borrow them?’
‘I don’t have any of those things. And if I did have candles one cannot borrow candles since they are a species of thing consumed in their use, not that batteries in a radio or flashlight aren’t as well, but it is, I would suggest, a different order of use. One may receive candles, like eggs or a cup of sugar, with the understanding that one will replace such things or else enter into a reciprocal agreement with the person who has provided them such that he may, when next finding himself without candles, eggs, sugar, or a pound of butter, come knocking on the other man’s door and ask for one of these items in kind, as repayment.’
Ramsey looked nonplussed.
‘So you don’t have a spare flashlight? It’s really dark over there. The trees, man, they’re kind of creeping me out.’
‘You walked here in the dark. I’m sure you’ll be fine. You can catch up on your sleep.’
‘Come on, Professor, you must have a spare flashlight. I just got here. I came up from the city because I wanted to get away for the weekend, you know, and my friends, they said I could stay at their place, but I don’t know, maybe they forgot to pay the electricity bill or something. I get here and there’s no power and no heat and it’s really fucking cold tonight, and I’ve been looking around for hours trying to figure out what’s wrong. They said the temperature was gonna be the same in Rhinebeck as the city, but shit, man, it’s way colder when you get out of the city’s microclimate. Have you noticed that? Manhattan’s always warmer than surrounding areas, I guess that heat island effect or whatever they call it, the cars and the subways and all that glass and concrete and steel, it produces its own, like, ten-degree boost or something. You’d think the weather service would take account of that but I swear they don’t, or their monitoring stations are, like, up at the tops of buildings and get way different readings. Shit it’s cold out here. Could I come in and warm up before I head back?’
‘It’s only a ten-minute walk. You’ll warm up on the way.’
‘That’s not very hospitable.’
‘Maybe I’m not a very hospitable person.’
‘Come on, I don’t think that’s true, you’re just — I don’t know—’
‘I’m what? You have a theory about me? You don’t even know me.’
‘Maybe you’re a little paranoid, Professor.’
‘Maybe I am. Maybe you should go back to your friends’ house.’
‘Your neighbors.’
‘Yeah, see, I don’t know them. Haven’t met them. I don’t feel obliged to help one of their guests.’
‘But I’m a friend of your daughter’s.’
‘I don’t think so, Mr. Ramsey. I think you’re Peter’s friend and I don’t think you’re an especially close friend. I get the sense you’re some distant hanger-on who turned up in their lives because you realized my daughter and son-in-law might be useful.’
‘That’s not very nice. Come on, man, can I just get warm for a few minutes? That house is fucking frigid, and if I can’t figure out how to get the gas and electricity working I’m in for a cold night.’
‘It’s not too late to catch a train back to the city. Tell you what, I’ll call you a cab.’
‘I don’t give up so easy, I’ll rough it out if I have to — if I could just get warm.’
Even through the obstruction of the screen, it was obvious he was shaking, and perhaps he was a good actor or perhaps he was genuinely cold, but whatever the case something in me began to thaw against my own better instincts and I unlatched the screen door, standing aside as Michael Ramsey walked into my house. In retrospect it is possible I had figured it out already to some extent and wanted to see how things would unfold, hoping if nothing else that inviting him in might give me answers, or that he might reveal his role in the drama unfolding around me.
‘Listen, thanks, man, I’m really grateful.’ He shivered as I closed the front door, locking it from the inside so he could not leave without momentary obstruction, as if I wanted to make him think he was my hostage as well as my guest. ‘My phone’s out of juice and I wondered if I could use yours to call my friends and ask them what’s up with the power? I don’t even know if they’re home but they said they were staying in the city tonight and they were going to come up tomorrow to join me, but, you know, I’d rather not spend the night in a cold house if I can avoid it? There must be some really simple explanation like a switch that just needs to be flipped, I don’t know, circuit breakers or whatever, maybe there was a surge and things went down, but you didn’t have any problems with your power when you arrived? Did you come up last night or this morning?’
‘I came up today, this morning. Everything was fine. The house was warm, the lights worked, they still work, as you can see, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the power supply in the area. I don’t think a transformer has blown. If there’s a problem it’s in your friends’ house. What are their names, anyway?’
‘Phil and Sara Applegate.’
It sounded improbable but I nodded.
‘They bought the place a couple years ago and completely redid it. She goes in for primitive design, you know, so it’s, like, I don’t know, colonial, like walking into the eighteenth century or something, all really simple, but shit it’s cold in there.’
‘Maybe they don’t have electricity. Maybe they only use oil lamps and candles and heat the house with a woodstove. There are people like that up here. You’d be surprised how many. They don’t want to live on the grid. They dig a well, chop wood, lead a pastoral life. I think it would be exhausting myself.’
‘Totally. Wow. Can you imagine? You’d be working all the time just to stay warm.’
‘Simpler existence. Zen-like, or something.’
‘You’re a funny guy, Professor.’
‘What did I say that’s funny?’
‘Zen-like, or something. . beat, beat, beat. I like your comic timing. Very post-ironic. I never noticed that about you before. So, can I use your phone?’
‘Why not?’ I pointed with my forehead at the phone in the corner of the living room and Michael Ramsey loped across the floor, I could see he was in what seemed to be his trademark outfit, all blacks and grays, wools and cottons and leathers, as if he had internalized some outsider’s sense of the limits of Manhattan chic, how a Midwesterner might imagine a New Yorker should dress, and then in an elegant movement he picked up the phone and dialed. He was skinny and elastic, and I thought again that he was too thin to be healthy, the body of a junkie or anorexic.
‘I know their number by heart,’ he said, turning to address me over his shoulder.
‘Photographic memory?’
‘Eidetic. Especially for numbers and addresses and shit. Hey, Sara, it’s Michael. .’
I listened or half listened as he recounted his discovery of my neighbors’ cold and dark house and his inability to make the heating or lights work and then the revelation that he was phoning from my own house. It became evident within a few further sentences that Sara and Phil (I later confirmed those are, in fact, the names of my neighbors) had no idea why the power should be off and were hopeful that Michael would be willing to stick around on Saturday for someone to come have a look at things and perhaps they themselves would think twice about coming up for the weekend, which suggested that either the Applegates were assholes or they were not as friendly with Michael Ramsey as he wanted me to believe. (I still have not got to the bottom of that.) At last he hung up the phone and turned around to find me standing at the edge of the living room rug, my toes just touching the tassels, one of my hands resting on the back of a chair while the other searched the inside of my pants pocket for any indication of how I should handle the situation, but cloth offers no answers and a pocket is all too often merely a pocket.