“I just can’t seem to get straight,” he said more than once.
Somewhere outside of Amherst she asked, “Would you like to come stay with me for a while? You could sleep on the couch... or in my bed if you want.”
Albert hadn’t had a drink in thirty-four hours. He felt queasy but clearheaded.
“I really, really want to, Mary D,” he said, surprising himself with the clarity. “But I’m on a tight schedule here. I got to get to a place that’s mine. Mine.”
The plump schoolteacher smiled sadly and put a hand on his forearm. She leaned over and kissed his bristly cheek.
2
The next twenty-two years passed like overlapping spirals drawn by a tired child on a rainy afternoon. Albert would work for weeks, sometimes for months at a time, and then he’d fall off the wagon.
But even when on a bender, Albert would always find time to beg. This practice he’d learned from his Tibetan master.
“A man with a tin cup allows the more prosperous to pay penance. Without this opportunity, their souls would surely be lost.”
Albert could imbibe prodigiously in his younger years, but after he crossed the half-century border his capacity diminished. Where at one time he could drink a fifth and a half of sour-mash whiskey, now half a bottle of cheap red wine was all he could manage before the gut rot set in.
He’d been hospitalized twice by the city and had done three stints in jail, for public lewdness, resisting arrest, and simple assault. The Eagle Heart Construction Company of Queens always took Albert back if he was sober. He’d been working for them as long as most could remember.
Between work and inebriation, jail and hospitalization, Albert lived in a cavity under an abandoned subway tunnel on the Upper East Side. This space was an underground chamber he inherited from a German survivalist named Dieter Krownen, who had returned to Munich when his mother got sick.
Chained together under metal netting in the abandoned tunnel above his subterranean lair, Albert had a collection of shopping carts in which he kept those belongings that didn’t fit in his 137-square-foot underground bunker.
Albert hadn’t realized he’d passed the half-century mark until he was fifty-three. One day he’d come across his birth certificate in an old alligator wallet in the bottom of one of the carts. The date of his birth was January 12, 1958, the time 4:56 a.m. His race was Negro, sex male, and he came into the world weighing six and three-quarter pounds.
After calculating his age, Albert stopped working for Eagle Heart Construction. Fifty, he thought, should be the mandatory retirement age in order to make space for younger workers. One of his professors at state college had told him that.
So for six months he’d been strolling around Manhattan with his travel cart. He pushed the rickety shopping cart all over the city, whispering words about his father and mother, Luellen, and always, always Alyce. He begged for a few hours each day, thinking about his deceased master and believing that he was doing penance by begging and saving souls.
One sunny afternoon he found himself on Sixth Avenue, two blocks south of Houston Street. There he stood on the corner next to a restaurant with half of its tables out on the sidewalk. He leaned against a lamppost remembering the half-told story about his great-uncle Big Jim who, Albert imagined, had killed a dozen white men in a just war.
Over the years, Albert had fleshed out the tale that his mother had tantalized him with before she died. Albert’s Jim was six foot six, with fists like hams, and very proficient with every kind of weapon. He’d fought beside Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War and had been wounded more than once...
While reconstituting the story he’d contrived over the years, Albert became aware of a woman crossing the street.
It was Alyce or, at least, almost Alyce. The woman walking toward him was the same age Alyce had been when Albert knew her; she was taller, with different-color eyes, blond not brunette, white not black. But in spite of all that she had the same style and poise and grace. She had the same wildness in her blue, not brown, eyes. Her gait was brash like Alyce’s, and her expression was one of mirth in the face of disaster.
This woman, who every man and woman around was looking at, walked right up to Albert and said, “Hi, I’m Frankie. What’s your name?”
“Albert.”
“You want to make some money, Albert?”
“OK.”
“Well, then,” she said, with a wry grin, “let’s go.”
Stillman’s Gourmet Grocer was a chain that had a store in SoHo. Frankie had Albert leave his cart down the block from the entrance and told him to go into the fancy supermarket before she did.
“First, go back to the meat section,” she told him, “and then to the fruits and vegetables. Whenever you see me, count to twelve and then go to the next section. Don’t act like you know me. Just count to twelve and move on.”
She laid out the plan for him to go to five different sections. He committed these destinations to memory, thinking that maybe the Tibetan notion of reincarnation was true and that Alyce had died and been reborn as Frankie.
He went into the store and was shocked by the air-conditioning. The cold made him shiver now and then, even under his coat and sweater. He made his way to the meats and looked into the cold bins with rows of steaks and pork chops, whole chickens and slabs of bacon — all set on rectangular Styrofoam plates wrapped in clear plastic. The food distracted him. He cooked in his subterranean lair but only rice and beans, chicken necks and grits.
After a while Alyce, no, Frankie, yes, Frankie, wandered into the aisle. One, two... She wore tight-fitting, faded blue jeans and a linen shirt. There was a necklace of blue stones around her neck. Her hair was tied back, and she was so beautiful...
...eleven, twelve.
Albert moved on, looking for the fruits and vegetables.
Store employees followed him openly. There was a guard in a uniform not three steps away.
Albert wasn’t worried. He was no thief. His mother hated thieves. At one time his sister wanted to be a cop. Looking at a bin filled with huge pomegranates, Albert wondered whether Luellen still had the same phone number. They hadn’t been in touch in nineteen years, maybe twenty.
“Excuse me,” the copper-skinned guard, wearing a blue and gray uniform, said.
At just that moment Alyce, no, Frankie, came into the far end of the aisle.
One, two, three...
“Excuse me,” the guard insisted.
“Yes?”...four, five...
“Can I help you?”
“No, no, I’m just looking.” ...seven, eight...
“If you’re not going to buy anything, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
The guard was young and pudgy, with a silly, drooping mustache. His eyes were both insecure and resentful.
When Albert got to twelve he turned and walked away.
The guard followed him.
“Excuse me.”
Albert passed the pasta aisle and one with cookies and cakes. Finally there was a row with coffee and teas, chocolates, and wildflower-flavored honeys.
Albert stopped in front of a row of golden jars and stared.
“Excuse me,” the guard said.
There were store employees standing at the far end of the aisle.
“Yes?” Albert asked, grateful not to be distracted by having to count.
“I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“But I haven’t finished looking.”
“You have to buy something.”
Albert reached into his pocket and took out a five-dollar bill. He showed this to the guard.