He thought, I’ll have to take a shower. And clean the dirt out of the bathtub after, so she doesn’t ask what I was doing outside when I was supposed to be sick. I have to be really careful, and I can’t tell anyone. No one at all.
In the shower, he had an idea.
1978
Home is the place that when you go there, they have to take you in, but when Morris arrived at the house on Sycamore Street, there were no lights to brighten the evening gloom and no one to welcome him at the door. Why would there be? His mother was in New Jersey, lecturing about how a bunch of nineteenth-century businessmen had tried to steal America. Lecturing grad students who would probably go on to steal everything they could lay their hands on as they chased the Golden Buck. Some people would undoubtedly say that Morris had chased a few Golden Bucks of his own in New Hampshire, but that wasn’t so. He hadn’t gone there for money.
He wanted the Biscayne in the garage and out of sight. Hell, he wanted the Biscayne gone, but that would have to wait. His first priority was Pauline Muller. Most of the people on Sycamore Street were so wedded to their televisions once prime time started that they wouldn’t have noticed a UFO if one landed on their lawn, but that wasn’t true of Mrs. Muller; the Bellamys’ next-door neighbor had raised snooping to a fine art. So he went there first.
“Why, look who it is!” she cried when she opened the door . . . just as if she hadn’t been peering out her kitchen window when Morris pulled into the driveway. “Morrie Bellamy! Big as life and twice as handsome!”
Morris produced his best aw-shucks smile. “How you doin, Mrs. Muller?”
She gave him a hug which Morris could have done without but dutifully returned. Then she turned her head, setting her wattles in motion, and yelled, “Bert! Bertie! It’s Morrie Bellamy!”
From the living room came a triple grunt that might have been how ya doin.
“Come in, Morrie! Come in! I’ll put on coffee! And guess what?” She gave her unnaturally black eyebrows a horrifyingly flirtatious wiggle. “There’s Sara Lee poundcake!”
“Sounds delicious, but I just got back from Boston. Drove straight through. I’m pretty beat. Just didn’t want you to see lights next door and call the police.”
She gave a monkey-shriek of laughter. “You’re so thoughtful! But you always were. How’s your mom, Morrie?”
“Fine.”
He had no idea. Since his stint in reform school at seventeen and his failure to make a go of City College at twenty-one, relations between Morris and Anita Bellamy amounted to the occasional telephone call. These were frosty but civil. After one final argument the night of his arrest for breaking and entering and assorted other goodies, they had basically given up on each other.
“You’ve really put on some muscle,” Mrs. Muller said. “The girls must love that. You used to be such a scrawny thing.”
“Been building houses—”
“Building houses! You! Holy gosh! Bertie! Morris has been building houses!”
This produced a few more grunts from the living room.
“But then the work dried up, so I came back here. Mom said I was welcome to use the place unless she managed to rent it, but I probably won’t stay long.”
How right that turned out to be.
“Come in the living room, Morrie, and say hello to Bert.”
“I better take a rain check.” To forestall further importuning, he called, “Yo, Bert!”
Another grunt, unintelligible over the laugh track accompanying Welcome Back, Kotter.
“Tomorrow, then,” Mrs. Muller said, her eyebrows once more waggling. She looked like she was doing a Groucho imitation. “I’ll save the poundcake. I might even whip some cream.”
“Great,” Morris said. It wasn’t likely Mrs. Muller would die of a heart attack before tomorrow, but it was possible; as another great poet said, hope springs eternal in the human breast.
???
The keys to house and garage were where they’d always been, hanging under the eave to the right of the stoop. Morris garaged the Biscayne and set the trunk from the antiques barn on the concrete. He itched to get at that fourth Jimmy Gold novel right away, but the notebooks were all jumbled up, and besides, his eyes would cross before he read a single page of Rothstein’s tiny handwriting; he really was bushed.
Tomorrow, he promised himself. After I talk to Andy, get some idea of how he wants to handle this, I’ll put them in order and start reading.
He pushed the trunk under his father’s old worktable and covered it with a swatch of plastic he found in the corner. Then he went inside and toured the old homestead. It looked pretty much the same, which was lousy. There was nothing in the fridge except a jar of pickles and a box of baking soda, but there were a few Hungry Man dinners in the freezer. He stuck one in the oven, turned the dial to 350, then climbed the stairs to his old bedroom.
I did it, he thought. I made it. I’m sitting on eighteen years’ worth of unpublished John Rothstein manuscripts.
He was too tired to feel exultation, or even much pleasure. He almost fell asleep in the shower, and again over some really crappy meatloaf and instant potatoes. He shoveled it in, though, then trudged back up the stairs. He was asleep forty seconds after his head hit the pillow, and didn’t wake up until nine twenty the following morning.
???
Well rested and with a bar of sunlight pouring across his childhood bed, Morris did feel exultation, and he couldn’t wait to share it. Which meant Andy Halliday.
He found khakis and a nice madras shirt in his closet, slicked back his hair, and peeked briefly into the garage to make sure all was well there. He gave Mrs. Muller (once more looking out through the curtains) what he hoped was a jaunty wave as he headed down the street to the bus stop. He arrived downtown just before ten, walked a block, and peered down Ellis Avenue to the Happy Cup, where the outside tables sat under pink umbrellas. Sure enough, Andy was on his coffee break. Better yet, his back was turned, so Morris could approach undetected.
“Booga-booga!” he cried, grabbing the shoulder of Andy’s old corduroy sportcoat.
His old friend—really his only friend in this benighted joke of a city—jumped and wheeled around. His coffee overturned and spilled. Morris stepped back. He had meant to startle Andy, but not that much.
“Hey, sor—”
“What did you do?” Andy asked in a low, grinding whisper. His eyes were blazing behind his glasses—hornrims Morris had always thought of as sort of an affectation. “What the fuck did you do?”
This was not the welcome Morris had anticipated. He sat down. “What we talked about.” He studied Andy’s face and saw none of the amused intellectual superiority his friend usually affected. Andy looked scared. Of Morris? Maybe. For himself? Almost certainly.
“I shouldn’t be seen with y—”