Walk Away
By
Parhelion
I saw him again, yesterday. He was walking away.
Maybe I should be hashing this out with a shrink, rather than on a piece of paper, but neither of us ever believed in that kind of thing. Besides, when you’ve gotten to my age either you have faith in yourself or you don’t. So, when I was on the subway platform yesterday and saw him walking away from me, I paid attention. Something real was happening, something that mattered, even if it was only inside my own head.
It wasn’t the first time I saw him, it was the third time. That works out roughly to once every four years since Wolfe died, which is a pretty low level of haunting, or hallucination, or whatever it is. He never says anything. He doesn’t even look at me. But he’s not ignoring me, either, he’s just preoccupied with something else, as if the glace or Dendrobium of his dreams is right ahead of him, a little ways down that platform, that path, that corridor, that sidewalk.
Okay, I confess that it was really the fourth time that I’ve seen him. Even I didn’t believe it the first time I saw him. I was still in the hospital waiting room, in that state of vacant shock where you know you’ve been hurt but haven’t had time to really feel it yet. When I looked out the window, trying to pull myself together, he was down on the sidewalk below, walking away. I didn’t lie to myself. I knew it was an illusion. I’d only just left him in the hospital bed, after all, with the sheet drawn up over his face. I was there when he went, I couldn’t be mistaken. That’s why I got a grip on myself and went to be helpful about the paperwork. It was still part of my job, then, to be helpful.
I wish to hell now I’d run down the stairs, yelled after him like a fool, followed him.
But I’m not angry now, not even at these pointless visions. I was mad at first, I admit it. It’s hard to forgive someone for leaving you after thirty-eight years, even if they didn’t mean to. I always intended to be the one to leave first, not like what happened with my folks when they died. Off I would go to get married and open my own office. I would be successful, I knew. We both knew that. But, somehow, it was never quite the right moment, the right woman or the right annoyance for me to leave. The brownstone was my home. I wanted excuses to stay, I guess.
He’s not angry with me, either. There’s no air of reproach about him. He didn’t show up when I shipped out the orchids and sold the brownstone, or when Fritz half-retired to be the consulting chef as the Kanawha Spa, or even when Saul died, burnt out inside by all the cigarettes he’d burned himself over the years. If he didn’t blame me for any of that, he sure wasn’t going to blame me for deciding to grab a corned beef sandwich when I was done following my target through a subway station, even if he never did like that smell on my breath.
He’s not warning me. Nothing dramatic ever happens after I see him. My life keeps going: I work out of my office, I see my friends, and I go to ball games. His appearance doesn’t signal danger. Since he died, I’ve been knocked out twice, shot at once, and broken an arm in what even I’d call a stupid accident. He never showed up when any of that happened although the timing would have made more sense. In my mind’s eye I can see how he’d stand over me, wearing the annoyed scowl on his face that he kept for the times I was hurt, as if I’d done it on purpose just to get out of typing up the germination records for a few days. But that was never what I looked for. It was the other expression I wanted to see, the one half-hidden behind all the trash, the one in his eyes. It would make sense for him to come back and let me see that look again, even if it would be like something out of a woman’s novel. That’s not it, though.
He’s sure not keeping me company. He does that anyhow. Too much so, some say. My friends were right. It was time to stop writing up our past cases and write something different even if it meant using a pseudonym. It was more than time to let him go. He’d been dead for five years. I quit raking up the past and seven more years went by, so the memories should be fading by now. I know that’s how it’s supposed to work, but what do you do when your recall is perfect? How do you let go then?
I can’t seem to let loose, a sign, I’ve read, of getting old. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m just past it, hallucinating. I don’t do as much field work these days to remind me, but I’ll still be seventy sooner than I want to think. Sure, I’m taken for a younger man, but a man in his fifties, not in his thirties. Sure, Wolfe worked right up to the end, but he had to. His lifestyle - and wouldn’t he grunt at that word - was too expensive for him not to. Besides, he sat on his fat behind in a custom-made chair all day, and the work I do, even now, takes me out of my office and into the ever-tougher streets. As near as I can tell, though, I’m still tougher than those streets. Clients still call. I submitted a bill in five figures last Tuesday for services rendered and it was paid. And, if I stop working as a detective, it’ll only be to spend more hours in front of my typewriter, hours like this one.
I think he was wearing the fawn summer overcoat from the mid-thirties, and he was carrying something. Not a briefcase, of course, but something. Something for me? He wasn’t wearing a hat. I wonder why.
Why doesn’t he ever look at me? He knows I’m there.
I’ve never been much good at introspection. Maybe it’s time to stop brooding about myself and start thinking about what’s going on. The books tell me that there’s four main reasons ghosts usually show up: to reproach, to warn, to recall, to advise. Not to reproach, to warn, to recall: I’ve covered those possibilities, over and over. To advise? Advise me of what? He gave me all the advice I needed while he was still alive. What he didn’t know, he had Saul teach me. What Saul didn’t teach me, I found out for myself, usually in the company of a female friend.
Some little punk at a party two weeks ago had the gall to ask me if--well, the hostess got there quickly enough to separate us before anything serious happened. Later, she told him, “One doesn’t ask that question of a man of his generation.” My hearing’s well enough trained to have picked that up across the room, even at my age. My generation, sure: he was so confident, sitting in judgment on my - our - lives. But, then, so were we, in our time. We were rebellious after the Great War; we had learned from our parents’ mistakes that we, not they, were right. Now I watch what’s happening in the world and know just how often we were wrong. Wolfe taught me not to argue with the facts although he did it himself, constantly. Even so, I know what we did and what we thought and what we felt and that punk didn’t. I was there.
Wolfe was there. Wolfe was with me, then. Not in any vision but in flesh, solid, abundant, annoying flesh. Clean and familiar flesh too, less flesh than I made out, flesh that I didn’t mind seeing across the office from me no matter what wisecracks anyone would make about that, then or now. Other people never make the right wisecracks, anyhow. The purpose of a wisecrack is to get someone going, to make him think, move, and act. Being annoying isn’t just a game or a shield; it’s also a tool with which you take care of someone.
Oh, damn it. Is that what you’re doing, annoying me? Is that your idea of being helpful, forcing me past the wisecracks? Then why did you lie all the days you were alive? Punks or no punks, it would have been better to lie next to you than to lie to you or hear you lie to me, the way we did so often. Although we both told the truth, too, just not in words.
Okay, then, here are the words, neatly typed out. I love you. Even more: I love you like your friend, like your companion, like the man you love. How’s that for being advised, you fat genius?
God, it hurts so bad. I’m bleeding. After twelve years of practice it may not show, but--no, that isn’t Archie Goodwin. Try again. My heart is pounding and I feel a little dizzy. It will pass. Some fresh air will help.
He’s down there on the street, walking away like always, like the first time. But his pace is much slower than usual, and, finally, he has turned to look up at me, standing in the window. I’m going down there to see what he wants.
I don’t think I’ll be back.