Fateful decision, that.
I made a second fateful decision when a couple of drunken tourists beat me to a cab on Hudson Street. The hell with it, I decided, and I walked over to Sheridan Square and caught the subway. I rode uptown to Seventy-second Street, bought a copy of tomorrow’s Times, and waited for the light to change so I could go home and read it.
“Excuse me…”
I turned toward the voice and was looking at a slender, dark-haired woman with a heart-shaped face. She had small regular features and a complexion out of a soap ad, and she was wearing a dark business suit and a red beret. She looked terrific, and my first thought was that I was going to be profoundly disappointed when she turned out to be selling flowers for the Reverend Moon.
“I hate to bother you,” she said, “but you live here in the neighborhood, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. You looked familiar to me, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you around. I feel ridiculous saying this, but I just got off a bus and I was on my way to my apartment, and I had the feeling someone was stalking me. That sounds melodramatic now that I hear myself saying it, but that’s what it felt like. And I live so close it seems silly to take a cab, and…”
“Would you like me to walk you home?”
“Would you? Unless it’s completely out of your way. I’m at Seventy-fourth and West End.”
“I’m on West End, too.”
“Oh, that’s great!”
“At Seventy-first Street.”
“Oh,” she said. “That means you’d be walking two blocks completely out of your way, and then two blocks back. That’s an extra four blocks. No, I can’t ask you to do that.”
“Of course you can. People have asked far more of me than that.”
“Are you sure? There’s a cab now. Why don’t I just take a cab?”
“To go two blocks? Come on.”
“Well, if you were to walk me to West End,” she said, “and then, when we did go our separate ways, I’d just have those two short blocks on my own, and—”
“Stop it,” I said. “I’ll walk you all the way home. I really don’t mind.”
Fateful, fateful.
She didn’t usually get home this late, I learned. She’d had a class, and it ran a little later than usual, and then she’d gone out for coffee with a couple of her classmates, and the discussion got so spirited it had been easy to lose track of the time.
I asked what the discussion was about.
“Everything,” she said. “We started out talking about one of the scenes we’d done earlier, and then we got onto the ethical implications of the Method, and then, oh, one thing led to another.”
It usually does. “You’re an actress.”
“Well, it’s an acting class,” she said. “And maybe I’m an actress, but we don’t know that yet. Which is one of the reasons I’m taking the class. To find out.”
“And in the meantime—”
“I’m a lawyer. Except that’s not quite true, either. What I really am is a paralegal, but I’m studying to become a lawyer. I’m taking classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at Manhattan Law School.”
“And acting classes on Thursdays?”
“Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“And you work days as a paralegal?”
“Five days a week from nine to five at Haber, Haber & Crowell. And they just about always want me to come in Saturdays, and I almost always do. You’re probably thinking I’ve got a very heavy schedule, and I do, but I prefer it that way, at least for now. I think I’m happier if I don’t have a great deal of unscheduled time these days. I know that’s cryptic and that one typically tells one’s life story to a total stranger, but I’m a little shy about that, maybe diffident’s a better word, a little diffident, and anyway you’re not a total stranger because you live right here in the neighborhood. And this is West End Avenue, where we would go our separate ways if you weren’t such a gentleman. You never told me your name. But then how could you? I’ve done all the talking. My name’s Gwendolyn Cooper, and yours is…”
“Bernie Rhodenbarr.”
“Short for Bernard. But people call you Bernie?”
“Usually.”
“With Gwendolyn you get a choice. I can be Gwen or Wendy or even Lyn.”
“Or Doll,” I suggested.
“Doll? Oh, the second syllable. Doll Cooper. Or Dolly, but no, that doesn’t really work. Doll Cooper. Can you see that on a playbill?”
“Easier than I can see it on a law school diploma.”
“Oh, I’m afraid that’s going to read ‘Gwendolyn Beatrice Cooper.’ Assuming I hang around long enough to get it. Doll Cooper. You want to know something? I like it.”
“It’s yours.”
“Better than that, it’s me. What do you do, Bernie? If that’s not too invasive a question.”
“I’m a bookseller.”
“Like at Dalton or Waldenbooks?”
“No, I have my own store.” I told her what it was called and where it was located and it turned out that was her favorite fantasy, to own and operate a used-book store.
“And in the Village,” she said. “It sounds totally perfect. I bet you love it.”
“I do, as a matter of fact.”
“You must go to work every morning with a song on your lips.”
“Well—”
“I know I would. Ah, here’s where I live, the one with the canopy. Are you actually going to walk me to my front door? I wondered where the true gentlemen were these days. It turns out they’re down in the Village selling books.”
Her doorman was perched on a folding chair, his attention largely given over to a supermarket tabloid. The headline of the article he was reading hinted at a connection between extraterrestrials and the California lottery. “Hi, Eddie,” she said.
“Hey, how ya doin’,” he said, without raising his eyes from the page.
She turned to me, rolled her eyes, then turned to him again. “Eddie, do you know when the Nugents are coming back?” This time he actually glanced up at her, his own face unsullied by a look of comprehension. “Mr. and Mrs. Nugent,” she said. “Apartment 9-G.” As in spot, I thought. “As in gerbil,” she said. “They went to Europe. Do you know when they’re due back?”
“Hey, ya got me,” he said. “Have to ask one of the day guys.”
“I keep forgetting,” she said, probably to me, since the tabloid had reclaimed his attention. “I’m in such a fog when I walk out of here in the morning that it’s all I can do to find the subway. Oh, God, look at the time! I’ll be in a worse fog than usual. Bernie, you’re an angel.”
“And you’re a doll.”
“I am now, thanks to you.” She smiled, showing a mouthful of perfect teeth. Then she stood up on her toes, kissed the corner of my mouth, and disappeared into the building.
Three blocks south of there, I gave my own night doorman a nod and got a nod in return. I’ve been a little less effusive with the building staff ever since I found out the guy I’d been gamely practicing my Spanish on was from Azerbaijan. Nowadays I just nod, and they nod back, and that’s as much of a relationship as anybody really needs.
I went upstairs to my own apartment. For a long moment I just stood there in the darkness, feeling like a diver on a high platform.
Well, at least I could get a little closer to the edge. Even curl my toes around it.
I turned on the light and got busy. I stepped out of my Florsheim wingtips and into an old pair of running shoes. From a cubbyhole at the rear of the bedroom closet I equipped myself with a little ring of instruments which are not, strictly speaking, keys. In the right hands, however, they will do all that a key can do and more. I put them in my pocket, and I added a tiny flashlight that throws a very narrow beam, and does not throw it terribly far. In the kitchen, in the drawer with the Glad bags and the aluminum foil, I found a roll of those disposable gloves of plastic film, much favored these days by doctors and dentists, not to mention those gentle souls for whom the word “fist” is a verb.