Day after day, I walked the blocks or rode the subway. Though the weather was cold and windy, I came to feel as if I were burning up, that some source of radiation, lodged in my chest, was threatening to incinerate me, just like Chester Bly. I drank gallons of water, carried around a big plastic jug. Because I was afraid, I tried to rush things. I went to the address on 28th Street given on the Key & Gate flyer. When I passed a young woman taking pictures on her phone, I knew it was hopeless. On the wrong side of a gulf of years I found a condo building, the ground floor occupied by Kailash Perfumes, a misspelled inkjet sign taped to the door reminding the customer that “We Sell Only Orignal.” The men knew nothing. They’d had the lease for a while, I would have to ask the boss. They did not run a retail business so minimum purchase would be ten units.
And so I tried to take my mind off my fear. I walked the blocks, I guzzled water. I went to listen to the musicians playing in Washington Square. Sometimes, when I went uptown, the elevated railway was a park. At other times, I made my way beneath the thunder of trains passing overhead. Once, there was nothing but a bridle path through farmland. I walked until the heels of my shoes had worn down. Then one afternoon I found myself there and all at once I had always been there, standing in the doorway of a Chinese laundry, looking at a row of buildings whose fa?ades were caked with a hundred years of soot. Painted signs advertised services: Booking, handbills, printing, scenery and costumes. From open windows came the sound of people banging at pianos, three or four pianos playing different dance tunes all at once.
I pushed open a door and climbed a winding staircase with a rickety rail, squeezing past men carrying horns and violin cases, folders of sheet music. I climbed past the Solomon DeVere Agency, the Rabbit Foot Company. I climbed until I was short of breath and the light faded and I had the familiar sensation of going down as I climbed, into the bowels of the earth. There, on the frosted glass of a door, gold letters announced the offices of Key & Gate Recording Laboratories. I knocked and someone on the other side made a sound. It was not the sound of a voice, exactly. More like an object dropping with a thud onto a heavy carpet. I turned the handle and opened the door.
Stepping through into the dark. Excuse me, excuse me.
Behind a cluttered desk sat an exophthalmic young woman with dyed black hair. Her bug eyes were ringed with shadow and she was conducting a telephone conversation in a language I could not identify. Behind her, a half-glass door was closed on what was presumably her boss’s office. As I stood there, waiting for the woman to finish her conversation, shadows flitted across the glass, as if there were people inside, two or three or more. If they were conducting a meeting, it was completely silent. In fact, as I realized with a chill, the whole office was acoustically dead. We were in an old building, a box of quivery joists and planks. Outside was a busy street. It was not possible. Wearily the secretary cupped the receiver and suggested I take a seat. Her voice fell without leaving a trace. My panic rising, I tried to leave but nothing came of it, my will did not translate into action, and instead of escaping out onto the street I found myself moving some old copies of Variety and sinking into an armchair.
The chair was snug and dark and deep. I felt like a sleepy child, a feeling accentuated by the unusual height of its arms, which rose almost to my shoulders. So I rested my hands on my knees. In my nose was the scent of rose water, under my feet a thick Persian carpet into which my broken shoes were sinking like mud. On the walls of the dark cluttered room I saw posters and handbills, so many. All the memories of all the theaters, all the stages. A starlet looked out of a frame made of the text Oh But How She Could Play A Ukelele! Another was dancing That Egyptian Glide. As the secretary chatted, in a low murmur suggestive of a conversation with a lover, they strummed and shimmied. I sank on down until the arms of the chair were above my head and the room seemed far and I began to grow suspicious of my sudden sense of ease. Dimly I remembered that I had no reason to feel easy. On the contrary. My panic rising again, I struggled back to the surface and stood and moved a stack of papers from another chair. The secretary watched me without emotion as I sat down. It was a hard upright chair, a chair in which I thought I would not be so quick to lose myself. However, another unpleasant sensation soon arose. I began to feel that something was behind me, which was not possible, because the back of the chair was against a wall. This feeling grew until it became a definite presence. Though I looked round more than once, I could see nothing out of the ordinary on the patch of wall behind my head, or the back of the chair itself. Then perhaps my eyes or mind became accustomed to the light, because the next time I turned, looming over me was a poster in a gilt frame, the kind made to hang outside a theater. It depicted a winking black face, a wide grin flowering between white gloved hands:
Here comes Wolfmouth! Famous Figure of Fun!
A red maw, a tongue like a receding highway, white teeth framing an enormous darkness. The eye was full of malice. The eye was turned on me.
—I’m sorry, sir.
Involuntarily, I had already risen to my feet. I could barely hear the secretary’s small dead voice.
—Mr. Khatchadourian is not available at this time.
I muttered an apology—something about having made a mistake, not wanting to waste anyone’s time—and backed out towards the door. If, a few moments before, the poster had depicted Wolfmouth, now it seemed merely to contain him. He was hanging inside it, lolling, floating, one leg lazily swinging backwards and forwards like a pendulum. For now he was a jolly minstrel, taking his rest. At any second, he might spring into lethal action.
From behind the door of the inner office came the crackle of a gramophone. I heard two voices, comedians doing a routine.
—Sam you sure am look like you got the miseries.
—The miseries? Why there’s another name for what I got.