I have Rachel, an ex-girlfriend living in the East Village, who will call me back at work if I don’t call her too often. I have two other friends, Eric Chen and Willy Jones. They both live in Brooklyn and still go to school.
That evening I climbed the seven flights up to my apartment because the elevator had stopped working in December. I sat in my chair and looked at the river. It was peaceful, and I relaxed. A fly was buzzing up against the glass, trying to push his way through to the world outside.
I got up to kill him. That’s what I always did when there was a fly in the house, I killed it. But up close I hesitated and watched the frantic insect. His coloring was unusual, a metallic green. The dull red eyes seemed too large for the body, like he was an intelligent mutant fly from some far-flung future on late-night television.
He buzzed up and down against the pane, trying to get away from me. When I returned to my chair, he settled. The red sun was hovering above the cliffs of New Jersey. The green fly watched. I thought of the fly I’d seen at work. That one was black and fairly small, by fly standards. Then I thought about Mona and then Lana. The smallest nudge of an erection stirred. I thought of calling Rachel but didn’t have the heart to walk the three blocks to a phone booth. So I watched the sunset gleaming around the fly, who was now just a black spot on the window.
I guess I fell asleep.
At three a.m. I woke up and made macaroni and cheese from a mix. The fly came into the cooking cove where I stood eating my meal. He lit on the big spoon I used to stir the macaroni and joined me for my late-night supper.
Ernie told me that Landsend mortgaging got most of their mail from the real-mail mail room, that they didn’t get most of the interoffice junk mail.
“Why not?” I asked.
“There’s just a few people up there. Most of their employees are off-site.”
“Well, could you put them on the junk list?”
“She a white girl?”
“So?”
“Nuthin’. But I want you tell me what it’s like if you get some.”
I didn’t answer him.
For the next week I took invitations to office parties, sales-force newsletters, and “Insurance Tips,” penned by Mr. Averill, up to Lana Donelli’s desk. We made small talk for thirty seconds or so, and then she’d pick up the phone to make a call. I always looked back as I rounded the corner to make sure she really had a call to make; she always did.
At the end of the week I bought her a paperweight with the image of a smiling Buddha’s face in it. When I got to her desk, she wasn’t there. I waited around for a while, but she didn’t return, so I wrote her a note, saying “From Rufus to Lana,” and put the heavy glass weight on it.
I went away excited and half-scared. What if she didn’t see my note? What if she did and thought it was stupid? I was so nervous that I didn’t go back to her desk that day.
“I really shouldn’t have sent it, Andy,” I said that night to the green fly. He was perched peacefully at the edge of the center rim of a small saucer. I had filled the inner depression with a honey and water solution. I was eating a triple cheeseburger with bacon from Wendy’s, that and some fries. My pet fly seemed happy with his honey water and only buzzed my sandwich a few times before settling down to drink.
“Maybe she doesn’t like me,” I said. “Maybe it’s just that she’s been nice to me because she feels sorry for me. But how will I know if I don’t try and see if she likes me, right?”
Andrew’s long tubular tongue was too busy drinking to reply.
“Hi,” I said to Lana the next morning.
She was wearing a jean jacket over a white T-shirt. She smiled and nodded. I handed her Mr. Averill’s “Insurance Tips” newsletter.
“Did you see the paperweight?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, without looking me in the eye. “Thanks.” Then she picked up her phone and began pressing buttons. “Hi, Tristan? Lana. I wanted to know if—” She put her hand over the receiver and looked at me. “Can I do something else for you?”
“Oh,” I said. “No. No,” and I wheeled away in a kind of euphoria.
It’s only now when I look back on it that I remember the averted eyes, the quick call, and the rude dismissal. All I heard then was “Thanks.” I even remember a smile. Maybe she did smile for a brief moment, maybe not.
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the next week I deposited little presents on her desk. I left them while she was out to lunch. I got her a small box of four Godiva chocolates, a silk rose, and a jar of fancy rose-petal jelly. I didn’t leave any more notes. I was sure that she’d know who it was. During that time I stopped delivering to her desk. I saved up all the junk mail for Friday morning, when I’d deliver it and ask her to go out with me.
Wednesday evening I went to a nursery on the East Side just south of Harlem proper. There I bought a bonsai, a real apple tree, for $347.52. I figured that I’d leave it during her Thursday lunch, and then on Friday, Lana would be so happy that she’d have to have lunch with me no matter what.
I should have suspected that something was wrong when Andrew went missing. I put out his honey water, but he didn’t show up, even when I started eating a beef burrito from Taco Bell. I looked around the apartment, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. There was a spiderweb in the upper corner of the shower, but there was no little bundle up there. I would have killed the spider right then, but he never came out when I was around.
That night I wondered if I could talk to Lana about Andrew. I wondered if she would understand my connection to a fly.
“What’s that?” Ernie asked me the next morning when I came in with the bonsai.
“It’s a tree.”
“Tree for what?”
“My friend Willy wanted me to pick it up for him. He wants it for his new apartment, and the only place where he could get it is up near me. I’m gonna meet him at lunch and give it to him.”
“Uh-huh,” Ernie said.
“You got my cart loaded?” I asked him.
Just then the Lindas came down in the elevator. Big Linda looked at me and shook her head, managing to look both contemptuous and pitying at the same time.
“There’s your carts,” Ernie said to them.
They attached their earphones and rolled back to the service elevator. Little Linda was looking me in the eye as the slatted doors closed. She was still looking at me as the lift brought her up.
“What about me and Junior?”
“Junior’s already gone. That’s all I got right now. Why don’t you sit here with me?”
“OK.” I sat down expecting Ernie to bring up one of his regular topics, either something about Georgia, white bosses, or the horse races, which he followed but never wagered on. But instead of saying anything he just started reading the Post.
After a few minutes I was going to say something, but the swinging door opened. Mr. Drew leaned in. He smiled at Ernie and then pointed at me.
“Rufus Coombs?”
“Yeah?”
“Come with me.”
I followed Leonard Drew through the messy service hall outside the couriers’ room to the passenger elevator that we rarely took. It was a two-man elevator, so Drew and I had to stand very close to one another. He wore too much cologne, but otherwise he was ideal for his supervisory job, wearing a light gray suit with a shirt that only hinted at yellow. The rust tie was perfect, and there was not a wrinkle on the man’s clothes or his face. I knew that he must have been up in his forties, but he might have passed as a graduate student at my school. He was light-skinned and had what my mother called good hair. There were freckles around his eyes.