Chance (55 page)

Oddly enough it was Chance who had experienced a number of recurring nightmares together with intrusive memories and vivid recollections of the photographs he’d been asked to look at and these accompanied by the image of this shy and diminutive creature, alone in those still-dark hours, inquiring of the now speechless effigy at her side. Off this, he would move to imagining her out there in the apartment in Palo Alto, alone in some no doubt terminally banal setting, attempting to “distract herself by watching television.” What would she watch? he wondered. What could she possibly find that would not lead to the gouging out of one’s own eyes? The image suggested Lear and unaccommodated man, the thing itself. Job at least had God in the whirlwind. Mariella got police procedurals and vampire bloodletting. And that was just the news. He seemed to recall that she worked full time as a packager for Granny Goose potato chips in San Jose and that prior to the accident her interests had included painting, drawing, and collecting small statues of frogs.

There came a night, alone in his new apartment, half in the bag, he had actually gone so far as to imagine his driving the forty-five minutes it might take to reach her. She was not unattractive. In his report, he had described her as follows:

A petite 39-year-old woman of Italian descent with black hair that is pulled back tightly into a bun. She has straight, almost classical, features and large brown eyes. Her fingers are well manicured and she wears no nail polish. She wears a leather coat over a tan pin-striped suit and brown leather high-heeled lace-up boots. Her general manner, while pleasant, is marked by a total absence of spontaneity. The interview proceeded in a series of questions followed by unelaborated answers.

What he had thought but not recorded, what set her apart from so many of the others, was that she had about her some aspect of the caged bird, of a life un-lived. And it was just
that,
he thought, the horror of the life un-lived, that had found him out, in the midst of his own decline, wherein each day seemed at risk of being even more dimly lit than the one before it.

He held to the belief, possibly illusory, that there are times in a person’s life, moments really, when the right word or motion, when a single touch might wound or heal. It was to this end that he imagined the drive. It was not about some sexual conquest. He might just as easily have enlisted the aid of another had another arrived. It was the
striking through
that he envisioned, the freeing of the caged heart. He knew better, of course. He could see all of this for what it was, the half-mad quixotic gesture better dreamt than executed because well
 . . .
because that was what life was like in the end. It was an image in a glass darkly. It was all just half lived. There would be no drives and no interventions. The workings of the world would not permit them. In lieu of these he opted for additional wine. But my God, he thought a moment later, refilling a glass, imagining for the simple sake of imagining it, his arriving unannounced upon her doorstep, what
would
she think? He heard the night made horrible with her screams.

He dozed thinking of Blake:
“Every night and every morn / Some to misery are born. . . . Every morn and every night / Some are born to sweet delight. / Some are born to sweet delight, / Some are born to endless night.”
He woke later in the still dark to the waves of Ocean Beach through the walls of his room. Rising, he was treated by way of a bathroom window to a strange orange light upon the eastern sky—what he was willing to take as evidence that in the hills above the Richmond oil refinery, the fires continued to rage.

T
HE FURNITURE
was French Art Deco from the late thirties, the work of a well-known designer by the name of Eugene Printz. The set comprised a desk, a bookshelf, and two chairs. It was made of palm wood and oxidized brass, and worth a considerable amount of money. It would have been worth even more but some of the brass was missing from the bookshelf and desk, several strips that should have run along the bottom edges of each. He’d gotten it that way and had paid accordingly. Still, it was a beautiful set and he’d always enjoyed how it looked in the big house he’d shared with his wife and daughter. Viewed now, in the confines of the small apartment, the stuff seemed sad and out of place, if not outright ridiculous. Over time it had come to irritate him and he’d begun to consider selling it. There was a dealer who specialized in such stuff, a black gentleman of perhaps seventy or more, down on Market Street. Chance couldn’t recall the man’s name but he could remember the location of his store, which was within walking distance of his office, and resolved to go there at his earliest convenience. An opportunity presented itself within the week, a cancellation butting up against his lunch hour, and he set out on foot for the dealer’s showroom.

Generally speaking, a walk in the city was something he enjoyed. On the day in question he could not shake the feeling that he was being shown the future. It was something less than what one might have hoped for. The flames had died in the East Bay hills but what felt to be the entire Bay Area remained covered in ash. Cars were made to appear uniform in color. It lay thick in the corners of things like drifts of dirty snow. A trio of young Asian women he took as college students passed along the sidewalk wearing surgical masks. This is how it will look, he thought, moving past the women. It will look like this, and then it will look worse.

There had come a point in the evacuation of the East Bay hills, their narrow streets jammed with cars, when the firefighters had called for the distraught residents to abandon their vehicles, to flee on foot. The fires of Richmond had moved east and south at alarming speeds. The Berkeley Hills were suddenly ablaze, the night sky raining sparks. The citizenry had declined the directive, preferring to ram one another in their flaming cars. College professors and accountants, dot-commers or whatever it was they called themselves, the writers and artists, the academics and doctors of the Berkeley Hills. . . . They had driven over one another in the black smoke like insects gone mad, like blindworms, for God’s sake. He’d watched it all on the late-night newscasts from the relative safety of his apartment. What was it to horde or sell? What did his fancy French furniture amount to when already the birds of prey were increasing their number?

It was in a state of just such apocalyptic fervor, brow damp and lungs burning, that he reached the building, an old brick warehouse from before the war situated on a narrow, well-kept alley just off Market Street. Entering, he could hear at once a man’s voice, a bright falsetto animated with rage. “Are you his bitch, then
 . . .
? Is that how it’s going to be?
”
The voice broke off at the sound of the bell that signaled the front door and Chance soon spied the owner of both business and voice in conversation with a young man of some apparently Latino extraction in a black skintight T-shirt, skintight black leather jeans,
and pointy-toed black leather boots that rose to just above his ankles. The older man was as Chance remembered him, well over six feet tall, dramatically thin and flamingly gay. He was even dressed as Chance remembered, in favor of rings and things, ascots, and loud sport jackets. If anything, he was older than Chance had recalled, closer to eighty than seventy. A guy that age, Chance thought, black and gay? One could imagine that he’d seen some things.

The old man cut short his rant. “Young man,” he said, addressing Chance while turning from the other as if he’d suddenly ceased to exist, his voice no longer shrill but rising pleasantly to float among the rafters. “What news of the Printz collection?”

“Jesus. You remembered.”

“Of course. But let me see. . . . There was a desk and chair.” He paused. “And a cabinet!”

“Bookcase and two chairs, but that’s not bad. When was it that I was here . . . two, three years ago?”

The old man’s hands fluttered in the muted light. “Who keeps track of such things? But there was something missing . . .”

“Some bits of brass.”

“Ah, yes. A shame.”

As Chance and the old man spoke the leather boy drifted away, disappearing into some dim recess of the old building. It was the musty, cavernous feel of the place that had drawn Chance on his initial visit. He had been new to the neighborhood then, out exploring. Surely, he’d thought, this was a place where treasures lay in wait, gathering dust in the shadows.

“I’m sure you told me your name,” Chance said. He put out his hand.

“Carl,” the old man told him. They shook. “And you . . . are a doctor, as I recall.”

“A neuropsychiatrist. Eldon Chance.”

The old man laughed. “Of course, Dr. Chance. How does one forget that? I remember furniture but lose names. To what do I owe the honor?” He went on without waiting a reply. “I have recently acquired a cabinet that might just go with that set of yours. . . .”

Chance held up his hands. “I wish. I’m thinking of selling what I have.”

Carl raised his eyebrows.

“I’m in the midst of a divorce,” Chance said. He was still not quite used to saying it out loud. “House is up for sale. I’m living in an apartment.”

“Say no more,” Carl told him. “I’m sorry, sorry to hear that.”

“Me too.” Chance had taken photographs of the furniture and put them on his laptop, slung now by way of a canvas travel case over one shoulder. He lifted the case. “I have pictures,” he said.