Falling Man_ A Novel - Don Delillo [18]
The road bent west and three girls wearing headsets went rollerblading past. The ordinariness, so normally unnoticeable, fell upon him oddly, with almost dreamlike effect. He was carrying the briefcase and wanted to turn back. He crossed up the slope and walked past the tennis courts. There were three horses hitched to the fence, police helmets clipped to their saddlebags. A woman ran past, talking to someone, miserably, on her cell phone, and he wanted to toss the briefcase in the reservoir and go back home.
She lived in a building just off Amsterdam Avenue and he climbed the six flights to her apartment. She seemed tentative, letting him in, even, strangely, a little wary, and he started to explain, as he had on the telephone the day before, that he hadn’t meant to delay returning the briefcase. She was saying something about the credit cards in the wallet, that she hadn’t canceled them because, well, everything was gone, she thought everything was buried, it was lost and gone, and they stopped talking and then started again, simultaneously, until she made a small gesture of futility. He left the briefcase on a chair by the door and went over to the sofa, saying he could not stay very long.
She was a light-skinned black woman, his age or close, and gentle-seeming, and on the heavy side.
He said, “When I found your name in the briefcase, after I found your name and checked the phone directory and saw you were listed and I’m actually dialing the number, that’s when it occurred to me.”
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“I thought why am I doing this without checking further because is this person even alive?”
There was a pause and he realized how softly she’d spoken inside his jumpy commentary.
“I have some herbal tea,” she said. “Sparkling water if you like.”
“Sparkling water. Spring water. There’s a small bottle in the briefcase. Let me think. Poland Spring.”
“Poland Spring,” she said.
“Anyway if you’d like to check what’s in there.”
“Of course not. No,” she said quietly.
She stood in the entranceway to the kitchen. The small boom of traffic sounded outside the windows.
He said, “See, what happened is I didn’t know I had it. It wasn’t even a case of forgetting. I don’t think I knew.”
“I don’t think I know your name.”
He said, “Keith?”
“Did you tell me this?”
“I think so, yes.”
“The phone call was so out of the blue.”
“It’s Keith,” he said.
“Did you work for Preston Webb?”
“No, one floor up. Small outfit called Royer Properties.”
He was on his feet now, ready to leave.
“Preston’s so sprawling. I thought maybe we just hadn’t run into each other.”
“No, Royer. We’re just about decimated,” he said.
“We’re waiting to see what happens, where we relocate. I don’t think about it much.”
There was a silence.
He said, “We were Royer and Stans. Then Stans got indicted.”
Finally he moved toward the door and then picked up the briefcase. He paused, reaching for the doorknob, and looked at her, across the room, and she was smiling.
“Why did I do that?”
“Habit,” she said.
“I was ready to walk out the door with your property. All over again. Your priceless family heritage. Your cell phone.”
“That thing. I stopped needing it when I didn’t have it.”
“Your toothbrush,” he said. “Your pack of cigarettes.”
“God, no, my guilty secret. But I’m down to four a day.”
She waved him back to the sofa with a broad arc of the arm, a traffic cop’s sweeping command to get things going.
She served tea and a plate of sugar cookies. Her name was Florence Givens. She placed a kitchen chair on the other side of the coffee table and sat at a diagonal.
He said, “I know