The Waiting Room (29 page)

"I'll be right back," he said, opened his door, climbed out—with several grunts and groans and wheezes—bent over, and looked back in. "They got raspberry and strawberry and prune, I think. Which do you want?"

"Raspberry's good," I said, and he nodded and lumbered across the street to Hattie's Brookfield Restaurant.

~ * ~

As I waited in the Chevette for Whelan to return with our breakfast, such as it promised to be, I hoped that Abner would pass by. After all, people who move to a small town, like Brookfield, often adopt its habits, become locals. Why move to a small town otherwise? So, because everyone else in town—or so it seemed—was up and moving about, starting the day's business, Abner should have been up, too. Maybe with his camera in hand, because Brookfield looked like a nice place to take pictures, a typical New England town, very picturesque. So I thought I'd see him wandering down the street, his gaze moving from here to there so he wouldn't miss the chance at a good shot.

But he didn't pass by, although a lot of other people did—couples, old people, young people, people in overalls, people in sports coats, people in hiking boots, people in sneakers, people who looked very purposeful and people who looked aimless, people with pets in hand, people with pets on leashes, people carting groceries home, people laughing and people frowning.

Lots more people, in fact, than should have been on the main street of Brookfield, Vermont.

It was as I was thinking this that Whelan opened his door, stuck his head in, and handed me a raspberry Danish wrapped in a napkin. "Nice little town," he said, and climbed into the driver's seat.

"Sure," I said. I sipped my coffee, munched on the Danish. "Awfully crowded, though."

"Yeah." He smiled a long-suffering smile. "Tell me about it." He took a bite of his Danish, chewed it, prepared to take another bite. "Fuckin' flea market," he said, the Danish poised near his lips. He nodded to indicate an area beyond the grange hall. "Over there." He took another bite of the Danish. "I guess it's an annual thing," he said as he chewed. "Just a bunch of junk if you ask me."

"That's why all these people are here?" I said incredulously. "Because of a flea market?"

"You'd be surprised how many people these things draw, Sam."

I took a bite of my Danish. I asked, "You can see them, Mr. Whelan?"

"See who?"

I nodded to indicate the crowds on Brookfield's main street. "Them. Those people."

"What the hell are you talking about, Sam? Sure I can see them."

"Good," I said. "I'm glad. It makes me feel better that you can see them." I sipped my coffee. "Tell me how you know about small-town flea markets, Mr. Whelan. I thought you'd put in forty years—"

He cut in, "At the NYPD? Yes. I did. But I also do a hell of a lot of traveling, Sam." He finished his Danish. "Anyway, like I was saying, I do travel. I get outta that freakin' city as much as I can, you know. Can't stand it there for too long, so I travel. Why the hell do you think I drive
this
damned lawn mower?" he asked, and answered himself, "Because it doesn't use any gas, that's why."

"I was wondering," I said. "You don't really… fit in it, do you?"

He grinned. "I'm not
fat
, Sam. I'm stocky."

"Gotcha," I said. I was enjoying the banter, the coffee, the raspberry Danish. I was even beginning to enjoy the crowds of people, now that I knew why they were in Brookfield.

The sunlight through the window glass was warming the side of my face and my shoulder—it had even taken my headache away. I leaned forward and looked through the windshield. The sky was an even pale blue, and all but cloudless.

Whelan nodded to indicate the post office. "They should be open at nine. That's when we'll find out where your friend is."

In Bangor, thirty years ago, my Aunt Greta told me that storms were really a giant old "hausfrau" sweeping out the old to make room for the new. Aunt Greta was in many ways a colorful and entertaining woman—"Lusty," my father used to say, which seemed to upset my mother. In my six- or seven-year-old brain, that giant old "hausfrau" was terribly real. I could see her. When storms came up, there she was with her awful broom, her long skirts, and her white bonnet (very much like the woman on the Old Dutch Cleanser cans), and, of course, of course, she was after
me!

Eventually, I grew out of believing in the "giant old hausfrau," though my feelings toward my Aunt Greta remained ambivalent. On the one hand, I thought the story, horrific as it was, was wonderfully entertaining, and on the other hand, it really did give me a scare—the genuine scare of insecurity and aloneness and fear that is somehow different from the scare we get on roller coasters and at horror movies.

I bring Aunt Greta and her hausfrau up now because sitting there, in Kennedy Whelan's Chevette Scooter, in Brookfield, Vermont, at 8:45 in the morning, I could tell that a storm was coming. Even though the sky was a flat, pale blue and the sunlight warm through the Chevette's windows. I knew a storm was coming because I have always had a sixth sense about such things; many people do. Maybe there was a ragged edge to the morning's pleasantness. Maybe it was a little too pleasant. Maybe the few clouds scuttling about had a tinge of gray in them.

I said to Whelan, "There's a storm coming."

"Sure," he said. He didn't believe me.

"I mean it," I said. "I have a sixth sense about these things." I set my empty cup on the Chevette's dashboard. "There's a storm coming."

He nodded at the cup. "You want more?"

"I could use it," I said. I was still feeling a little groggy from sleeping in the Chevette's bucket seat. "I'll get it."

"Good enough," he said, and nodded again at the cup on the dashboard. "Take that with you, okay? I like to keep the car clean."

"You bet." I took the cup, climbed out of the car, and headed across the crowded street toward Hattie's Brookfield Restaurant. I was halfway across the street, and picking up bits and pieces of conversation from the crowds around
me
—"Eighteen
dollars for an
ash
tray!" ... and "Guy must be out of his mind to be selling stuff like that at
a
family
flea market"… and "Wouldn't mind settling here at all"—when I saw Abner.

He was coming out of Pete's Groceries and Things. He had a full bag of groceries in each arm and a look of desperation about him, as if the crowds that had invaded Brookfield planned to invade
him
next.

I stopped in the middle of the street. Someone jostled me; someone else, very annoyed, said,
"
Ex
cuse
me!" precisely the way Steve Martin says it.

"Abner!" I called.

He stopped. He glanced over at me. His look of desperation became a look of surprise and sudden panic. Then he bolted, his bags of groceries threatening to topple from his arms.

I looked quickly around at the Chevette. Whelan was rolling his window down and putting a new cigar into his mouth. "He's—" I called, and stopped.
No,
I thought, uncertain why,
I don't want him knowing.
But Whelan had heard me; he looked questioningly at me.

I held my cup high. "Cream?" I called.

He nodded.

"Great," I called, and walked very quickly to the door of Hattie's Brookfield Restaurant. I stopped there to let a few people walk in ahead of me, then I glanced back at the Chevette. Whelan was watching. He looked confused. I held the cup up again and smiled. "Cream?" I called; again he nodded.

I glanced in the direction that Abner had run. I saw only the flea market crowds, and, fleetingly, a wisp of darkness at the horizon.

I went in. The restaurant was packed. At the counter, I got the attention of a young and schoolgirl-pretty waitress (like the ones that fast-food restaurants use on TV commercials) who said, "Be with you in a moment, sir." She smiled a flat, vaguely welcoming smile.

"No," I said, "I don't want anything. Do you have a rear exit?"

Her smile vanished, as if I had said something obscene. Then, quickly, her smile reappeared. "Oh!" she said. "Yes, sure we do," and she nodded toward the back of the restaurant. "Over there," she said, and turned to the person who'd stepped up behind me. "Be with you in a moment, sir," she said.

He said, "Just coffee."

I closed my eyes. "Nuts!" I whispered. It was Kennedy Whelan's voice. I felt his hand on my shoulder. He gripped hard—harder, I thought, than he looked capable of. "You're a real amateur, Sam," he said.

I shrugged. "You've got to start somewhere," I said. I hadn't turned to look at him.

"What do you do for a living, Sam?"

"Construction work, mostly," I answered. "I've done other things."

"Good for you, Sam," he said, sounding very paternal. "Stick to that, okay?"

"Sure," I said. "That's a promise." I looked at him. He was wearing a shit-eating grin, his cigar between his lips, and somehow he looked more robust, stronger, not the enfeebled, overweight, out-of-shape former cop with whom I'd shared the last ten hours or so.

Apparently he saw my confusion, because he said, "Yeah, Sam. I've got asthma. I've had it since I was a kid, and it gives me trouble every once in a while. Like last night. But, beyond that, my friend, I'm a real hale and hearty son of a bitch."

The waitress reappeared, gave us both her flat, vaguely welcoming smile, and said, "Now, what was it you gentlemen wanted?"

"Coffees," Whelan told her. "Both with cream."

"Coming up," she said, and went to fill the order.

I said to Whelan, "It was an act, you mean?"

His shit-eating grin grew bolder; he nodded gloatingly. "A pretty good one, too, wouldn't you say? Hell, it was the only way to get you back to the car. No way was I going to go chasing through the woods after you. Where were you going anyway, Sam?"

I sighed. "There were some railroad tracks—"

"Sure," he cut in. "I'll lay you odds you were going in the wrong direction."

I shrugged. "Probably," I said, and thought,
Jesus, you can't count on anyone, dead or alive.
It wasn't true, of course, and I knew it wasn't true. There were several people I could count on—Madeline, Abner, Leslie. They were predictable. They were what they appeared to be. I knew that as surely as I knew about storms and gravity. But there was always one person I knew I could count on without question: myself.

The waitress came over with the coffees in a paper bag; she handed the bag across the counter. Whelan took it, thanked her, then said to me, "Let's go back to the car, Sam. You can tell me where Abner is."

We started out of the restaurant. "I don't know
where
he is," I said.

Whelan glanced critically at me. "You don't?" he said; it was almost a rhetorical question, as if he knew that I had told him the truth.

"No." I pushed the restaurant door open. "I saw him coming out of that little grocery store—"

"Did he see you?"

We stepped out of the restaurant, onto the crowded sidewalk. The sunlight was gone. "Yes," I answered. "He saw me. And he ran."

"Where to?"

I nodded toward the area beyond the grange hall and the spot where Whelan had told me the flea market had been set up. "There," I said.

We crossed the sidewalk to the street, Whelan using his bulk as a kind of courteous battering ram: "Excuse me, please" . . . "Excuse me" . . . "Coming through." He sounded like the archetypal New Yorker. He said to me, "And you didn't go after him, Sam?"

"I wanted to," I said. The street was alive with people now.
God
, I thought,
what if an ambulance or something has to get through?
"I wanted to," I repeated, "but . . . I guess I was having second thoughts about you, Mr. Whelan." We were at the car. I opened the driver's door; he got in. Before I closed the door, he said, "Why?"

"Why what?" I said.

"Why were you having second thoughts about me, Sam?"

I shrugged. "Instinct, I think."

He smiled at that, began, "Well, then, maybe there's hope for . . ." But he was cut off by a shrill, pain-ridden scream from the street.

W
helan clambered from the car, knocking the paper bag with coffees to the pavement, and looked quickly left and right over the top of the door as if uncertain from which direction the scream had come.

I pointed to my right, at a tight knot of people that had formed within the crowds clogging the street. "There!" I barked.

I heard another scream, a man. And a moment later, yet another. Whelan whispered, "What the
hell
is going on?!"

Something clattered to the pavement nearby. I looked. Fifty feet away, at the edge of the crowd, a woman in a light green dress stared blankly at the two halves of a waffle iron at her feet; within seconds, the crowd surrounded her and she was swallowed up by it.

Within the crowd, a man tall enough that his head was visible above it pleaded for order: "... be calm," he said, "... panic," he said, but most of his words were lost in the cacophony of screams and shouts and curses. Moments later, the crowd seemed to rise up and pull him down and he was lost within it.