Part 17 (1/2)

”What's the number?” I made believe I was writing it down.

I interrupted her again a few minutes later. ”Mom, I'm going to be away for a while.”

”Away where, Nanette?”

”I think I'll go visit a friend in-on Cape Cod. I need to get away from here. I'll call you when I get back.”

So that was the one millionth and first lie I'd told her in my life.

I went in to the kitchen and refilled my coffee cup, glancing once more at the ugly weapon on the table and returned to the other room.

I put pencil to paper.

This, I thought, will be my landmark poem.

The first line was a snap.

LEAVING NEW YORK! MUST SACRIFICE.

The second line was even easier.

FOR SALE!.

And in a minute the rest of it just fell into place: HIGH-END STEREO EQUIPMENT: LIKE-NEW AIWA COMPONENTS SOLID MAPLE CABINETS.

And then the wow finish: ALSO FOR SALE-78S, LPS. ECLECTIC. RARE STUDIO AND BOOTLEG HOROWITZ, PRICE, LENYA, DIZZY, BIRD, MILES.

And the coda: CALL 0000000. LEAVE NAME AND PARTICULARS. SPECIFY YOUR INTEREST. WILL SEND POSTCARD WITH PRICES, DETAILS.

I sat back and stared at my handiwork.

Was I or wasn't I the Rimbaud of the fire sale?

Now, what phone number could I use? Not mine. Valokus would recognize it. Not Aubrey's. Not anyone's who knew me.

No. It would have to be an old-fas.h.i.+oned answering service. That was easy. I looked in the Yellow Pages and found one, taking care to see that they didn't even have the same exchange as my own number. I called them and was quoted a modest fee for the service. That's all I needed. I said I'd drop by and pay them in person in a few hours.

Then I took another piece of paper and rewrote the message in larger, bolder lettering.

What next? What next? Xerox it. How many would I need? How many laundromats and supermarkets were there between Thirty-fourth and Seventy-second Street-between Second and Ninth Avenue-that have accessible community bulletin boards? Hard to know. A hundred and fifty copies would be safe.

I rushed downstairs and made the copies. The moment I entered my apartment again, the phone started ringing.

This time I didn't answer. It rang eleven times and was silent. It could have been my mother again. It could have been Aubrey or the cops. It could have been danger. I pulled the plug out of the wall.

I had more work to do: placing ads that read exactly the same as my notice in every giveaway neighborhood newspaper I could think of and in the Village Voice.

I wouldn't be going to Cape Cod. But I had decided it would be best to get away from my apartment for the duration of the gig.

I got together my toothbrush and some a.s.sorted ca.s.settes, my Walkman, my sax and packed my Afghani carpetbag. I wrapped the gun and ammunition carefully and added them to the bag.

Sixty minutes later I was lying on a queen size bed in a lovely room in the Gramercy Park Hotel. My windows looked out on the stately, deserted park with its high iron fences.

I had for years, one season flowing into the next, walked past the pristine hedges of that park, its empty benches calling to me. But Gramercy Park was private. You couldn't enjoy it unless you were one of the lucky and well-heeled residents of the immaculately kept townhouses ringing the park. The elitism of it had always bitten my b.u.t.t, but now, for as long as I lived in the hotel, I was one of the haves, one of those fortunate few ent.i.tled to sit or stroll there any time I wanted. All I had to do was ask the hotel doorman to unlock the gate.

Maybe, I thought, I will play my sax there, treat the neighbors to a free concert. It made me laugh. Somebody would lean out of their french windows and see a big, short-haired Negress mangling Ellington favorites on a beaten up sax. I'd see how fast the police responded to that one. I decided to forget about the park for the present.

By three in the afternoon I was on the road, so to speak. Nervous about leaving the weapon back in my room, I was toting it. Strapped, as they say. I wondered briefly, giddily, madly, whether today would be the day I would happen upon a crime in progress, let alone be the victim of one. I was just demented enough to play avenging angel. You talkin' to me?

My route was simple. Walk to Ninth Avenue. Then go north on Ninth following it uptown when it turned into Amsterdam, around Lincoln Center, up to Seventy-second Street, posting my notices as I went. Then turn around, cross the street, and go south on Ninth to Fortieth.

My aim was to place a ”For Sale” notice in each laundromat and supermarket and friendly looking small shop that would accept it. After Ninth, I would walk up Eighth Avenue, then Broadway, then Seventh Avenue-and every other avenue east to Second. I figured it would take the rest of the afternoon and early evening and the next couple of days. Of course, a great swath of streets in midtown had virtually no markets or residential service stores of any kind.

On the way to my kick-off point I used Walt's bank card to get another five hundred dollars; I purchased a large box of pushpins and two scotch tape dispensers, and paid the telephone service.

It was wearying work. About two out of every three laundromats had an open bulletin board, and about one of every three supermarkets. Many of the notice boards were chock full of babysitting, catsitting, and word processing offers. I had to rearrange subtly and then tack or tape, or both.

In a small supermarket on Madison and Sixty-eighth Street I ran into a slight problem.

There was a non-busy bulletin board just inside the entrance. No one was by the board so I started to tack up the notice, just as I had in dozens of other spots.

”Just hold on a minute!”

I turned. A tall, hunched white man, a real Silas Marner type, was standing about two feet away. He was wearing a s.h.i.+rt and tie and one of those old-fas.h.i.+oned blue grocer's smocks. His breast tag read: Manager.

”What are you doing?” he whinnied at me.

”I'm placing a notice on the bulletin board,” I said as if speaking to a two year old. ”See? This is a sheet of paper and there's writing and everything on it.”

”You can't just come in here off the street and do something like that. I've never even seen you in the store before. Do you shop here?”

Fat chance.

I didn't answer.

”I don't suppose you live in our neighborhood?”

I didn't answer.

”You're probably working some kind of confidence game. Here! Let me see what you've written.”

He grabbed the notice out of my hand and began to read it.

Without saying another word, I opened my purse and shoved my hand in. My fingers went slinking around the grip of the .22.

Then I released the weapon and pulled my hand out fast. I really was slipping over the line. There was a pretty serious law against what I was about to do. I was flirting with a mandatory one year jail term just for carrying this f.u.c.king thing. A concealed weapon. What was I doing? Jeopardizing everything to teach a racist creep a lesson.

I turned on my heel and walked out. Mister Manager was still holding my notice. He could do with it as he pleased.

Two mornings later I concluded my rounds. By way of celebration, I went into one of those fancy bookstores with an espres...o...b..r attached and bought a new biography of Proust, a coffee table type volume about the great jazz vocalists, a guide to North America's wild flowers, and what was being touted in the papers lately as a new wave murder mystery. I took them all back to my room and hit the bed reading.