Pitch Dark (13 page)

There are three young people standing in that bus shelter. I ask, Do all the buses from here go to the airport? And with that obdurateness, satisfaction, even mockery, they say, These buses don’t go to the airport. You’ll have to go into Dublin for a bus to get there; it’s the other way. And they exchange looks. I am a little stunned by this. I say, Shall I catch a bus from here to Dublin, then? And they say, That’s what you’ll have to do. One of the girls adds, If they’re not full. She starts to flag down a bus, which is just coming. It doesn’t stop, and she says, with great satisfaction, That one’s full. We wait. I see, by some miracle, a black car that appears to be a taxi, coming from the direction the lorry driver and I have come from. I say, I guess I’d better try and get a cab then, and wave to him. By another miracle, he pulls over and he has no passenger. I ask how much it will be to the airport. He says six or seven pounds. It barely crosses my mind to wonder whether the truck driver can have been mistaken, about the direction of the airport, about the itinerary of the buses; to wonder also why he did not take me, at least, into Dublin. But he is, by then, still so much my friend that I just have to assume it was a mistake of some sort, and perhaps it was. I don’t believe it was. But, whatever his errand or intention may have been, he stopped for me. He didn’t have to. It prolonged his work day. Work night. He stopped for me. And whatever he may have thought my errand was, well, how else can I put it? I feel warmly toward him still. The fact, however, is that had it not been for that providential, empty cab, I would almost certainly, no, certainly, have missed my plane.

The cab driver says, What time’s your flight? I say, Ten, but I ought to be there by nine-fifteen. I still have to get my ticket and check in. He says, Well, in this traffic, I’d better take you through the park. Where’ve you been staying, then? I say, Just outside of Dublin. A pause. Several minutes pass. I say, Is this way much longer. He says, No, actually it’s shorter. This is clearly untrue, else why would he have said we’ll go through the park, on account of traffic, in the first place. Also, we seem to have run into more traffic than he had expected. He becomes impatient. I say, The park is lovely. He says nothing. I think I ought to ask some sort of question. If I’ve been staying just outside of Dublin, of course, I don’t know what kind of question I would ask. (I suddenly remember a moment with the lorry driver: as we neared Dublin, and the sun was just rising at the outskirts, and it was clear that the time and distance were much longer than I had expected, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to deliver my car at any airport, having left it behind, of course, at Ballyhaunis. Also, that my argument that I planned to pick up that car tomorrow was pretty weak. How, then, explain that, having left a damaged car, in an obscure town, by night, I leave Ireland now, intending, all the same, to return the car to its rental agency by Friday afternoon. A problem, certainly. But I had my new, my religious identity, and suddenly it dawned on me: what I was going to do was to fly out of Ireland under another name. In order not to get caught at this, I would not use my credit card; I would use cash. And I would have to inquire, too, whether one has to show one’s passport, in leaving or in entering Ireland. As I recalled, one did not have to show it. I could pretend I was asking on behalf of someone else. My boss, perhaps, or my brother. If passports were required, I would of course have to risk my own name. Otherwise, I would just pay in cash, under whatever name, and leave. Traveling under a false name might be a crime of some sort. I should make the name as like my own as possible to account for the mistake. Alder, I thought. But then that does happen so often. I was afraid they might make the same mistake and be on the lookout for just such an Alder. So I thought, Hadley, since no one would look under H. And then, in my new hilarity, I thought, Why not Haddock. But that seemed going too far. So I settled, now, on Hadley.) At the airport, the meter registers nine pounds, and of course he had said six or seven. I have a sense now of his feeling somewhat contrite, or perhaps only abashed. But I am not thinking of it. I pay him ten pounds fifty. He stops, turns around, and says, It’s too much. I say, What do you mean? He says, The fare’s only nine pounds. I say, I know, I just wanted you to have something. And he says, God bless you.

Well, the answer to my question, whether one needs to show one’s passport, was no. Then, I asked the agent at the ticket counter whether I could pay in mixed currencies. She said, No, only one. I wanted to make it short. So I thought, What the hell, and gave her my credit card. She saw the discrepancy in names, and said, Oh, I’ve got it wrong. I said, No, the name on my credit card’s my maiden name, It’s a name I sometimes use. And there, of course, was the argument, Do you take me for such a fool as to use my card, and to say I’ve got two names. Then, she said, my computer doesn’t check out the card. I said, What does that mean, do you call them, or what. She said, Do you want me to call them? I said yes. Then it was all right, and she said, Sorry for the delay. I said, I was worried for a minute there. She said, No, sometimes the computer does that; what’s really embarrassing though is when I call them, and they say it’s stolen or in arrears, and they ask me not to give it back. The ticket bought, I went upstairs. Then, the news that the British Airways flight would be late, first ten minutes, then twenty. Hungry now for breakfast, I hesitated at the bar, in the departure lounge. As I counted pence, looking for change to buy some biscuits, a man who stood drinking at the bar turned to me and said, Are you a writer? My heart sank. I said, Does it show. He said, I can tell. This time, something akin, in retrospect, to the argument from What kind of fool occurred to me on
their
behalf. If they, they were following me, if that man was an agent, would they be such fools, would he be such a fool, as to alert me, to warn me, by addressing to me a question that could only fill me with suspicion and alarm. Well, yes they might, for several reasons: spontaneously, or as a check on my spontaneous reaction to being identified; a ploy to get me to do something, or refrain from doing it. I lurked outside the bar, in the departure lounge a bit, studying that drinking man, wondering whether he was really drinking at this early hour, or just posing as an Irish alcoholic. Security, in these times, would surely require agents at all Irish airports, watching for bombs, guns, fugitives, aliases, God knows what. Perhaps they could not be bothered with mere tortfeasors like myself. Not wanting to lurk, however, I walked to a row of chairs, just outside the barred corridor to the chute beyond which there ought to be a plane. There was no plane. Another announcement, saying the flight would be ten minutes later than previously announced. I began to wonder whether I would not do better, after all, on Aer Lingus, whose scheduled departure was now a mere fifteen minutes after the announced time for British Airways. I asked, at the last-minute check-in counter, whether the Aer Lingus flight, which I could plainly see outside, might leave on time and first. The ticket agent, or whatever he was, said, It won’t. So I sat down. I decided to go to the ladies’ room, but there was a row of chairs in front of it, with a board over them, and a sign saying Out of Order. I walked by the men’s room. I saw a door marked with a sign depicting a little man in a wheelchair. I went in. There, with the door half open, was a woman, sitting on the toilet and holding the hand of a small child. I waited outside the door, till they came out. Since the toilet had not been flushed, I thought it was out of order. But, when I pulled the handle, it flushed readily. I went back, resumed my chair in the departure lounge, nearer the chute, and unfolded one of my newspapers.

I looked up; and just beyond the agent’s booth, I saw two men in conversation. One, fat, dark-haired, pale, wearing a rounded collar, tie, sweater, and jacket, and carrying a raincoat, faced in my direction. The other, sandy-haired, wearing a brown suit, also carrying a trenchcoat, faced the other way. I left, through the steel maze, and walked around the men. I began to imagine that the man who had his back to me was the one I had seen drinking in the bar. I went back to the bar to look. He was no longer there. The sandy-haired man, near the booth, had a beard, which I had not previously noticed, or had I? When I passed in the direction he was facing, it seemed to me he turned away. I went back to my seat. I thought, What was my crime so far; none that I could see, except traveling under an alias, which I had not yet done. I got up, and said to the British Airways ticket agent, or whatever he was, that I’d like to change the name on my ticket. To make it proper for my records. He said his was only the last-minute check-in. To change, I would have to go back to the downstairs ticket counter. And there wasn’t time for that. I said, In that case I’ll have to take Aer Lingus. He said, That’s up to you. Having established, now, my good intentions, and my what kind of fool do you take me for, regarding the false name, I looked at the two men, still engaged in conversation. The sandy-haired one had been joined now by a woman. I thought I’d wait to see whether they entered the area inside the chute. I could, after all, always leave at the last minute. They seemed, all three of them, to be staring at me now. When I sat in another place, to face the sandy-haired man, he and his girl turned. So did the dark, fat man, so that he again faced me, in his round collar, dark tie, maroon sweater, and the sandy-haired one again had his back to me. When I left again, through the steel maze, they exchanged words, then entered the area beside the chute and sat down. I thought, Will they board the plane and fly away if I do not board it. Not a chance. So we’ll have the same episode or sequence, if I change to the Aer Lingus flight. But what if I outwait them, they get on the flight, that is, and I don’t. They’d get off. So I thought, Might as well get it over with, but still I waited. Then they boarded all passengers bearing green boarding passes. That’s what I had, a green boarding pass. But I waited and waited. I could see two of their boarding passes were brown. Finally the dark, fat man got up. He had a green boarding pass, and used it. I used mine, and I followed him, but lurked, lingered in the boarding chute. I started back, thinking I might say I’d taken fright. But I wavered, havered, went back, looked at him to see if he had turned to look at me, then thought, What the hell, and got on. The couple, the sandy-haired, bearded man and the girl, got on. I was seated right behind the dark, fat man. They were seated in the smoking section, several rows behind me. I thought, Now would surely be the time to arrest me, if they were going to do it. Perhaps they could have done so, when my boarding pass was taken. Would they surround me, and walk me off the flight, then? But they did nothing. And, even in my state, I knew they could hardly arrest me in the air.

Quanta, Amy said to me, on the train, in that blizzard, in answer to my question. Not here, Diana said, to her lasting regret, to her own daughter, who approached her, crying, in front of all those people. Not here. But in London, don’t you see, the phone rang. In London, the phone calls began.

Well, I waited. I told no one. For the next few days, in any case, my voice was gone; it might have been a fever. I waited for them to find the car. I waited for them to find the ticket, me. But it was not until long afterward, when it was explained to me, that I understood that there was, after all, something else quite wrong in the course of these events, and that there really was something they were trying to frame me for, in the matter of the car. But I didn’t understand it then. Quanta. Not here.

You can see it from here; but just try to get to it.

But do you sometimes wish it was me? Always. Pause. It is you.

BUT IN
London, don’t you see, the phone rang. The phone calls began. I was asleep. He said, You’ve left, I said, Well, no.

It is only a small house, though it is old, on an acre-and-a-half of land. It is screened from the road by a grey, weathered eight-foot fence and an uneven row of ragged pines. All the acres that surround the property are owned by a neurotic Lebanese, but the house, which is red with white trim, used to be a cider mill. It overlooks a waterfall, a brook, and two small ponds. The upper pond is shallow. The man from whom I bought the place said he used to skate, with his little granddaughter, on that pond, a distance, I think, of maybe thirty gliding steps around. The lower pond is deep, and he said he used to swim in there. Room for just a few strokes, virtually in place. The upper pond, which has a sudden, jagged bend on one side, is lined in summer with rushes, covered in the fall with leaves. The roof of the front porch of the house is covered, for some reason, with moss, and also, on one side, with wisteria, which gives the house a sort of raffish Veronica Lake look, a disheveled charm. In fact, the whole place is quaint, so quaint that it sometimes seems quite magical. Why, you could put an island with bridges in that little pond, the great professor, who advised governments from Lima to Baghdad on land use, said when he came to visit, and have something perfect, enchanted, Japanese. It’s a jewelry box, my Aunt Zabeth said, the first time she saw it. At other times, the quaintness can seem a little sick. There is also, oddly, an enormous flagpole, taller than the one in town on Main Street, which loomed high over the house, and which, together with the upper pond, somehow created the impression of a hazard near a golfing green. I could never remove a flagpole. I still have an American flag, with forty-eight stars, which was given to me by a Japanese boy called Junior, when we were in kindergarten. Soon after I moved in, I simply asked Paul, the neighborhood handyman, how much it would cost to move the flagpole, away from the house and the pond, toward some trees near the corner of the property. He said several hundred dollars. Then I asked how much it would take to change the shape of the upper pond, make it narrower and deeper, less like a golf hazard and more clear. Four thousand dollars, he said, at the very least. And there was always the danger that the house would be flooded, or even borne away, in spring.