Disappearing Act, Part XVII

Monday evening.

I am sitting at the corner drugstore.

The house is no longer there.

After coming back from the Association, I didn’t find anything more than a vacant lot. I asked the children who were playing there if they recognized me. They said they didn’t. I asked what had happened to the house. They said that they had been playing in the vacant lot forever.

The Association had no archives on me. Not one line.

That means that I don’t exist any more than one individual. Everything that I possess, everything that I am – my body, and the clothes that cover it. All of my identity cards have disappeared from my wallet.

My watch has disappeared as well. Without me realizing it. Off of my wrist.

It had an inscription on the back. I remember it.

To my dearest one with all my love. Mary.

I am in the middle of drinking a cup of coffee

Disappearing Act, Part XVI

Monday morning.

The letter that I had sent to Jim was returned to me. With the envelope marked ‘UNKNOWN”.

I tried to find the bill, but I couldn’t. It had disappeared before I woke up.

I went to the grocery store. They recognized me. But when I asked if they had seen my wife, they had laughed, saying that they knew well that I would die single.

Nothing stayed with me except one sole idea . It is taking a risk. I have to leave the house and go into the city to the Veterans Association. I want to know if I am in their archives. If yes, there will be some information on my studies, my marriage, my relatives.

I carry this notebook with me. I don’t want to lose it. If I lose it, there won’t be anything in the world to remind me that I am not insane.

Disappearing Act, Part XV

Sunday.

I don’t know what to do. I spent the day sitting at the window watching the street. I watched for any recognizable face. But there was no one but strangers.

I didn’t dare to leave the house. It was all I had left. With our furniture and our clothes.

I would like to say my clothes. Her closet is empty. I opened it this morning when I woke up and there wasn’t so much as a handkerchief. It was like a slight of the hand, a disappearance, like…

I simply laughed. I must be…

I called the furniture store. They’re open Sunday afternoons. They told me that there was no bed ordered in my name. I could come in to verify if I wanted.

I returned to the window.

I thought of calling my aunt in Detroit. But I was unable to remember the number. And it wasn’t in the directory any more. The entire directory was empty. There wasn’t anything left except my name in gold on the cover.

My name. Nothing but my name. What can I say? What can I do? Easy. There’s nothing to do.

I flipped through the photo album. Almost all of the pictures had changed. They didn’t show anyone.

Mary wasn’t there anymore, nor our parents, nor our friends.

What to laugh about.

In our marriage photo I was sitting, all alone, on an immense table covered with dishes. My left arm was extended and bent to embrace a phantom bride. And, on the other side of the table, there were glasses that were floating in the emptiness.

That were toasting me.

Disappearing Act, Part XIV

Later.

I don’t know.

Mary never came back.

I called the office. Sam answered. I asked if Mary was there. He told me that I must have made a mistake, that there was no Mary working there. I gave him my name. I asked him if I worked there.

- Enough of the games, he said. I'm counting on you Monday night.

I called my cousin, my sister, my uncle. No response. Not even a ring. None of the numbers worked.

So, none of them were there.

Disappearing Act, Part XIII

Saturday

Mary left early, for some urgent secretary work.

After my breakfast, I went to get some money from the bank, to pay for the new bed.

I cashed in a check for a hundred dollars. I handed it with my checkbook to the cashier.

He opened the checkbook and looked me with furrowed brow.

- Do you think this is funny?

- What are you talking about?

He pushed the checkbook towards me, calling out:

- Next.

I believe that I shouted.

- What are you trying to pull?

A man got up from a desk and approached with an important air. Behind me, a woman said:

- Don’t stay in front of the window, sir.

- What’s he talking about? asked the man.

- Your cashier is refusing to honor my check.

He took the checkbook that I was holding and opened it.

He widened his eyes with surprise. Then, in a calm voice:

- The checkbook is blank, sir.

I pulled the checks back, heart beating fast.

It had never been used.

I whimpered:

- Oh! My god…

- Would you like for us to verify the number of your checkbook?

But there was not even a number. I looked at it. Tears welled in my eyes.

- No, I said, no…

I left as he was calling me:

- One second, sir...

I ran all the way home.

I waited in the entrance for Mary to come home. I continue to wait this very moment. I am looking at the checkbook. On the line that we had signed both our names. At the spaces where we put down our deposits. Fifty dollars from her parents for our first wedding anniversary. Two hundred and thirty dollars from the Veteran’s fund. Twenty dollars. Ten dollar. ..

Everywhere, nothing but emptiness.

Everything was gone. Jane. Sally. Mike. The names disappeared along with the people.

And now the checkbook. What was next?

Disappearing Act, Part XII

Friday.

I verified some things concerning Design Handbook. Information told me that no such publication had that name in their directory. I am going to see for myself all the same.

I recognized the building. I looked at the list of offices in the vestibule. I knew that I wouldn’t find the magazine, but in spite of that it still caused a shock.

I took the elevator, stupidly, my stomach tied in knots. I had the impression of being carried adrift far from everything that exists.

I went down to the third floor. I found myself at the exact place where I came to find Jane once.

It was a textile company.

- There was never a magazine office here? I asked at the reception.

- Not that I can remember, responded the employee. But I have only been here for the past three years.

I went back home. I told Mary that I was feeling ill, that I was not going to work tonight. She told me that she wasn’t either. I went in our bedroom to be alone. I stayed in the place where we were going to put our new bed, after its delivery next week.

Mary followed me. She stayed in the doorway.

- Bob, what’s the matter? I don’t have the right to know? Her voice was nervous.

- There’s nothing wrong.

- I beg you, don’t say nothing’s wrong. I’m not blind.

I wanted to run towards her. But I turned away.

- I have a letter to write.

- To whom?

I lost my temper.

- That’s my business.

And then I told her that it was to Jim.

She looked me right in the eye.

- I would like to believe you.

- What does that mean?

She turned her back on me.

- All right, you give my love to … Jim.

Her voice broke. I got goosebumps just hearing it.

I wrote the letter. I decided that Jim could help me. The situation was too desperate to keep it a secret. I told him that Mike had disappeared. I asked him if he remembered Mike.

Curiously, my hand hardly trembled. Maybe it was like this when one practically doesn’t belong on earth.

Disappearing Act, Part XI

Thursday afternoon

I went today to see Jim at his office in Hampstead. He seemed surprised to see me.

- Don’t tell me that you took the train here just to tell me that you’ve accepted the job.

I asked him:

- Jim, have you ever heard me talk about a girl in New York with the name of Jane?

- Jane? No, I don’t believe so.

- Look, Jim, I had to have alluded to her. Come on, remember, the last time that we played poker, with Mike. I talked to you about her then.

- I don’t remember, Bob. What is this concerning?

- It’s impossible for me to find her. Nor the girl that went out with Mike. And Mike denies ever knowing either one.

Faced with his surprise, I again gave him the explanations. Then he exclaimed:

- Well, that’s wonderful! Two married men out skirt-chasing!

- We were friends, nothing more. It was a friend from college that introduced me to them. Don’t get ideas.

- Good, we’ll let it drop. And how can I help you?

- I cannot find them. They aren’t there anymore. I can’t even prove that they ever existed.

He shrugged his shoulders. “So what?” And he asked me if Mary knew about this. I didn’t answer him.

- I never mentioned Jane to you in one of my letters? I continued

- I couldn’t tell you. I never save my letters.

I left him a short while after this. He was becoming too curious. And I saw the process – he would speak to a woman, that woman would speak to Mary – and the fire is put to the powder.

Leaving the station at the end of the afternoon, I had a horrible feeling of being something temporary. If I was sitting somewhere, it was like resting on emptiness.

I suppose that I had nerves on edge. Because I smacked a passerby just to see if he acknowledged my presence and my contact. He yelled and treated me to all sorts of names.

I would have hugged him.

Disappearing Act, Part X

Wednesday afternoon

There’s only one way to know if Jane and Sally had really disappeared.

I met Jane by the intermediary of one of my friends from college. Both of them were from Chicago. It was him that gave me her address in New York, the Stanley Club. He didn’t know that I was married.

I paid a visit to Jane, I went out with her, and Mike with his friend Sally. This is how everything went. I know that everything was like this.

Today I wrote to my friend Dave. I told him what had happened. I asked him to go to Jane’s parents and tell me if it seemed like a joke or just a series of coincidences. Then I took out my address book.

Dave’s name wasn’t in it.

Was I really becoming insane? I know perfectly well that address was in there. I remember the evening when I wrote it down so as not to lose contact with him after college. I even remember the inkblot from my pen that had fallen.

The page was blank.

I remember him, his name, his features, his manner of speaking, the things that we had done together, the classes that we had taken.

I had even kept a letter of his that he had sent in college, one year during our Easter vacation. Mike was with me in my room when I received it. As we lived in New York, we didn’t have the time to go to our families, since the vacation only lasted a few days.

But Dave had gone back to his house, in Chicago, and from there he had sent us this funny letter express. He had sealed it in wax, with the mark of his ring like an imprint, to make us laugh.

The letter was in my drawer with other old souvenirs.

It wasn’t there anymore.

And I had possessed three photos of Dave, taken after we had received our diplomas. There were two in my photo album. They were still there.

But he wasn’t in them.

There was only the gardens of the university with the buildings in the background.

I was afraid to go any further. I could have written or telephoned the university and asked them if Dave had ever been their student.

But I was afraid of trying.

Disappearing Act, Part IX

Tuesday night

I called Mike tonight. I asked him if he knew something about Sally.

- Who?

- Sally.

- Sally who?

- You know who, you big galoot.

- Is this a joke?

- One could say that, yes! How about we start talking seriously?

- Start from the beginning. Who the devil is Sally?

- You don’t know Sally Norton?

- No. Who is it?

- You never had a date with her, Jane Lane, and myself?

- Jane Lane? Who are you talking about?

- You don’t know Jane Lane either?

- No! And I don’t find it funny. I suggest that you stop. Between married men, it’s…

- Listen! I shouted. Where were you Saturday night three weeks ago?

There was a guarded silence.

-Wasn’t it the evening that we spent by ourselves while Mary and Gladys were at that fashion show?

- By ourselves? Without anyone else?

- Who else?

- No girls? Sally? Jane?

- There you go again! He groaned. Listen, old friend, what’s happened to you? You don’t seem to be doing well.

I was crumbling inside the telephone booth.

- No, I mumbled, I’m fine.

- Really? You seem to be in a frightening state.

I hung up. I am in a frightening state. Like a starving person in a world where there’s not a crumb to eat.

What happened?

Disappearing Act, Part VIII

Monday night

I called the Stanley Club while Mary had gone downstairs to look for coffee cups.

I said to the receptionist, like every time:

- I would like to speak to Miss Lane, please.

- Hold on a second.

Silence. The waiting made me impatient, then a click.

- What name?

- Miss Lane. I called her I don’t know how many times.

- I’ll look at the list again.

Another silence. And:

- There’s no one by that name here, sir.

- But I tell you that I’ve called her ….

- Are you sure that this is the right number?

- Yes? This is the Stanley Club?

- Yes sir.

- Well, that’s who I’m trying to reach.

- What do you want me to tell you? In any case, no Miss Lane lives here.

- But I called her yesterday evening! You told me that she was out.

- I’m sorry, I don’t remember that.

- That’s impossible!

- I’ll look one more time, but I assure you that it’s useless.

- And no one by that name has moved in the last couple of days?

- There hasn’t been a vacant room for a year. You know, in New York, with the housing crisis…

- I know.

I hung up.

I went back to my office. Mary came back from the drugstore. She told me that my coffee was getting cold. I pretended that I had called Jim about that position that he had offered me. The lie barely showed. Now she’ll have an occasion to bring that back up.

I drank my coffee than I tried to work. But my mind was elsewhere.

She has to be somewhere. I didn’t dream her. Not any more than Mike dreamt Sally.

Sally! She also lives there!

I pretended like I had a migraine and had to go out to buy some pills. We had some at the house. I said that I couldn’t handle that brand. What futile lies!

I ran to the drugstore. The same receptionist answered me.

- Is Miss Sally Norton there?

- Hold on a second.

I felt my stomach in knots. First, she knew the names of the inhabitants by heart. Jane and Sally had lived at the Club for two years.

And then:

- Sorry, mister. There’s no one by that name here.

I stifled a moan.

- Is something wrong, sir?

- No Jane Lane and no Sally Norton?

- Are you the guy who called here a little while ago?

- Yes.

- Listen, if this is a joke…

- A joke! Yesterday evening I called and you told me that Miss Lane had gone out, asked me if I had a message. I told you that I didn’t. And now it’s you who’s fooling with me…

- I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t remember anything about yesterday night. If you would like the director…

- No, it’s useless.

I hung up, then I called Mike. He wasn’t home. His wife Gaby told me that he was dining out.

I was a little nervous, I babbled:

- With men friends?

She seemed shocked.

- I hope so!

I started to be afraid.

Disappearing Act, Part VII

Later on.

The meal appeased me a little. I needed that. The telephone ring was making me nervous.

I called the number. A woman answered.

- Design Magazine, she said.

I asked to speak to Miss Lane.

- Pardon?

- Miss Lane.

She said, “one moment”. And I knew that this wasn’t the correct number. Usually the receptionist connected me immediately onto Jane’s line.

- Could you repeat the name? She asked again.

- Miss Lane. I must have the wrong number…

- Would you like to speak to Mr. Payne?

- No, no. Excuse me, it’s a mistake.

I hung up in a bad mood. This phantom number that I had looked at I don’t know how many times … it doesn’t make sense.

I thought that I had seen an old directory and I went to consult that one . It was the same.

I will call her house tomorrow night, I can’t do anything else. I want to meet up with her, to be sure that she and I still have plans for Saturday night.

I thought of something. That receptionist. Her voice. I could swear that it was her that I heard the other times.

Funny idea.

Disappearing Act, Part VI

Monday afternoon.

I went out to call Jane. Mary is going to see her sister tonight. She didn’t say that she was going to bring me, and it’s not going to be me who reminds her.

I already called Jane last night, at her house at the Stanley Club, and the receptionist told me that she had gone out. I thought of meeting her today at her office.

I went to call at the drugstore. Priding yourself on your memory for phone numbers is the best way to forget them. God knows I’ve called that one enough. It’s impossible for me to remember it.

She works at a magazine office – Design Handbook, or Designer’s Handbook, or something like that. Curiously, I’ve forgotten that as well. I must never have paid much attention.

But I do remember the place. I went by to look for it one day. We went out to lunch together. Mary thought I was at the public library.

I took the directory. I knew that the number of Jane’s magazine was high up on the right hand column, on the right hand side. I had looked at it dozens of times.

Today, it wasn’t there.

I found the word Design with a lot of different services. But it was on the left, on the bottom, exactly the opposite. And I wasn’t able to find the name. Usually, after I saw it, I knew that it was that one and soon enough I would recognize the number. Today, know.

I scanned the list every possible way. Nothing resembled Designer’s Handbook. Finally, I took down the number of Design Magazine, but I had the feeling that it wasn’t what I was looking for.

I will finish that later. Mary is calling me to come down to the table. Lunch, dinner, do I know? In any case it’s the big meal of the day since we are both working nights.

Disappearing Act, Part V

Monday morning.

Name of God, name of God!

Keeping the manuscript for more than two months, that wasn’t enough for them, oh no! They had to spill coffee on it, and they returned it to me, refusing it with an advertisement! Do they realize what they’ve done?

Mary saw the ad.
- So, what now? she said.

Contempt in her voice.
- Now?

I tried not to explode.

- You still believe that you’re capable of being a writer?

I did explode.

- Of course, they’re right, they are infallible, huh? I’m worthless, just because they said so?

- It’s been going on for seven years. Without any results.

- And it will continue on anyways. A hundred years, if that’s what it takes.

- You’re refusing to take the work that Jim offered you?

- Exactly.

- You have to do it in case your book fails.

- I have a job. And so do you! And that’s just how things are going to stay.

- Possibly, but I won’t be sticking around for it!

Then she left me! And afterwards? I let go of everything. Bills… writings … failures, failures! And my old life, that was wearing away drop by drop, building up a wall of complexities like a maniac playing with blocks.

You! Master of the world, regulator of the universe. If there is someone who understands me, get rid of them! Simplify the world! I don’t believe in anything but I would give it up, no matter what on earth, if only…

What good is it? Everything’s the same to me.

I’m going to call Jane today.

Disappearing Act, Part IV

Sunday evening.

The problems are back. Still another argument. I don’t even know what it was about. She broods. I fume. I am incapable of writing when I’m angry. She knows that.

Want to call Jane. She at least is interested in what I do. Want to let go of everything, to get myself drunk, to throw myself into water, doesn’t matter what. Not surprising that babies are happy. They have a simple life. A bit hungry, a bit cold, a bit afraid of the dark. Nothing else. What good is it to become a man? Life is a ­­­fraud.

Mary is calling me to come down to dinner. Don’t want to eat. Don’t even want to stay at the house. Maybe I’ll call up Jane a bit later. Just to say hello.

Disappearing Act, Part III

Saturday night.

We had been out to order a new bed this afternoon.
- Dear, we can’t afford this, she said.
- Don’t worry about it. The old one was so bad. I want my little girl to have sweet dreams.

She kissed my cheek, happy. She bounced back onto the bed, like an excited child.
- Look! She shouted. How mushy it is!

Everything’s fine. Everything except the next supply of bills in the mail. Everything, except my last story that doesn’t want to get started. Everything, except my book that was rejected five times. Burney House has to accept it! They’ve had it for a long time. I get it. I have reached the critical point in my career. More and more I have the impression that I’m a stretched spring.

Finally… everything’s going well with Mary.

Disappearing Act, Part II

Saturday afternoon.

Thank god, she forgave me. I will never see Jane again. Everything is going to work out.

I went to sit down on the bed this morning, she was still sleeping. She woke up and watched me with big eyes, then she looked at the time. She had been crying.
- Where were you? She asked in the fragile little-girl’s voice that she used when she was frightened.

I said:
- With Mike. We were drinking and talking all night.

She looked at me for a second longer. Then, slowly, she took my hand and pressed it against her cheek.
- Pardon me, she said, and tears came to her eyes.

I buried my head close to hers so that she wouldn’t see my face.

- Oh! Mary, you too, pardon me.

I will never tell her the truth. She is worth too much to me. I can not lose her.

Disappearing Act

Pages reproduced from a notebook found two weeks ago in a drugstore in Brooklyn. On the same table was a half-empty cup of coffee. According to the owner, that table had been unoccupied for more than three hours at the moment that he had noticed the notebook for the first time.

Saturday, early morning.

I shouldn’t speak of these things in writing. If Mary gets her hands on it? What then? It would be the final blow, everything gone. Five years scattered to the winds.

But I have to. I am too much in the habit of writing. Impossible to know peace without it.

To put my black thoughts on white, to externalize them, to simplify my mind. But it’s so difficult to simplify things and so easy to complicate them.

To think about the past months.

What was the beginning? An argument, of course. So many arguments during our marriage. And always the same, that’s what is horrible.

Money.

She said:

- It’s not a question of trusting your talent. It’s a question of bills and knowing if we do or do not have the means of paying them.

- And bills for paying what? Necessities? No. Nothing but luxuries.

- Luxuries!

And we would go at it again. God, how awful life without money can be. No other shortage is quite the same. How to write in peace with the chain of worries about money–money-money? Television, refrigerator, washing machine – nothing but payments until the end. And the new bed that she wanted …

And me, stupid, making the situation worse.

Why had I left the apartment that evening? The argument, yes, but there had been others. Pride, that’s all. Seven years – seven! – spent writing to earn a total of 316 dollars! And my evenings spent part-time with this blasted typing work, with Mary obliged to work as well. God knows that she had the perfect right to doubt me, the perfect right to want me to accept that job offered by Jim.

Everything is my fault. To admit my failure, make the required gesture – all would be resolved. More work during the evenings. And Mary at the house like she wanted. The necessary gesture, nothing else.

And I did that which was not necessary. That’s what’s sickening.

Mike and I were like idiots. The meeting with Jane and Sally. And the following months to continue behaving like idiots. To lose ourselves in what we called an ‘experience’. To make merry in forgetting that we were married.

And then the last night, both of use, with the girls, in their studio…

Scared of saying a word? Imbecile!

Adulterer.

Why was everything so tangled up? I love Mary. I love her. And in loving her I did that thing.

And what’s worse, I enjoyed doing it. Jane is tender, understanding, passionate. She is the symbol of lost happiness. It was marvelous. Useless to lie.

How can something so bad be marvelous? Cruelty as a source of joy? Everything is tainted, confusion, disorder, and anger.