Ghosts of Manhattan: A Novel(68)

“Hi, Nick.”

“Hey. How are you?”

“Okay.” She pauses. I guess we both do. “Where are you?” Her question is not accusing or demanding. Just soft and curious.

“I’m back in the city.”

“How was your trip?”

“Fine.” There’s another long pause. I start to regret having called. It’s too clear that we’re talking without saying anything.

“Are you coming home tonight?”

“Yes, not till late, though. There’s a dinner I have to go to.” This is part truth, part lie. There’s no work dinner but I intend to stay at Cedar Tavern drinking by myself until late before going home.

“Okay.”

I clear my throat. I want to change the conversation but I can’t begin to put the words together.

“Nick.” She says my name but seems also to fail at the next words. She leaves it hanging in the air, and my instinct is to help it the way a person sees a pencil rolling off a table’s edge and flashes a hand toward it by reflex.

“Yes?” I’ve helped. I wait again.

“I miss us.”

I’m silent now, thinking about those three words, and in particular the last one. She didn’t say that she missed me. She didn’t say that she missed the Nick Farmer who is walking on Fourteenth Street on January 31, 2006. She said she misses “us,” an entity neither of us has seen in a long time and which is possibly irrecoverable. She doesn’t say she wants me to come home. She seems to say she wants me to go back in time and recover something I’ve lost, then for that person to come home. I don’t know how to respond to this and so I tell her the truth. “I don’t know what to say to that, Julia.”

“No.” She utters this, it seems, more to herself than to me. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later.”

For a moment I wonder if my interpretation of her words is too negative. She had reached out and I shut it down the way I shut down every other person’s attempt to reach me. “Yes, I’ll be late tonight, so maybe in the morning.” She still seems able to open a door for us. I need to pull myself together and walk through it before it’s too late.

“Look, I’m sorry. I just had to tell the assistant district attorney that a guy who is a piece of crap is actually all right.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Can we talk later?”

“Okay. Bye.”

I put the phone back in my pocket and I see the sign for Cedar Tavern a block away. I feel more tense than ever and fear that I’ve just made a colossal and avoidable blunder by not going to Julia right now, and the consequences are already falling on me like lead weight. I can feel the muscles in the back of my neck.

Cedar Tavern is so dark inside that it’s a strange place to enter in the middle of the day. I walk to a booth in the back while my eyes adjust. I pass by the bar stools. I don’t want the persistent and stalking presence of a bartender while I pass the hours. I slide across the leather seat of the booth and angle my back to the corner against the wall and settle in with my first drink. I get only a beer as I want a drink but also want to make it the whole day here and not pass out.

The booth feels safe and comfortable to me. I don’t have another place to escape to. There’s no home and no place of work I can run to. Like DiMaggio in his late years trying hopelessly to make a home of an upstairs room at the Olympic Club with not much to do but meet a dwindling number of old buddies and admirers for a drink in the club bar. I’ll make it home eventually, but I think late enough and drunk enough to avoid a conversation.

My cell phone buzzes with a text message and I assume it will be Julia but I recognize it as Rebecca’s number.

lost in the village—come help me

I think about dropping everything and getting a taxi to wherever she is. Then I think about what I would do tomorrow. I think most single or married guys I know would jump at this, but I’m already so dejected with myself I can’t handle the idea of it. It would be great for a few hours, then I’d feel miserable and trapped in a prison I made for myself. William’s theory on this is right. If I feel that urge, it’s safer and easier just to get a hooker, but I don’t want to do that either.

out of town. ur on ur own

I stare at the phone in my hand like a woman waiting for the double lines of a pregnancy test and wishing I hadn’t shortened you’re and your to ur because it looks so ridiculous.

some hero you are

Right. I turn off my phone for the night and get a bourbon. I sip it and think of my phone turned off and feel that I’ve conquered some small thing. I start to drink a silent toast to myself and then decide screw it, I need to say it out loud like taking an oath. With bourbon at eye level I say, “You’re a good person, Nick. You deserve better. Settle for more.”

Anyone overhearing this would think I’m speaking to a departed friend, and I hope it does signal a death and rebirth. It’s up to me.

I stare at the bourbon left in my glass and issue a silent challenge. In a violent sip I finish it. I don’t only finish it, I vanquish it. I don’t want any more, and I think in a few minutes’ walk from this bar I can be to St. Vincent’s Hospital to visit Jack. I haven’t seen him in a while and I need to.

It had been a massive heart attack, and I know from William that Jack is still in the hospital getting tests. I hadn’t thought of visiting Jack as something I would do, but now I’m certain it will make me feel better and might be good for him.