A Ticket to the Boneyard

Maybe they hadn't been looking at me at all.

* * *

I gave her the hour and fifteen minutes she'd asked for. I spent half of it as productively as the two idlers on Eighth Avenue, lurking in a doorway of my own across the street from Elaine's apartment building. People came and went, all of them strangers to me. I don't know what I was looking for. Motley, I suppose, but he didn't show.

I made myself wait until precisely one o'clock before I went over there and presented myself to her doorman. He called upstairs, handed me the phone. She asked me who had drawn the sketch, and I went blank for an instant, then told her it was Galindez. I gave the phone back to the doorman and let her tell him it was okay to let me come up. When I knocked on her door she checked the judas first, then unfastened all the locks.

"Sorry," she said. "I suppose it's silly to go through all that-"

"That's all right." I walked over to the coffee table, where a floral arrangement was a riot of color among all that black and white. I didn't know the names of all the flowers, but I recognized a couple of exotics, bird-of-paradise and antherium, and I figured I had to be looking at seventy-five dollars' worth of floral affection.

She came over and kissed me. She was wearing a yellow silk blouse over black harem pants, and her feet were bare. She said, "See what I mean? They're prettier than yesterday."

"If you say so."

"Some of the buds are starting to open, I think that's what it is." Then I guess she picked up on the tone of what I'd said and she looked at me and asked if something was the matter.

"They're not my flowers," I said.

"Did you pick out something different?"

"I didn't send any flowers, Elaine."

It didn't take her long. I looked at her face and watched the wheels turn in her mind. She said, "Jesus Christ. You're not kidding around, are you, Matt?"

"Of course not."

"There was no note, but it never even occurred to me that they weren't from you. For God's sake, I thanked you for them. Yesterday. I called you, remember?"

"You didn't mention flowers."

"I didn't?"

"Not specifically. You thanked me for being romantic."

"What did you think I meant?"

"I don't know. I was a little groggy at the time, I'd dozed off in front of the TV set. I guess I just thought you were referring to the night we'd had together."

"Well, I was," she said. "Sort of. The night and the flowers. In my mind they more or less went together."

"There was no note?"

"Of course not. I figured you didn't bother with a note because you knew I'd know who sent them. And I did, but-"

"But I hadn't."

"Evidently not." She had paled at the news, but her color was back now. She said, "I'm having a little trouble adjusting to this. I've spent the past twenty-four hours enjoying the flowers and thinking warm thoughts about you for having sent them, and now they're not your flowers at all. I suppose they're from him, aren't they?"

"Unless someone else sent them to you."

She shook her head. "My gentlemen friends don't send flowers, I'm afraid. God. I feel like throwing them out."

"They're the same flowers they were ten minutes ago."

"I know, but-"

"What time did they get here?"

"When did I call you, around five o'clock?"

"Something like that."

"They came an hour or two before then."

"Who delivered them?"

"I don't know."

"Well, was it a kid from the florist or what? And did you happen to get the name of the florist? Was there anything on the wrapper?"

She was shaking her head. "Nobody delivered them."

"What do you mean? They couldn't have just turned up on your doorstep."

"That's exactly what they did."

"And you opened the door and there they were?"

"Just about. I had a visitor, and when I let him in he handed them to me. For a split second I thought they were from him, which didn't make any sense, and then he explained they'd been sitting on my welcome mat when he arrived. At which point I immediately assumed they were from you."

"You figured I just dropped them on your doorstep and left?"

"I thought you probably had them delivered. And then I was in the shower and didn't hear the bell, so the delivery boy left them. Or he left them with the doorman, and the doorman left them there when I didn't respond to the bell." She laid a hand on my arm. "To tell the truth," she said, "I didn't give the matter that much thought. I was just, well, moved, you know? Impressed."

"And touched that I had sent you flowers."

"Yes, that's right."

"It certainly makes me wish they were mine."

"Oh, Matt, I don't-"

"It does. And they're beautiful flowers, you can't get around it. I should have kept my mouth shut and taken credit for them."

"Think so, huh?"

"Why not? They're a hell of a good romantic gesture. I can see where a guy could get laid on the strength of something like that."

Her face softened, and her arm moved to circle my waist. "Ah, baby," she said. "What makes you think you need flowers?"

Afterward we lay quietly together for a long while, not asleep but not entirely awake. At one point I thought of something and laughed softly to myself. Not softly enough, because she asked me what was so funny.

I said, "Some vegetarian."

"Some what? Oh." She rolled onto her side and opened her big eyes at me. "A person who abstains entirely from animal matter," she said, "runs the risk over a long period of time of developing a vitamin B-12 deficiency."

"Is that serious?"

"It can lead to pernicious anemia."

"That doesn't sound good."

"It shouldn't. It's fatal."

"Really?"

"So they tell me."

"Well, you wouldn't want to chance that," I said. "And you can get that on a strict vegetarian diet?"

"According to what I've read."

"Can't you get B-12 from dairy products?"

"I think you can, yes."

"And don't you eat dairy? There's milk in the fridge, and yogurt, as I recall."

She nodded. "I eat dairy," she said, "and you're supposed to be able to get B-12 from dairy products, but I figure you can't be too careful, you know what I mean?"

"I think you're right."

"Because why leave something like that to chance? Pernicious anemia just doesn't sound like something a person would want to have."

"And an ounce of prevention-"

"I don't think it was an ounce," she said. "I think it was more like a spoonful."

I must have drifted off because the next thing I knew I was alone in the bed and the shower was running in the bathroom. She emerged from it a few minutes later wrapped in a towel. I took a shower myself, dried off, and got dressed, and when I went into the living room there was coffee poured for me and a plate on the table with cut-up raw vegetables and bite-size chunks of cheese. We sat at the dinette table and nibbled at the food. Across the room, the floral arrangement was as dazzling as ever in the soft light of late afternoon.

I said, "The guy who handed you the flowers."

"What about him?"

"Who was he?"

"Just a guy."

"Because if Motley deliberately used him to get the flowers to you, he might be a lead back to him."

"He didn't."

"How can you be sure?"

She shook her head. "Believe me," she said, "there's no connection. He's a fellow I've known for a couple of years."

"And he just happened to drop in?"

"No, he had an appointment."

"An appointment? What kind of an appointment?"

"Oh, for God's sake," she said. "What kind of an appointment do you think he had with me? He wanted to come over and spend an hour discussing Wittgenstein."

"He was a john."

"Of course he was a john." She looked at me sharply. "Does that bother you?"

"Why should it bother me?"

"I don't know. Does it?"

"No."

"Because it's what I do," she said. "I turn tricks. This is not new information. It's what I did when you met me and it's what I still do."

"I know."

"So why do I get the impression that it bothers you?"

"I don't know," I said. "I just thought-"

"What?"

"Well, that you were keeping the doors barred for the time being."

"I am."

"I see."

"I am, Matt. I'm not taking any hotel dates, I turned down a couple of people already. And I'm not letting anybody in the door that I don't know. But the fellow who came over yesterday afternoon, he's been a regular date of mine for a few years. He'll show up one or two Saturdays a month, he's no trouble, and why shouldn't I let him in?"

"No reason."

"So what's the problem?"

"No problem. A girl's got to make a living, right?"

"Matt-"

"Got to accumulate some more ready cash, got to buy some more apartment houses. Right?"

"You've got no right to be like that."

"Like what?"

"You've got no right."

"I'm sorry," I said. I picked up a piece of cheese. It was a dairy product, and a likely source of vitamin B-12. I put it back down on the plate.

I said, "When I called this morning."

"And?"

"You told me not to come over right away."

"I told you to give me an hour."

"An hour and fifteen minutes, I think it was."

"I'll take your word for it. So?"

"Did you have someone over here?"

"If I'd had someone here I wouldn't have answered the phone. I'd have put the mute on and let the machine pick it up in silence, the way I did when you and I went into the bedroom."

"Why did you tell me to wait for an hour and a quarter?"

"You won't let it alone, will you? I had a fellow coming at noon."

"So you did have somebody coming."

"That's what I just told you. He called me just a few minutes before you did, as a matter of fact. He made a date to come over at noon."

"At noon on Sunday?"

"He always comes on Sunday, usually late morning or early afternoon. He lives in the neighborhood, he tells his wife he's going out to buy the paper. He comes over here, and I suppose he picks up the Times on his way home. I suppose that's part of the kick for him, putting one over on her that way."

"So you told me-"

"To give me until one o'clock. I knew he'd be on time, and I knew he'd be out of here within a half hour. He always is. And I wanted a half hour after that so that I could take a shower and freshen up and be-"

"And be what?"

"And be nice for you," she said. "What the fuck is this, will you tell me that? Why are you attacking me?"