Oracle Night Read online

  We had been together for only a few minutes, and already I felt drained, depleted by the boy’s vapid, cynical talk. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could, but for form’s sake I decided to wait until the meal was over. Trause’s pale and emaciated son appeared to have little appetite for the Smithers cuisine. He picked at his mashed potatoes for a while, sampled one taste of the meat loaf, and then put down his fork. A moment later, he rose from his seat and asked me if I wanted dessert. I shook my head, and he marched off to the food line again. When he returned, he was carrying two cups of chocolate pudding, which he set before him and ate one after the other, showing considerably more interest in the sweets than he had in the main course. With no drugs around, sugar was the only substitute available, and he devoured the puddings with the relish of a small child, scooping every morsel out of each cup. Somewhere between the first and second helping, a man stopped by the table to say hello to him. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, with a rough pockmarked face and his hair pulled back in a short ponytail. Jacob introduced him as Freddy, and with the warmth and earnestness of a true rehab veteran, the older man extended his hand to me and said it was a pleasure to meet one of Jake’s friends.

  ‘Sid’s a famous novelist,’ Jacob announced, apropos of nothing. ‘He’s published about fifty books.’

  ‘Don’t listen to what he says,’ I told Freddy. ‘He tends to exaggerate.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Freddy answered. ‘This one’s a real hell-raiser. Gotta keep a close eye on him. Right, kid?’

  Jacob looked down at the table, and then Freddy patted him on the head and walked off. As Jacob dug into his second chocolate pudding, he informed me that Freddy was his group leader and not such a bad guy, all things considered.

  ‘He used to steal things,’ he said. ‘You know, a professional shoplifter. But he had a smart gimmick, so he never got caught. Instead of going into stores with a big overcoat on, the way most of them do it, he’d dress up as a priest. No one ever suspected him of anything. Father Freddy, the man of God. One time, though, he got himself into a weird jam. He was somewhere in midtown, about to go in and rob a drugstore, when there was this big traffic accident. A guy crossing the street was hit by one of the cars. Someone dragged him onto the sidewalk, right where Freddy was standing. There was blood all over the place, the guy was unconscious, and it looked like he was going to die. A crowd gathers around him, and suddenly a woman spots Freddy in his priest’s costume and asks him to say the last rites. Father Freddy is fucked. He doesn’t know the words to any of the prayers, but if he runs away, they’ll know he’s a fake and arrest him for impersonating a priest. So he bends down over the guy, puts his hands together to make it look like he’s praying, and mumbles some solemn bullshit he once heard in a movie. Then he stands up, makes the sign of the cross, and splits. Pretty funny, huh?’

  ‘It sounds like you’re getting quite an education at those meetings.’

  ‘That’s nothing. I mean, Freddy was just a junkie trying to support his habit. A lot of the other people around here have done some pretty crazy shit. See that black guy sitting at the corner table, the big one in the blue sweatshirt? Jerome. He spent twelve years in Attica for murder. And that blond girl at the next table with her mother? Sally. She grew up on Park Avenue and comes from one of the richest families in New York. Yesterday, she told us she’s been turning tricks on Tenth Avenue over by the Lincoln Tunnel, fucking guys in cars at twenty dollars a pop. And that Hispanic guy on the other side of the room, the one in the yellow shirt? Alfonso. He went to jail for raping his ten-year-old daughter. I’m telling you, Sid, compared to most of these characters, I’m just a nice middle-class boy.’

  The puddings seemed to have energized him a bit, and when we carried our dirty trays into the kitchen, he moved with a certain spring in his step, unlike the shuffling somnambulist I’d spotted in the front hall before lunch. All in all, I’d guess I was with him for thirty or thirty-five minutes – long enough to feel I’d discharged my duty to John. As we walked out of the dining hall, Jacob asked me if I’d like to go upstairs and see his room. There was going to be a big group meeting at one-thirty, he said, and family members and guests were invited to attend. I was welcome to come along if I wanted to, and in the meantime we could hang out in his room on the fourth floor. There was something pathetic about the way he’d latched on to me, about how reluctant he seemed to let me go. We were barely even acquaintances, and yet he must have been lonely enough in that place to think of me as a friend, even though he knew I’d come as a secret agent on behalf of his father. I tried to feel some pity for him, but I couldn’t. He was the person who had spat in my wife’s face, and even though the incident had happened six years before, I couldn’t bring myself to forgive him for that. I looked at my watch and told him I was supposed to meet someone on Second Avenue in ten minutes. I saw a flash of disappointment in his eyes, and then, almost immediately, his face hardened into a mask of indifference. ‘No big deal, man,’ he said. ‘If you gotta go, you gotta go.’

  ‘I’ll try to come back next week,’ I said, knowing full well that I wouldn’t.

  ‘Whatever you like, Sid. It’s your call.’

  He gave me a condescending pat on the shoulder, and before I could shake his hand good-bye, he turned on his heels and started walking toward the stairs. I stood in the hall for a few moments, waiting to see if he’d look back over his shoulder for a farewell nod, but he didn’t. He kept on mounting the staircase, and when he rounded the curve and disappeared from sight, I went over to the woman at the front desk and signed myself out.

  It was a little past one o’clock. I rarely went to the Upper East Side, and since the weather had improved in the past hour, rapidly warming to the point where my jacket now felt like an encumbrance, I turned my daily walk into an excuse to prowl around the neighborhood. It was going to be hard to tell John how depressing the visit had been for me, and instead of calling him right away, I decided to put it off until I returned to Brooklyn. I couldn’t do it from the apartment (at least not if Grace was home), but there was an ancient telephone booth in the back corner of Landolfi’s, complete with a closable accordion door, and I figured I would have enough privacy to do it from there.

  Twenty minutes after leaving Smithers, I was on Lexington Avenue in the low 90s, moving along among a small crowd of pedestrians and thinking about heading home. Someone knocked into me, accidentally grazing my left shoulder as he walked by, and as I turned to see who it was, something remarkable happened, something so outside the realm of probability that at first I took it for a hallucination. Directly across the avenue, at a perfect ninety-degree angle from where I was standing, I saw a small shop with a sign above the door that read PAPER PALACE. Was it possible that Chang had managed to relocate his business? It struck me as incredible, and yet given the speed with which this man conducted his affairs – closing up his store in one night, rushing around town in his red car, investing in dubious enterprises, borrowing money, spending money – why should I have doubted it? Chang seemed to live in a blur of accelerated motion, as if the clocks of the world ticked more slowly for him than they did for everyone else. A minute must have felt like an hour to him, and with so much extra time at his disposal, why couldn’t he have pulled off the move to Lexington Avenue in the days since I’d last seen him?

  On the other hand, it also could have been a coincidence. Paper Palace was hardly an original name for a stationery store, and there easily could have been more than one of them in the city. I crossed the street to find out, more and more certain that this Manhattan version was owned by someone other than Chang. The display in the window proved to be different from the one that had caught my attention in Brooklyn the previous Saturday. There were no paper towers to suggest the New York skyline, but the replacement was even more imaginative than the old one, I felt, even more clever. A tiny doll-sized statue of a man sat at a small table with a miniature typewriter on it. His hands were on the keys, a sh
eet of paper had been rolled into the cylinder, and if you pressed your face against the window and looked very closely, you could read the words that had been typed on the page: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us …

  I opened the door and went in, and as I crossed the threshold I heard the same tinkling of bells I’d heard in the other Paper Palace on the eighteenth. The Brooklyn shop had been small, but this one was even smaller, with the bulk of the merchandise stacked up on wooden shelves that extended all the way to the ceiling. Once again, there were no customers in the store. At first, I didn’t see anyone, but a soft, tuneless humming was wafting up from somewhere in the vicinity of the front counter, as if someone were squatting behind it – tying his shoe, perhaps, or picking up a fallen pen or pencil. I cleared my throat, and a couple of seconds later Chang rose from the floor and put his palms on the countertop, as if to steady his balance. He was wearing the brown sweater this time, and his hair was uncombed. He looked thinner than he had before, with deep creases around his mouth and slightly bloodshot eyes.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘The Paper Palace is back on its feet.’

  Chang stared at me with a blank expression, either unable or unwilling to recognize me. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I know you.’

  ‘Of course you do. I’m Sidney Orr. We spent a whole afternoon together just the other day.’

  ‘Sidney Orr is no friend of mine. I used to think he’s good guy, but no more.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You let me down, Mr. Sid. Put me in very embarrassing position. I no want to know you no more. Friendship over.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What did I do?’

  ‘You leave me behind at dress factory. Never even say good-bye. What kind of friend is that?’

  ‘I looked everywhere for you. I walked all around the bar, and when I couldn’t find you I figured you were in one of the booths and didn’t want to be disturbed. So I left. It was getting late, and I had to go home.’

  ‘Home to your darling wife. Just after you get blow job from the African Princess. How funny is that, Mr. Sid? If Martine walk in here now, you do it again. Right here on floor of my shop. You fuck her like a dog and love every minute of it.’

  ‘I was drunk. She was very beautiful, and I lost control of myself. But that doesn’t mean I’d do it again.’

  ‘You not drunk. You horny hypocrite, just like all selfish people.’

  ‘You said no one could resist her, and you were right. You should be proud of yourself, Chang. You saw into me and found my weakness.’

  ‘Because I knew you think bad thoughts about me, that’s why. I understand what’s in your mind.’

  ‘Oh? And what was I thinking that day?’

  ‘You think Chang in nasty business. Dirty whore-man with no heart. A man who dream only of money.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Yes, Mr. Sid, it’s true. It’s very true. Now we stop talking. You give big hurt to my soul, and now we stop. Look around if you like. I welcome you as customer to my Paper Palace, but no more friend. Friendship dead. Friendship dead and buried now. All finished.’

  I don’t think anyone had ever insulted me more thoroughly than Chang did that afternoon. I had caused him a great sadness, unintentionally wounding his dignity and sense of personal honor, and as he lashed out at me with those stiff, measured sentences of his, it was as if he felt I deserved to be drawn and quartered for my crimes. What made the attack even more uncomfortable was that most of his accusations were correct. I had left him at the dress factory without saying good-bye, I had allowed myself to fall into the arms of the African Princess, and I had questioned his moral integrity about wanting to invest in the club. There was little I could say to defend myself. Any denials would have been pointless, and even if my transgressions had been relatively small ones, I still felt guilty enough about my session with Martine behind the curtain not to want to bring it up again. I should have said good-bye to Chang and left the store immediately, but I didn’t. The Portuguese notebooks had become too powerful a fixation by then, and I couldn’t go without first checking to see if he had any in stock. I understood how unwise it was to linger in a place where I wasn’t wanted, but I couldn’t help myself. I simply had to know.

  There was one left, sitting among a display of German and Canadian notebooks on a lower shelf at the back of the store. It was the red one, no doubt the same red one that had been in Brooklyn the previous Saturday, and the price was the same as it had been then, an even five dollars. When I carried it up to the counter and handed it to Chang, I apologized for having caused him any suffering or embarrassment. I told him he could still count on me as a friend and that I would continue to buy my stationery supplies from him, even if it meant traveling far out of my way to do so. For all the contrition I tried to express, Chang merely shook his head and patted the notebook with his right hand. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘This one not for sale.’

  ‘What do you mean? This is a store. Everything in it’s for sale.’ I removed a ten-dollar bill from my wallet and spread it out on the counter. ‘Here’s my money,’ I said. ‘The sticker says five dollars. Now please give me my change and the notebook.’

  ‘Impossible. This red one the last Portuguese book in shop. Reserved for other customer.’

  ‘If you’re holding it for someone else, you should put it behind the counter where no one can see it. If it’s out on the shelf, that means anyone can buy it.’

  ‘Not you, Mr. Sid.’

  ‘How much was the other customer going to pay for it?’

  ‘Five dollars, just as sticker say.’

  ‘Well, I’ll give you ten for it and we’ll call it a deal. How’s that?’

  ‘Not ten dollars. Ten thousand dollars.’

  ‘Ten thousand dollars? Have you lost your mind?’

  ‘This notebook not for you, Sidney Orr. You buy other notebook, and everybody happy. Okay?’

  ‘Look,’ I said, finally losing patience. ‘The notebook costs five dollars, and I’m willing to give you ten. But that’s all I’m going to pay.’

  ‘You give five thousand now and five thousand on Monday. That’s the deal. Otherwise, please buy other notebook.’

  We had entered a domain of pure lunacy. Chang’s taunts and absurd demands had finally pushed me over the edge, and rather than go on haggling with him, I snatched the notebook out from under his palm and started for the door. ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Take the ten and go fuck yourself. I’m leaving.’

  I hadn’t taken two steps when Chang jumped out from behind the counter to cut me off and block my way to the door. I tried to slip past him, using my shoulder to push him aside, but Chang held his ground, and a moment later he had his hands on the notebook and was yanking it away from me. I pulled it back and clutched it against my chest, straining to hold on to it, but the owner of the Paper Palace was a fierce little engine of wire and sinew and hard muscle, and he tore the thing from my grip in about ten seconds. I knew I would never be able to get it back from him, but I was so peeved, so wild with frustration, that I grabbed hold of his arm with my left hand and took a swing at him with my right. It was the first punch I’d thrown at anyone since grade school, and I missed. In return, Chang delivered a karate chop to my left shoulder. It crashed down on me like a knife, and the pain was so intense that I thought my arm was going to fall off. I dropped to my knees, and before I could stand up again, Chang started kicking me in the back. I yelled at him to stop, but he kept on sending the tip of his shoe into my rib cage and spine – one short brutal jab after another as I rolled toward the exit, desperately trying to get out of there. When my body was flush against the metal plate at the bottom of the d
oor, Chang turned the handle; the latch clicked open, and I fell out onto the sidewalk.

  ‘You stay away from here!’ he shouted. ‘Next time you come back, I kill you! You hear me, Sidney Orr? I cut out your heart and feed it to the pigs!’

  I never told Grace about Chang or the beating or anything else that happened on the Upper East Side that afternoon. Every muscle in my body was sore, but in spite of the power of Chang’s avenging foot, I had walked away from the pummeling with only the faintest bruises along the lower part of my back. The jacket and sweater I had been wearing must have protected me, and when I remembered how close I’d come to taking off the jacket as I roamed around the neighborhood, I felt lucky to have had it on when I entered the Paper Palace – although luck is perhaps an odd word to use in such a context. On warm nights, Grace and I always slept naked, but now that the weather was turning cool again, she had started going to bed in her white silk pajamas, and she didn’t question me when I joined her under the covers in my T-shirt. Even when we made love (on Sunday night), it was dark enough in the bedroom for the welts to escape her notice.

  I called Trause from Landolfi’s when I went out for the Times on Sunday morning. I told him everything I could remember about my visit with Jacob, including the fact that the safety pins were gone from his son’s ear (no doubt as a protective measure), and summarized each one of the opinions he’d expressed from the moment I arrived until the moment I saw him vanish in the bend of the staircase. John wanted to know if I thought he’d stay for the whole month or skip out before the time was up, and I answered that I didn’t know. He’d made some ominous remark about having plans, I said, which suggested that there were things in his life that no one in his family knew about, secrets he wasn’t willing to share. John thought it might have had something to do with dealing drugs. I asked him why he suspected that, but other than making a glancing reference to the stolen tuition money, he wouldn’t say. The conversation hit a lull at that point, and in the short silence that followed, I finally mustered the courage to tell him about my misadventure on the subway earlier in the week and how I’d lost ‘The Empire of Bones.’ I couldn’t have chosen a more awkward moment to bring up the subject, and at first Trause didn’t understand what I was talking about. I went through the story again. When he realized that his manuscript had probably traveled all the way to Coney Island, he laughed. ‘Don’t torture yourself about it,’ he said. ‘I still have a couple of carbons. We didn’t have Xerox machines in those days, and everyone always typed at least two copies of everything. I’ll put one in an envelope and have Madame Dumas mail it to you this week.’