Small Town

The phone rang, and he let it ring. There was an answering machine, but he’d disconnected it, not wanting people leaving messages. There weren’t many calls, and this was the day’s first. There’d been a call early on from her office, and he’d returned that call the following morning, explaining that Ms. Crispin had been called out of town suddenly for a family emergency, that she’d asked him, a neighbor and friend, to notify them, and that it was impossible to say when she might return. Two days later he called them again to report that her aunt had in fact died, that Ms. Crispin was the woman’s sole heir, and would remain in Duluth. “She’s not even coming back for her things,” he said, sounding aggrieved himself. “I’m supposed to pack everything and ship it to her. She must think I don’t have anything better to do.”

So there wouldn’t be any more calls from the office.

She had a bookcase full of books, mostly paperback novels, but one illustrated volume called Lost Brooklyn, filled with photographs of buildings, many of them quite magnificent, which had fallen to the wrecking ball. He liked looking at the pictures and pondering the transitory nature of all things, even buildings. But he couldn’t get transported by pictures as he could by text.

He had plenty of money. Before they’d identified him, before they put his picture in the paper, he’d realized that his days of anonymity were over. Accordingly he’d used the ATM, drawing the $800 daily maximum for three days in succession. His expenses were lower now, too, since he couldn’t go to a hotel, or eat in a restaurant. The $2,400 he’d drawn would last him for the time that remained to him.

Before he found the Baltic Street apartment, he’d had to be resourceful. He didn’t dare sleep on park benches, fearing he’d wake up to a patrolman tapping the soles of his shoes with his nightstick, then taking a good look at him when he sat up and opened his eyes. He didn’t need much sleep, though, and got what he required an hour or two at a time in air-conditioned movie theaters. He rode the G train to Greenpoint and bought shirts and socks and underwear at a bargain store on Manhattan Avenue, which seemed safer to him than Fourteenth Street, and ate in ethnic enclaves in Queens, where the residents were more caught up in tensions over Kashmir and civil war in Colombia than the doings of white people in gay bars in Manhattan.

Then he found Evelyn Crispin’s apartment, and his life became less of a struggle. She had a cupboard and refrigerator full of food, and a soft bed for him to sleep in, and a comfortable chair and a television set with cable reception. She had neighbors, too, but he never saw them. He left the apartment after two A.M. and returned before five, and never encountered anyone.

Every day that he stayed out of sight, the likelihood of their capturing him diminished. The hunt would go on indefinitely, but the public, with its eight million pairs of eyes, had a notoriously short attention span. Look how quickly they’d forgotten all about the man who’d sent anthrax through the mails. Other stories were already competing for their notice, and the Carpenter’s facial features, not that sharply delineated in their photo to begin with, would blur and soften and recede from the forefront of their collective memory.

Before long he would be invisible again.

Someone was ringing the doorbell, knocking on the door.

He’d been drifting, lost in reverie, not asleep but not entirely awake, either, and now he sprang from his chair and turned toward the door. Someone had a key in it and was turning the lock. They couldn’t get in, he’d thrown the bolt, but he had to do something.

He picked up a knife in the kitchen, then went to the door, called, “Yes? Who is it?”

“It’s Carlos,” a voice said. “Come to check on Miz Crispin. You want to open the door?”

“I can’t,” he said. “I was in the shower and I heard you banging on the door. You’ve upset the cat terribly.”

“I don’t want to upset nobody,” Carlos said. “Where’s the lady? Been days now and nobody’s seen her.”

“She’s out of town,” he said. “Didn’t you get the note she left?”

“What note?”

“She’s in Duluth,” he said. “Her aunt passed away, she had to go there. Are you sure you didn’t get the note?”

A woman’s voice said, “Duluth?”

“In Minnesota. I’m a friend of hers, I’m taking care of her cat until she comes back. She asked if I’d stop in and feed the cat and water the plants, and I said I’d move right in, because my air conditioner died and just try to get them to come in the middle of a heat wave.”

“I know she’s from Minnesota,” the woman said.

“I just wanted to make sure she was all right,” Carlos said.

“She’s fine,” he said. “I had a postcard from her the other day. Come around tomorrow and I’ll show it to you.”

“No, I don’t have to see no postcard. I just...”

“Listen,” he said, “the water’s still running in the shower. You’re good to be concerned. She’s fortunate to have such good neighbors.”