Small Town

Yesterday he’d forced himself to go out for a walk. Picked up a carton of Camels, bought coffee at Starbucks. They gave you a free cup of coffee when you bought a pound, and he’d sat at a window table and watched the people pass. He felt throughout as though he was being watched in turn, but the tables near his were unoccupied, the baristas too busy or too self-involved to notice him.

He’d finished the coffee and left, unable to shake the feeling that people were staring at him, recognizing him. Later, when he was hungry enough for dinner, he’d been unable to bring himself to leave the apartment. He wound up ordering Chinese food, and the kid from Sung Chu Mei was concerned only with getting paid and stuffing menus under the doors of the building’s other tenants. He clearly had no idea he had just brought an order of beef with orange flavor to a man who’d been charged with murder.

And now it was a gorgeous day, New York at its best, and the thought of leaving his apartment was entirely without appeal. No, wrong, it was hugely appealing, but the appeal was more than offset by a reluctance to subject himself to the real or imagined stares of his fellow citizens.

Maybe he’d just stay put. For today, or maybe not just for today. That was one thing about New York — barring eviction, you never had to leave your apartment. You could stay inside 24/7, and, as long as the phone and the doorbell worked, you could arrange to provide yourself with everything you needed. Because everybody delivered — the deli, the liquor store, and all the restaurants, even the fancy ones.

He had plenty to read, a whole wall full of books. He wouldn’t run out, not with two dozen Russian novels sitting there, the complete works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and Turgenev, all bought during a spell of manic optimism and untouched since the day he’d put them on the shelves. And there were other books, ones he might actually want to read. (Although who was to say that now wasn’t the time to get through Crime and Punishment?)

And every week the mailman would bring him fresh copies of New York and The New Yorker. Of course he’d have to go downstairs for the mail, the guy wouldn’t bring it to his door, but he could wait until four in the morning, say, and slip silently out his door and down the stairs, returning with the mail before a neighbor could catch a glimpse of him.

The crazy part was that he could imagine himself sinking into that sort of existence. He didn’t really believe it was likely, but his imagination was more than equal to the task of conjuring up a life of deliberate agoraphobia. A recluse, eyes darting around suspiciously at the slightest sound, hair uncut and beard unshaven, wearing the same clothes until they fell apart. (But was that necessary? Gap and Lands’ End would clothe him if he called their 800 numbers, and damn near everything was available online. Dry cleaners would pick up and deliver. And no doubt there were barbers who’d make house calls, if the money was right.)

He shook his head, trying to shake off the life he was envisioning for himself. He decided the silence wasn’t helping, and looked for a record to play. But no, the last thing he needed was to be forced to make choices. He put on the radio, found the jazz station, and listened to something he didn’t recognize. There was a trumpet player, and he was trying to decide if it was Clifford Brown.

His mind wandered, and he was thinking of something else when the announcer ran down the personnel on the cut she’d just played. He realized as much after the fact, and thought of calling the station. He could do that, and she would never realize she was talking to an accused murderer. Unless she had caller ID, but even then—

Oh, really, did he honestly give a rat’s ass who’d been playing the trumpet?

He was in jail, he realized. He was home, but he was in jail, and nobody could come along and bail him out of it.

six

Jerry Pankow caught the two-thirty meeting at Perry Street. During the sharing he raised his hand early on, but when he didn’t get called on right away he stopped trying. When the meeting ended he was angry with himself, so he left his keys on his chair and went around the corner to the Arab deli for a cup of coffee, then came back for the four o’clock meeting. This time he raised his hand and got called on, but he talked about something else, not what was most on his mind, because he’d decided that was something he should talk about with his sponsor.

He called her, and relaxed when he heard her voice. Funny how it worked. You relaxed in anticipation of the relief. He remembered times, fiercely hungover, shaking, when he’d stand at the bar and watch the bartender pour the drink. And then, before he even had the glass in his hand, he’d feel as if the drink were already in him, smoothing the rough edges, quieting the storm.