“Astonishing,” said Scarp. He had ordered another round of drinks, at the end of which Harry was regaling him with the play’s climactic scene, the story of Aunt Fussbudget Flora — funny and wrenching and life-affirming in its way.
“The lights went dim, and the moon spilled onto her pillow in pale oblongs. We were all standing there, gathered in a prayer, when she sighed and breathed her very last word on earth: ‘Cripes.’ ”
Scarp howled in laughter. “Miraculous! What a family you have. A fascinating bunch of characters!” Harry grinned and sat back. He liked himself. He liked his life. He liked his play. He didn’t feel uneasy or cheaply spent, using his work this way, or if he did, well, he pushed that to one side.
“Harry,” said Scarp, as he was signing for the check. “This has been a real pleasure, let me say.”
“Yes, it has,” said Harry.
“And though I’ve got to run right now — to have dinner with someone far less engaging, let me tell you — do I have your word that you will consider writing something for me sometime? We don’t have to talk specifically now, but promise me you’ll give it some thought. I’m making a troth here.”
“And it shall set you free,” said Harry. “Absolutely.”
“I knew I would like you,” said Scarp. “I knew we would hit it off. In fact, where do you live? I’ll get a cab and drop you off.”
“Uh, that’s OK,” said Harry, smiling. His heart was racing. “I could use the walk.”
“If you’re sure,” said Scarp. “Listen, this was great. Truly great.” He shook Harry’s hand again, as limply as before. “Fabulous.”
THERE IS A WAY of walking in New York, midevening, in the big, blocky East Fifties, that causes the heart to open up and the entire city to rush in and make a small town there. The city stops its painful tantalizing then, its elusiveness and tease suspended, it takes off its clothes and nestles wakefully, generously, next to you. It is there, it is yours, no longer outwitting you. And it is not scary at all, because you love it very much.
“Ah,” said Harry. He gave money to the madman who was always singing in front of Carnegie Hall, and not that badly either, but who for some reason was now on the East Side, in front of something called Carnegie Clothes. He dropped coins in the can of the ski-capped woman propped against the Fuller Building, the woman with the pet rabbit and potted plants and the sign saying, I HAVE JUST HAD BRAIN SURGERY, PLEASE HELP ME. “Thank you, dear,” she said, glancing up, and Harry thought she looked, startlingly, sexy. “Have a nice day,” she said, though it was night.
Harry descended into the subway, his usual lope invigorated to a skip. His play was racing through him: He had known it was good, but now he really knew. Glen Scarp had listened, amazed, and when he had laughed, Harry knew that all his instincts and choices in those lovely moments over the last four years, carefully mining and sculpting the play, had been right. His words could charm the jaded Hollywood likes of a Glen Scarp; soon those words, some lasting impression of them, might bring him a ten- or even twenty-thousand-dollar television episode to write, and after that he would never have to suffer again. It would just be him and Breckie and his play. A life that was real. They would go out and out and out to eat.
The E train rattled west, then stopped, the lights flickering. Harry looked at the Be a Stenographer ad across from him and felt the world was good, that despite the flickering lights, it basically, amazingly, worked. A man pushed into the car at the far end. “Can you help feed me and my hungry kids?” he shouted, holding out a paper cup, and moving slowly down Harry’s side of the car. People placed quarters in the cup or else stared psychotically into the reading material on their laps and did not move or turn a page.
Suddenly a man came into the car from the opposite end. “Pay no attention to that man down there,” he called to the riders. “I’m the needy one here!” Harry turned to look and saw a shabbily dressed man with a huge sombrero. He had electric Christmas tree lights strung all around the brim and just above it, like some chaotic hatband. He flicked a button and lit them up so that they flashed around his head, red, green, yellow. The train was still stopped, and the flickering overheads had died altogether, along with the sound of the engine. There was only the dull hum of the ventilating system and the light show from the sombrero. “I am the needy one here,” he reiterated in the strangely warm dark. “My name is Lothar, and I have come from Venus to arrest Ronald Reagan. He is an intergalactic criminal and needs to be taken back to my planet and made to stand trial. I have come here to see that that is done, but my spaceship has broken down. I need your assistance so that I can get it done.”
“Amen!” someone called out.
“Yahoo,” shouted Harry.
“Can you help me, people, earthlings. I implore you. Anything you can spare will aid me in my goal.” The Christmas tree lights zipped around his head, people started to applaud, and everyone dug into their wallets to give money. When the lights came on, and the train started to go again, even the man with the hungry kids was smiling reluctantly, though he did say to Lothar, “Man, I thought this was my car.” When the train pulled into Forty-second Street, people got off humming, slapping high fives, low fives, though the station smelled of piss.
Harry’s happiness lasted five days, Monday through Friday, like a job. On Saturday he awoke in a funk. The phone had not rung. The mail had brought him no letters. The apartment smelled faintly of truck and sewage. He went out to breakfast and ordered the rice pudding, but it came with a cherry.
“What is this?” he asked the waiter. “You didn’t use to do this.”
“Maraschino eyeballs.” The waiter smiled. “We just started putting them on. You wanna whipped cream, too?”
When he went back home, not Deli but a homeless woman in a cloth coat and sneakers was sitting in his doorway. He reached into his pocket to give her some change, but she looked away.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I just have to get by here.” He took out his keys.
The woman stood up angrily, grabbing her shopping bags. “No, really, you can sit here,” said Harry. “I just need to get by you to get in.”
“Thanks a lot!” shouted the woman. Her teeth were gray in the grain, like old wood. “Thanks!”
“Come back!” he called. “It’s perfectly OK!” But the woman staggered halfway down the block, turned, and started screaming at him. “Thanks for all you’ve done for me! I really appreciate it! I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me my whole life!”
To relax, he enrolled in a yoga class. It was held three blocks away, and the teacher, short, overweight, and knowledgeable, kept coming over to Harry to tell him he was doing things wrong.
“Stomach in! Shoulders down! Head back!” she bellowed in the darkness of the yoga room. People looked. She was not fond of tall, thin men who thought they knew what they were doing. “Head back!” she said again, and this time tugged on his hair, to get his head at the right angle.
“I can’t believe you pulled my hair,” said Harry.
“Pardon me?” said the instructor. She pressed her knee into the middle disks of his spine.
“I would just do better,” said Harry loudly, “if you wouldn’t keep touching me!”
“All right, all right,” said the teacher. “I won’t touch you,” and she walked to the other side of the darkened room, to attend to someone else. Harry lay back for the deep breathing, spine pressed against the tough thread of the carpet. He put his hand over his eyes and stayed like that, while the rest of the class continued with headstands and cat stretches.