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Megan is at her desk. She looks up when you come in, goes back to her reading.
"Remember me?"
"I remember something about a lunch date." She keeps her eyes on her desk.
"Oh, no. I'm sorry."
She looks up. "You're always sorry."
"There was this thing I had to do."
"A sweet young thing?"
"An old thing gone sour."
"I have feelings, too, you know."
"Damn it, I'm sorry."
"I know you've had a lot on your mind lately," Megan says.
"How about di
"One more meal with you could be the death of me." She's smiling now.
"Just let me pack up my things here. Won't take a minute."
Once you open the drawers of your desk you realize it could take all night. There is a vast quantity of flotsam: files, notebooks, personal and business correspondence, galleys and proofs, review books, matchbooks, loose sheets with names and phone numbers, notes to yourself, first drafts of stories, sketches and poems. Here, for instance, is the first draft of "Birds of Manhattan." Also the "U.S. Government Abstract of Statistics on Agriculture, 1981," indispensable in researching the three-part article on the death of the family farm, and on the back of which you have written the name Laura Bowman and a telephone number. Who is Laura Bowman? You could dial the number and ask for her, ask her where she fits into your past. Tell her you are suffering from amnesia and looking for clues.
In the top drawer you discover two empty rectangular packets. Actually, one of them is not quite empty; inside the black paper is a fine dusting of white. You scrape it onto the desk with a credit card, using the edge of the card to rake up two clean lines. You look over at Megan. She's reading. You could quietly hoover the lines and she'd never know the difference. You extract a bill from your wallet and roll it into a tight cylinder between thumb and forefinger. One apiece isn't going to do much for either of you. On the other hand, two won't do much for you, either; one will make you want another, and another will only initiate a chain reaction of desperate longings. Is this self-knowledge? In any case, you want to do something nice for Megan. For her it might be a treat, something out of the ordinary.
"Meg. Come over here a minute." Now you are committed.
You hold out the bill. She raises her eyebrows.
"This will make you forget you didn't eat lunch."
"What is it?"
"The powder that made Bolivia famous."
She lifts the bill tentatively to her nose and bends over the desk.
"Do the other one, too," you say when she offers you the bill.
"Are you sure?"
"Sure." You just wish she would hurry up and finish it off.
Meg twists her nose like a rabbit and sniffles. "Thanks."
You shovel the contents of the top drawer onto the desk and wonder how, exactly, to deal with all this paper. Some of it may be significant. Most of it is junk. How do you tell the difference?
"We had some trouble here this morning," Megan says. She sits down on the edge of your desk. You resist the urge to jump out of the chair and run down the hall with your jacket pulled over your head. No comment. All day you have been stifling the memory of your drunken-commando raid on Clara's office. You want to explain to Megan that it was a joke, you were drunk, it was Tad's idea. It wasn't really you, just a clownish alter ego over whom you have no control. You don't do things like that. You're not that kind of guy at all. If Alex were seriously hurt, though, Meg probably would have said so already. You keep your eyes fixed on a pamphlet entitled "Manual of Factual Verification."
"What do you mean, trouble?"
"Well, when Rittenhouse came in this morning he found Alex Hardy passed out on the floor of Clara's office."
You find it difficult to talk. "Really? Is he all right?"
"I don't imagine he feels terrific. He'll be fine once his blood detoxifies. He's taking the cure up at McLean's. Famous Drinking Writers' Club."
"Didn't he hurt himself when he fell?"
"That's the strange thing. There was no sign of injury, but there was blood on the floor of Clara's office. And on the walls, too. Very peculiar."
"Did he say anything? I mean, about what happened?"
"Nothing coherent. He said something about being attacked by pygmies."
"They didn't call the, uh, police, did they?"
"Why would they?"
"Just wondering. Sounds to me like a weird deal all around." You start to relax. Alex is okay and the visions of cops at your door are fading.
"Another odd thing," Megan says. "There was a mink in the mailroom."
"A mink?"
"It was hiding in a mail bag full of rejected manuscripts. When the mail guy hoisted the bag this morning it started biting him. They had to call the ASPCA."
"Really strange." Poor Fred, you think.
"How are you coming?" she says, pointing at the desk.
"I think this calls for drastic measures." You stand up and collect all the wastebaskets in the room, lining them up beside the desk. You take a book from the desk and hand it to Megan. "Could you give this to Alex for me? Tell him it's one of the Young Turks." She takes the book. You pull open the drawers one by one and dump the contents, entire, into the steel buckets.
"That's done. Let's eat."
In the cab, you ask Megan where she wants to eat.
"How about my place?"
"You're going to cook?"
"You sound suspicious."
"It just seems like a radical idea."
"If you'd rather go out… "
"No. That sounds great."
You get out at Bleecker Street. Megan takes your hand and leads you into a delicatessen. She holds up a box for your approval. "Linguine," she says. You nod. "I'm going to teach you how to purchase and make a meal." In the next aisle she introduces you to two cans of clams. Ordinarily, she says, she would use fresh clams and fresh pasta, but she doesn't want to scare you on your first lesson.
From the deli you walk toward Sixth. Megan is telling you about the difference between fresh and dried pasta. Each step takes you closer to the old apartment on Cornelia Street, where you first lived with Amanda in New York. This was your neighborhood. These shops were your shops. You possessed these streets as securely as if you held title.
Now the vista is skewed slightly, someone has tilted the ground a few degrees, and everything is the same and not the same.
You pass Ottomanelli's Meats, where the corpses of small animals hang in the window: unski
At the corner of Jones and Bleecker a Chinese restaurant has replaced the bar whose lesbian patrons kept you awake so many summer nights when, too hot to sleep, you lay together with the windows open. Just before you moved out of the neighborhood a delegation of illiberal youths from New Jersey went into the bar with baseball bats after one of their number had been thrown out. The lesbians had pool cues. Casualties ran heavy on both sides and the bar was closed by order of the department of something or other.
Farther along, the obese gypsy Madame Katrinka beckons you to enter her storefront parlor with red velvet couch to have your fortune told. What would she have told you a year ago?
"Best bread in the city," Megan says, pointing to Zito's Bakery. The bell over the door rings as you enter. The fragrance of the interior reminds you of mornings on Cornelia when you woke to the smell of bread from the bakery ovens, Amanda sleeping beside you. It seems a lifetime ago, but you can see her sleeping. You just can't remember what you talked about.