• • •
The night wind on the old garage on Berry Street sucked and rattled the door like a visitor, and Jimmy woke with his lamp still on. He opened his eyes and heard the familiar rattling of the entry door with a clarity that surprised him. His head was clear. When he rolled his head, it didn’t hurt or drift, and he sat up and saw that it was midnight exactly. He drew a breath and then another, and he felt as if he had slept all night. He hadn’t felt this well for a year. He pulled his legs up and took his bare feet in both hands and stretched his neck down, and it didn’t burn. “I don’t know what this is,” he said aloud. He put on his slippers and his robe and the jacket with a kind of pleasure, and he stood up, and his vision did not swim. The door still tapped, and he went to it and pushed a folded paper into the jamb, and it was silent. Then he opened the door and felt the fresh night in his face. He sat on the bed again and pulled the new walker over and tested it. There were wheels and a brake and a basket and a little padded seat that folded down. It was deluxe.
• • •
In New York he and Daniel would walk to the river sometimes instead of going straight home from the paper. Daniel would come to the office on West 22nd Street, and they’d strike west, kicking and talking about their days. Daniel had once done a piece for a slick travel magazine on the theme of island getaways, and he’d included a famous sketch of Manhattan, referring to the various possible beaches up and down the East and Harlem rivers and then the Hudson, making each shoreline something out of the guidebooks, cabañas and piña coladas optional. Jimmy would have already been to some off-off Broadway play and then come back to the office to write it up, and it was wonderful to be out in the late night, especially in winter, the streets theirs all the way to the water. Even after Daniel got sick, and he was sick a long time, they still went down to what they called the beaches when they could, arm in arm to the waterfront, the new docks on the old piers, and the luminous water and the serious smell of the Hudson, and the lights of New Jersey in electric palisades.
Jimmy directed the walker out to the driveway now in the windy midnight neighborhood. All Wyoming was night. The air quickened everything and Jimmy was thrilled to be out this way. There was no moon, and the wind kept finding the leaves in ranks and rolling them past him. “‘Pestilence-stricken multitudes,’” Jimmy said, the old Shelley poem. It was cold, and at first it was pure tonic, and then it settled on his neck and his forehead and his hands. “Go on,” he said. “I’m walking to the street. A person walks to the street. Just to the old street and back.” Halfway he realized he should have worn gloves, and his hands cramped and opened and cramped. And then he felt a sickening pain rinse through his body, as if he’d spilled something on his shirt; he wasn’t able to be able to be able. You’re sick now, mister. It was a long way, he saw. He might have made a mistake.
• • •
At that hour Larry listened. He held Stephanie Barnes, but now sometimes her head was in his shoulder, and they sat close. In the front, he could hear Wendy and Wade whispering a little now and again, something like whispering. He kissed Stephanie, and she was smiling at him, and he was happy too, he supposed. He should be. He heard Wendy whisper, “Not here.” Stephanie heard it too, and to cover, she kissed Larry and embraced him, shifting her weight then suddenly and sharply to her hand on his ribs. The white light went right to the tops of his eyelids, and he said a sharp “Oh!” and Wendy’s face appeared over the seat.
“What?”
Wade pulled her sharply back, and she said, “Goddammit, Wade, no.”
Wade said something that Larry couldn’t hear, and Wendy’s face was there again. “Are you all right?” she asked Larry.
He was breathing through his teeth, and Stephanie was apologizing, and then Wendy was jerked away, and she swore again, and then Wade said, “Okay,” and then after a silence he said loudly, “Fuck this! Just fuck this!” It was loud, but Larry was not surprised. Wendy scrambled back to the passenger side, and he came across for her, and Larry said, “Wade. Hey, buddy.”