“If they see you in person, they’ll be more likely to remember,” said Andy reasonably. “Otherwise you could just be any weirdo calling and pretending. Don’t worry,” he said, glancing over his shoulder, “I won’t tell anybody if you don’t want me to.”
“A weirdo?” I said. “Pretending what?”
“Well, I mean, you get lots of strange people calling you here,” said Andy flatly.
I was silent, not knowing how to absorb this.
“Besides, they’re not picking up, what else are you going to do? You won’t be able to get down there again until next weekend. Also, is this a conversation you want to have—” he cast his eyes down the hallway, where Toddy was jumping up and down in some kind of shoes that had springs on them, and Mrs. Barbour was interrogating Platt about the party at Molly Walterbeek’s.
He had a point. “Right,” I said.
Andy pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “I’ll go with you if you want.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. Andy, I knew, was doing Japanese Experience for extra credit that afternoon—a study group at the Toraya teahouse, then on to see the new Miyazaki at Lincoln Center; not that Andy needed extra credit but class outings were as much as he had of a social life.
“Well here,” he said, digging around in his pocket and coming up with his cell phone. “Take this with you. Just in case. Here—” he was punching stuff on the screen—“I’ve taken off the security code for you. Good to go.”
“I don’t need this,” I said, looking at the sleek little phone with an anime still of Virtual Girl Aki (naked, in porny thigh-high boots) on the lock screen.
“Well, you might. Never know. Go ahead,” he said, when I hesitated. “Take it.”
xii.
AND SO IT WAS that around half past eleven, I found myself riding down to the Village on the Fifth Avenue bus with the street address of Hobart and Blackwell in my pocket, written on a page from one of the monogrammed notepads Mrs. Barbour kept by the telephone.
Once I got off the bus at Washington Square, I wandered for about forty-five minutes looking for the address. The Village, with its erratic layout (triangular blocks, dead-end streets angling this way and that) was an easy place to get lost, and I had to stop and ask directions three times: in a news shop full of bongs and gay porn magazines, in a crowded bakery blasting opera, and of a girl in white undershirt and overalls who was outside washing the windows of a bookstore with a squeegee and bucket.
When finally I found West Tenth—which was deserted—I walked along, counting the numbers. I was on a slightly shabby part of the street that was mainly residential. A group of pigeons strutted ahead of me on the wet sidewalk, three abreast, like small officious pedestrians. Many of the numbers weren’t clearly posted, and just as I was wondering if I’d missed it and ought to double back, I suddenly found myself looking at the words Hobart and Blackwell painted in a neat, old-fashioned arch upon the window of a shop. Through the dusty windows I saw Staffordshire dogs and majolica cats, dusty crystal, tarnished silver, antique chairs and settees upholstered in sallow old brocade, an elaborate faience birdcage, miniature marble obelisks atop a marble-topped pedestal table and a pair of alabaster cockatoos. It was just the kind of shop my mother would have liked—packed tightly, a bit dilapidated, with stacks of old books on the floor. But the gates were pulled down and the place was closed.
Most of the stores didn’t open until noon, or one. To kill some time I walked over to Greenwich Street, to the Elephant and Castle, a restaurant where my mother and I ate sometimes when we were downtown. But the instant I stepped in, I realized my mistake. The mismatched china elephants, even the ponytailed waitress in a black T-shirt who approached me, smiling: it was too overwhelming, I could see the corner table where my mother and I had eaten lunch the last time we were there, I had to mumble an excuse and back out the door.
I stood on the sidewalk, heart pounding. Pigeons flew low in the sooty sky. Greenwich Avenue was almost empty: a bleary male couple who looked like they’d been up fighting all night; a rumple-haired woman in a too-big turtleneck sweater, walking a dachshund toward Sixth Avenue. It was a little weird being in the Village on my own because it wasn’t a place where you saw many kids on the street on a weekend morning; it felt adult, sophisticated, slightly alcoholic. Everybody looked hung over or as if they had just rolled out of bed.
Because nothing much was open, because I felt a bit lost and I didn’t know what else to do, I began to wander back over in the direction of Hobart and Blackwell. To me, coming from uptown, everything in the Village looked so little and old, with ivy and vines growing on the buildings, herbs and tomato plants in barrels on the street. Even the bars had handpainted signs like rural taverns: horses and tomcats, roosters and geese and pigs. But the intimacy, the smallness, also made me feel shut out; and I found myself hurrying past the inviting little doorways with my head down, very aware of all the convivial Sunday-morning lives unrolling around me in private.