I told her, as concisely as I could, the whole story, leaving out any details that weren’t, in my opinion, absolutely essential. Among the nonessential details I skipped were the details of my trip to Rome. For instance, the fact that I wouldn’t be going alone.
But when the time came to ask the question I’d come to ask, I couldn’t keep myself from looking around warily.
“And so I was wondering if any of the regulars here at the Chelsea might have anything to do with that world-the world of cocaine and drug dealing, I mean. Let me be clear: I don’t have any specific ideas, no suspicions. When my client told me that he’d found out some information from a gay friend of his, it occurred to me that I might ask you and see if anything useful came up.”
“I’m sorry, I really don’t know what to tell you. If any of my customers uses or buys or sells cocaine-and I’d guess the likelihood is high-I don’t know anything about it. Obviously, nobody snorts it here-they’d have some explaining to do to Hans and Pino-and we haven’t noticed any suspicious activity, nothing to indicate that anyone is using this place as a base to sell coke. I don’t know anything about drugs, these days.”
“Why do you say ‘these days’?”
“Well, in the first half of my life-in my other life-white powder made an occasional appearance. A number of my clients liked coke, and I knew a few people who sold it, though I never used it, much less bought it. Anyway, I’m talking about a long time ago, years ago. It’s a world I had a few brushes with, but it’s light-years away now. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
“Don’t worry. It was a stupid idea, the kind of idea only an amateur investigator would come up with.”
We went on chatting while the bar slowly emptied out. Then the staff went home, one by one, and in the end we were sitting there alone, with most of the lights turned off, and the music still playing, turned down low. She went and fetched Pino/Baskerville from the car and let him come in and sit with us. He seemed to remember me, because he came over and let me pet him and then stretched out on the floor under our table.
“I like to sit here, after the place shuts down, with Pino. The bar changes-it becomes a different place. And then I can smoke because when it’s closed it’s no longer a public place. It’s my place, and I can do what I want. Pino doesn’t mind cigarette smoke, or at least he never objects.”
“Can I say something incredibly stupid?”
“Be my guest.”
“It seems incredible to me that until just a couple of years ago it was okay to smoke in bars and restaurants. I have a hard time even picturing it. I have to make an effort to remember that there were cigarettes, and that some places you walked into the air was practically unbreathable. It’s as if the regulations against smoking interfered with my memories and manipulated them somehow.”
“I’m not sure I follow you on that last part.”
“Let me give you an example. This afternoon, I was sitting in a bar waiting for someone. While I was sitting there by myself, I thought back and remembered a time, years and years ago, when I was sitting in that same bar with my friends. It was a memory from my time in college, and for sure at least three people who were there with me were smokers. I’m certain on that afternoon we were smoking. And yet the scene, as I saw it in my mind, had no cigarettes. It’s as if the prohibition of smoking in public places had a sort of retroactive effect on my memories.”
“A retroactive effect on your memories. You say some odd things. Nice, though. Why did you happen to remember that particular afternoon?”
“We were talking about novels and characters. Each one of us named the character we identified with most.”
“Who did you pick?”
“Captain Fracasse.”
“Would you say the same thing today?”
“No, I doubt it. Captain Fracasse is still one of my favorite characters from literature, but if I had to play the same game today, I’d pick someone else.”
“Who would you pick?”
“Charlie Brown.”
She burst into laughter, a short, sharp explosion.
“Come on, really.”
“Charlie Brown, really.”
She stopped laughing and looked me in the eye to see if I was joking or not. She decided I wasn’t joking.
“But you said characters from literature.”
“You know what Umberto Eco said about Charles Schulz?”
“What?”
“I’m not sure if I remember it word for word, but I’m pretty sure this was the concept: ‘If poetry means the capacity of carrying tenderness, pity, and wickedness to moments of extreme transparence, as if things passed through a light and there were no telling any more what substance they are made of, then Schulz is a poet.’ And I would add to that: Schulz was a genius.”
“Why Charlie Brown, though?”
“Well, as you probably know, Charlie Brown is a prototypical loser. His baseball team always loses. The other kids make fun of him, and he’s hopelessly in love with a little girl-the Little Red-Haired Girl-even though he’s never been able to talk to her. She doesn’t even know Charlie Brown exists.”
“But what does a loser like Charlie Brown have to do with someone like you? I don’t get it.”
“Wait, let me finish. Have you read the one where he goes to summer camp with a paper bag over his head, with holes cut out for his eyes?”
“No.”
“When Charlie Brown puts the paper bag with eye holes over his head, suddenly, inexplicably, he becomes popular. All the kids at the camp go to him for advice and help. He becomes another person. I haven’t read many books that I identified with so intensely as that series of Peanuts comic strips. The Charlie Brown who became someone only when his head was covered with a paper bag is me.”
She sat in silence, looking at me. Underneath the table the dog wriggled on his back, making low sounds of pleasure like a giant purring cat. Keith Carradine was softly singing “I’m Easy.”
“I like to read, but it’s always been easier for me to identify with characters in movies. I think I like movies more than anything in the world. I like everything about going to the movies, and the moment I like best is when they turn off the house lights and the film is about to begin.”
She was right. It’s a perfect moment when the lights go down and everything’s about to begin. For a little while neither of us spoke. I let my eyes roam over the film posters hanging on the walls.
“Where do you get these posters?” I asked after a couple of minutes.
“They’re almost all originals. Only a few of the oldest ones are reproductions. I started collecting them years ago, and back then to find them you had to go around to junk shops, old film distribution companies, and bookstores that specialized in cinema. Now you can find anything you want on the Internet. But I still prefer going around to dusty old shops to look for posters.”
There were posters from every era: from La Dolce Vita to Manhattan , from Cinema Paradiso to Dead Poets Society, with a picture of Robin Williams being lifted in triumph by his students, against a yellow background that looked like embossed gold.
“Call me corny, but at the end of that movie, when the boys climb onto their desks, it was all I could do not to cry,” I said, pointing at the poster.
“I’m way cornier than you, then. I sobbed like a little girl. And then, when I saw the movie again, I cried just as hard as the first time.”
“There’s a line I always remember from that movie-”
“O Captain! My Captain!”
“ ‘Our fearful trip is done.’ But that’s not the part I meant.”
“Which one, then?”
“Something that Robin Williams as Keating says to his students: ‘No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.’ ”
“It would be nice if it were true.”
“Maybe it is true.”
She gave me a serious look, the look of someone hearing something she liked.
“I like movies that make you cry.”
“So do I.”
“I can name more than you can.”