He walked to the single, nearly empty closet at the back of the room. The door was already ajar, the upper hinge pulled nearly free from the wall so that it slumped to the right. There were two suits, five shirts and four pairs of trousers. A cracked leather belt hung from a wire hanger, along with a scattering of ties. Corman picked the dark blue one, then added a white shirt and a black suit. The world could hardly contain the vast irrelevancy of his shoes.
A large suitcase rested on the upper shelf of the closet, and as Corman pulled it forward, he felt its unexpected heaviness suddenly shift toward him, then stood by helplessly as it tumbled over the edge and slammed into the floor below, the top springing open as it fell, spilling hundreds of photographs in a wide, black-and-white wave across the bare, wooden floor.
Reflexively, he dropped to his knees and began sweeping the scattered pictures back into the gutted suitcase. At first he returned them in large handfuls, then slowly, one by one, taking a long, lingering moment to stare appreciatively at each of them. These were what the old man’s soul had needed, and as Corman continued to look at them, staring longer and longer at each one, he knew that this was his way of paying homage to a life he’d only come to know in its final years. All through the morning and then into the afternoon, he sat on the floor and looked at the photographs Lazar had saved through his long career. While the air grew steadily darker, he peered at pictures of children playing in the park, women leaning from their windows, men slumping against parking meters, cars and brick walls, and over and over, in one picture after another, in a theme that seemed to have developed slowly throughout the old man’s life, pictures of people huddled beneath awnings, in doorways, under the fluttering batlike wings of a thousand black umbrellas, but all of them staring out toward unseen open spaces, as if still searching for some break in the unrelenting rain. And as Corman returned the last picture to the suitcase, it struck him that this was what had been missing from Groton’s apartment, that there’d been no photographs hanging from the walls or stuffed into his bag, not one picture after all those years to stand forever as something he did right.
He was still in Lazar’s apartment when he called Pike. “I’m going to pass on Groton’s job,” he told him quietly.
“Suit yourself,” Pike said casually. “It’s not a job I’ll have any trouble filling.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Too bad, though,” Pike added nonchalantly. “The fag liked you, said you were a pretty good shooter.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Said you had an eye for things.”
“An eye,” Corman repeated unemphatically, then with more significance. “Lazar died yesterday.” He tapped the side of his camera bag. “I’m taking some of his clothes up. For the body.”
“He was good,” Pike said, “a good shooter. But he was weak, Corman. What the Irish call a harp.”
“He seemed tough enough to me.”
“How tough’s that?”
“He drank it down to the worm,” Corman said. “He didn’t fake anything.” If he’d been a sculptor, he thought as he hung up the phone, he would have etched the same proud words upon the old man’s stone.
Corman laid the bag on the desk beside a tray of hospital plates. “This is for Mr. Lazar,” he said.
The attendant recognized him immediately and gave him a quizzical look. “Did anyone call you?” she asked delicately.
Corman nodded. “I know he died,” he told her. “I brought some clothes for him.”
“Oh, I see,” the woman said. “Well, Mr. Lazar is … we have … I mean he’s downstairs.”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to see him?”
Corman shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
The woman smiled softly. “He died in his sleep,” she said. “Very quiet. We didn’t know anything had happened until we made our regular rounds.” She glanced at the bag for no reason, then returned her eyes to Corman. “He was sitting up. I mean, when it happened. I guess he was listening to the radio. He had it propped up against his ear.”
“Yes, he was probably doing that,” Corman said. He could feel a strange restlessness somewhere deep within him and worked to keep it down. “As far as a funeral, I’ll make the arrangements. He owned a plot in a cemetery in Brooklyn. The one you see from the train on the way to Coney Island. It’s very crowded. He liked that, crowds.”
“I know the one,” the woman said with a sudden cheeriness. “I live near it.”
“They would know about the plot,” Corman added. “Where it is. That kind of thing. I’ll call them, make the arrangements.” He slid the bag over toward her. “I guess you can take these now?”
She pulled them toward her, peeked in. “Looks fine,” she said.
Corman placed his hand on the suitcase. He could feel the many miles it had traveled, smell the hotel beds where Lazar had flung it, see the roads, tracks, rails it had been hustled down. “Yes,” he said as he spread his hand across it, left it there a moment, then drew it achingly away.
Lucy had left a note on the door telling him she’d gone to Mrs. Donaldson’s, so he trudged back down the hallway to get her. She answered the door immediately.
“Why are you here?” she asked, surprised.
He smiled quietly. “Just to pick you up.”
“I thought you were going out with Mom.”
“I am, a little later.”
“And I’m going home with her tonight, right?”
Corman nodded. Tonight and forever, he thought, and ever and ever and ever. And he would be away as she grew tall and her voice changed by imperceptible degrees. He would be away when she failed at this, triumphed at that, away when she woke up with a start, when the cat died, the bird escaped, away when she fell, away when she got up again. And in the end he would no longer feel familiar with the shape of her leg, the length of her hair, because, by some formula the world took powerfully to heart, he had failed to be what he should have been.
“So when are you meeting Mom?” Lucy asked.
“Around eight,” Corman told her. “Mrs. Donaldson will stay with you until we get back.”
Lucy turned excitedly and called to Mrs. Donaldson that her father had arrived, and that she was going home. “Is it okay if I eat with her tonight?” she asked as they headed toward their apartment. “She cooks better.”
“Yeah, it’s okay.”
Lucy slapped her hands together. “Great,” she said happily, then rushed away, bounding down the corridor ahead of him for a few yards before she stopped abruptly, as if caught by a sudden thought. Then, for no reason he could understand, she returned to him slowly, her eyes oddly tender, tucked her hand in his arm and walked beside him silently to their door.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
LEXIE ARRIVED almost exactly at eight. She smiled tentatively when Corman opened the door, then came slowly into the small foyer as he stepped back to let her pass.
Lucy rushed from her room to greet her. “Hi, Mom.”
Lexie pulled her into her arms, smiled warmly. “Hi. How are you?”
“Fine,” Lucy said. “I’m staying with you tonight.”
“Absolutely,” Lexie said. She looked at Corman, then spoke to him finally, her voice already a bit strained. “Hello, David.”
Corman nodded.
“You left the party quite early.”
“The shoot was over.”
Lucy tugged Lexie’s hand. “Did Papa tell you?”
“Tell me what, honey?”
“Mr. Lazar died.”
Lexie’s eyes shot over to Corman. “I’m sorry, David.”
“He’d had a stroke,” Corman said, almost dismissingly, carefully controlling himself. “He wasn’t in very good shape.”