I was asleep the next time the phone rang. The tuner, still on, glowed like a banked campfire in the corner.
“Chuck, it’s important. You know I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t important. Tell Hal I can’t come tomorrow, will you? I can’t keep the appointment, tell him. Something’s come up, I can’t get there. Will you do that for me?”
“Sure.”
“You gonna tell him? It’s important. I can’t get there. Got it?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Thanks. Don’t forget. Thanks, pal.”
What a bummer. I thought I’d never get back to sleep. Finally, I got up and put on The Last Album. Screw had called it Days Too Long, but everybody calls it The Last Album. It had everything in it of Screwbosky’s attitude toward death — and, as he said, he’d thought about it a long time. One part of him thought that life was too short. The other part thought that it was long enough.
I came down through the park on my bike with the wind blowing in my face. The sun was sitting high on top of the big horse chestnuts on the east side of the park. On the other side, a three-quarter moon was still in the sky, hanging white in the west. The two balls faced each other across the park, with me coming down between them. I cycled down the West Side traverse and shot out of the park at Columbus Circle, changing lanes twice and circling the statue to cut on down to Fifty-seventh Street. I turned east and passed Carnegie Hall, passed the restaurant, passed the spot where I once picked up Mick Jagger and two of his friends, and spun on down to Fifth. It was too early, I knew. But I’m like that. Always on time. Once I figure out what I’m going to do, doing anything else is a waste of time.
Anyway, I’d had it with the apartment. I had to get out. I’d been cleaning since I woke up that morning, and hardly made a dent. I just closed off the kitchen, figuring I would clean only the areas that would be visible. First, the bathroom. Change the cat’s box. Put up some new towels. I have this trick of scraping down the sink and tub with a single-edged razor blade. That gets the crud off. Then I pour bleach over everything, and what’s left turns white.
Then the bedroom. God, what a mess. I’d got out of the habit of making the waterbed. I couldn’t sleep on it anymore. I’d been sleeping on a sleeping bag on the living-room floor. One of the cats had caught a claw in the plastic and started a slow leak. Then she pissed in the gutter of water that rimmed the bed. I had to mend the leak, bail out the stinking water, and wipe the bed down. And find some clean sheets. I didn’t want to have to do a laundry. Luckily, there were some clean sheets, so I just stuffed everything that was dirty into one of the closets and closed the door.
The bathroom looked good. The bedroom was OK with the lights off and the curtains drawn. The living room would have to stay as it was, there was not much I could do about it. It was clean enough — there is not much furniture, besides my desk and worktable. The room is full of projects, scale models, theater designs, and so forth. Mostly unfinished. My friends like to think of me as an artist. They’re always introducing me as an artist or an architect or a designer. But I’m too self-critical to really get anywhere. None of the things I’ve started ever get finished. Nothing I do matches the idea as it first comes to me. And yet these half-done things suggest the whole things, so what’s the use of further fooling around? I’d just as soon be introduced as a cabby. Sometimes I correct people, after they’ve introduced me. “No, I’m not an artist. I drive a cab.”
I drove this week, three days in a row, to make a little money. I have this arrangement with Mike at the garage; he lets me take a cab out anytime I want to. I don’t make a lot. You have to hustle to make money driving, and I won’t hustle. But it suits me OK, driving. Gets me out of my apartment. I’d go crazy if I didn’t make myself get out from time to time.
Somewhere in the living room, in one of the big portfolios, I was sure I had a poster of the 1986 tour, the one that never happened. That poster is probably worth a lot of money now. A collector’s item. Screwbosky was dead before the first concert of the tour. After the sixties and the seventies were over and nobody much was dying anymore, he had to die. I had tickets for that lour. Madison Square Garden. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, just bought the records. I had never been physically closer to him than sitting down front, next to the stage, or standing by the corridor when the band passed through the auditorium to the platform. It never occurred to me then to try to get close to him. I just liked his music. He was part of a good time. It was a good time because I didn’t know yet that it was almost over. And now I have this second chance. Storey Stanton, now Mrs. Talbot, once Storey Screwbosky, was going to give me that chance. To get close to him.
What had I done with that poster? Just going through all my old stuff was slowing me down, wasting time, and I didn’t want to look at the past that much. I spotted the poster just as the phone rang. I didn’t want to talk to anybody at the moment, but I heard the telephone butler activate, so I flipped the switch so that I could hear the caller.
Yeah, it was Mom. Sophia. Hello, you little dumpling. She had already called twice that morning, but as usual she was intimidated by the recorded greeting and couldn’t bring herself to speak. I currently had the machine set up so that it started with the cavalry charge played at top volume by the best bugle you’d ever want to hear. It galvanizes most of my callers into saying whatever it is that’s on their minds. Not Sophia. She leaves her little silent moment of waiting on the machine, and hangs up.
But this time she is going to speak up. Brave little woman, Sophia. She talks fast, to get in as much as she can to her allotted half-minute.
“Peter? Peter, why don’t you answer your telephone? Your mother needs to speak to you. Why did you come into the shop on Monday? The clerks, they don’t know what to say to you. You took money from the cash register, they don’t know how to say no to you. I am not there on Mondays, you know that. On Mondays I go to see Father Stephanotis. Father wants to see you. He has not seen you since the funeral. He says, Peter is such a fine-looking young man. And such a brain. Why does he do the things he does? I don’t know, I have no answer, I am only a mother—”
She ran out of time. Not that there was any more to say. I ran the tape back, and then played it again, transferring it to the big tape recorder. It would be worth playing around with, maybe. Now that she’s left a message, I’ll have to call her back in the next day or two. Have to keep those rent checks coming. Sophia pays my rent in an arrangement by which the checks are debited against whatever my share of the estate will be. You have no idea how much time I have to spend on her to keep this arrangement going.
I tacked up the poster. Screw is wearing leather pants and an open leather jacket, no shirt. He’s holding a mike in his left hand, high and close to his face, like a light. His Gibson J-200 is hanging from his neck. His right hand cups his ear. His eyes are half closed, his head turned a little so that his two trademarks, the beaky nose and the wild hair, are outlined against the spotlights. National Tour, June 17-July 23, 1986, it says. I was still enrolled at Columbia that year. I was still going to be a college graduate, a professional.
I almost coasted into a yellow cab that was making the light late. “Watch it, you stinkin’ coprolite,” he said. Or that’s what I think he said. “Get outta my way, shitstabber,” I replied. He shouted something more as he accelerated down Fifty-ninth Street, and I gave him the finger. Of course, I belong to that confederacy of cab drivers. I had been driving all week, but now I was on the other side — one of them — the vast army of bodies whose aim in life is to keep cab drivers from reaching their destinations swiftly and efficiently.