Chapter
17
I’d ordered the one bottle they’d had in the cellar and that, together with our meals of grilled lamb chops, herbed pasta and roast duck with juniper berries, followed by several after dinner liqueurs had made the two hours pass with no pain. Mathews was mellowed out and talkative, very talkative.
“You’re absolutely mad, you know that don’t you Charlie?”
“Luck for me or we’d have never met,” I laughed.
“No, you’re making jokes. I’m serious. You’re nuts Charlie.”
I was not sure how to take this strong, but humorously stated comment. It was unlike Mathews to be this way. I could only attribute it to the liqueur. “Is this part of your therapy, Doctor?”
He slowly shook his head. “Do you have any idea of the odds in you coming out of this unscathed? You’re planning on meeting someone tomorrow morning that I’d stake my reputation on will never give you a straight answer.”
“That makes me crazy?”
“I didn’t say you were crazy. Mad. Nuts.”
“Oh, of course. How could I have misunderstood.”
“You’re still making jokes, Charlie.”
I motioned for the waiter. “As long as I’m ‘mad and nuts,’ I’m going to have another.” I lifted my glass to him.
He looked down at his empty glass; his fifth round empty glass and nodded.
“If you’re so sure of my mental state,” I said, “why the hell did we travel twenty-seven hundred miles to tell me?”
He smiled. “I like Mario’s food.”
I was beginning to believe he was stone sober. He was working me. Damn. I hated when he came at me like this. He had used similar approaches during the sessions. I knew what to expect by now. He was evasive and relentless and the only way to get through it all was to react normal, which meant react as if he were a son of a bitch. He’d always work me up into a frenzy and then let me go. He’d have some kind of answer he wanted, and I would be exhausted, and he would put me under, and I would wake fully refreshed, and we’d hug, and I’d leave, and...wait a minute, I thought. This is a ridiculous place to get into one of his pissing contests. What the hell was the matter with him? I leaned across the table. “What the hell is the matter with you?” I said.
“I’m thinking that you are very rich. Anyone who has at least seven and a half million dollars and doesn’t know who they are is going to lose that money if he lets certain people know he doesn’t know who he is.”
“Meaning, Sobel?” I said. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Charles, I’m here with you because she hasn’t been consistent, right?”
“You mean the letter?”
“The letter. From what you told me, she thinks you’re Charlie Stevens. Agreed?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe. And maybe she didn’t just forget to mention she met who she thought was Stevens, your benefactor, as far as you and she are concerned. Maybe?”
“What’s your point, inspector?”
“Charles, she’s expecting to meet Charles Randall tomorrow, right? You did make the appointment for Charles Randall, correct?”
“Of course. She doesn’t need to meet.... It hit me. What Mathews was driving home, hit me. He was right. I was nuts.
“Charlie, if you show up as Charles Randall, and she thinks she was sitting with Charlie Stevens at the Hyatt, then...
“I get it, okay? I may be slow, but I’m not stupid.”
He paused a moment.
“I am stupid,” I corrected.
He patted my hand, “Not stupid, just nuts.” He sipped some water as the waiter placed two more liquors on the table.
“So, what am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“The doctor asks the questions, remember?”
“Sometimes, Mathews, you’re really a pain. Okay. Ask.”
He lifted the liquor to his lips. “What are you going to be doing while I play Charles Randall tomorrow and get you some answers?”
He made a mock toast.
My jaw dropped. “You. Charles Randall. That’s a good one.”
“The only one, Charlie.”
I was confused and probably drunk, but I knew I wasn’t prepared to answer his question. “I’m… Can we talk about this in the morning?”
“Over coffee? He motioned for the check and took a last sip. “Sure, if you get up early enough. Charles Randall’s
appointment with Ms. Sobel is at ten I think you said.”
As our legs took on the ten or eleven blocks back to the hotel, we said very little. Several months earlier, Mathews had admitted being a walking addict. “Two or three miles in the morning and the same at night,” he had told me was his ritual. “Gives me time to rid myself of everyone else’s problems and concentrate on my own. We doctors do have problems ourselves, you know.” As I reflected on that statement, I wondered if I was being eased into one of his problems. Was his taking my place tomorrow a problem? Sara had said he was very concerned for me. Was it genuine, or did he have a buried agenda? At the moment, I was reduced to nothing but instincts, that dinner and booze had reduced my instincts to mush.
As we walked, I calmed myself and tried to think straight. Why was I suspicious? This man had taken a special interest in me from the beginning. Oh, I’d joked at one time about the fee, accusing him of having a special two-hundred and fifty dollar an hour interest in me, but I’d checked around. He was actually below average in LA with his charge. I wasn’t going to do much better. He was professional, having a steady flow of patients. He certainly didn’t seem in need of business or money. And I liked him. That was the main reason I’d conceded to this trip with him. I liked and trusted him. So, if I liked and trusted him, why was I thinking he was doing something covert? Oh, Jesus, Charlie. Blow it off, I told myself. Blow it off. Too much drink. That was it. I was still dumbstruck with not realizing back in LA what Mathews had to be thinking all along. He was the only way for Sobel to meet the Charles Randall she’d never seen before.
“Hey, Doc. Warmed up enough? Let’s see if your “habit” is any good. Race you back.” I veered off the sidewalk and ducked into the park, breaking into a jog. I looked over my shoulder and saw a man twice my age, wearing a big smile, muttering obscenities and threatening to raise his rate as he enjoyed every moment of the sprint he was forcing me into. His head was thrown back slightly, taking deep breaths of the energy he said he missed. I’d read that New York had that effect on a lot of people. I turned back, lifted my chin, and like him, took in the enchantment of old street lamps lighting up the strong and tireless trees that gave Manhattan one of its story book images. Peeking through the trees were the towering sentinels of windowed light along Central Park South, keeping an ever-watchful eye on the oasis below. That’s how it appeared to my little boy attitude at the moment, drunk out of my mind, running through the playground of the Charles and Charlie unknown
Next morning, I woke to my first hangover… in memory that is. Damn. The telephone light was blinking red. I looked at the time. I’d missed any time to talk to Mathews before… Oh, shit it was 10 AM. He’s…
The cheerful voice on the other side of the door announcing “room service” was no consolation for the price I’d paid for the night before.
The room service was presented with a bouquet of flowers, complete with a greeting card from Mathews: “Enjoy your morning. Sorry for the slip into drunk-land last night. Indulgence is a vice of mine - Doc. P.S. Couldn’t get you to answer your phone this morning, but will keep my recorder running the whole time, so stop worrying about me stealing your millions.”
Stealing my millions? As I tipped the waiter and sat down to contemplate the 10:00 am hour, the food, fresh squeezed orange juice, eggs Benedict, and a pot of fresh coffee, I had the eerie feeling that my privacy had been invaded. I couldn’t remember saying anything about my money last night, about “stealing my millions.” Was I that transparent, or was Mathews just uncanny? As I sipped my coffee and peered out over Central Park, I wondered just how psychic he was.
It was eleven o’clock when I finished showering and getting dressed. I tried Sara again, but no answer. I double-checked the hotel operator for messages. None. I reread Mathews’ note – Re-read Sobel’s letter – Re-read the morning paper. I was not good at waiting. I took a walk.
The sidewalks were crowded with misery, I thought. Where were the strollers like I’d seen the night before? Where were the smiling faces of the restaurant? Everyone seemed so serious, so much in a hurry to pass through his or her surroundings. Conveyor belt driven people going where? So far, this was a city of people unlike anything I’d imagined, a city making it hard for me to understand.
I wandered up to a store called F.A.O. Schwartz. The bronze plaque at the entrance said it was the world’s largest toy store. I looked inside. It was magical. Among the few children inside at this hour, were happy adult faces, smiling and bobbing around trying not to miss anything they passed. Faces like the little boy face I felt underneath my own. This is what I needed to be around. It was like a giant magnet.
Stepping inside, I stopped and gazed up.
“Wonderful, isn’t it?” said the older woman standing beside me. We were both staring up at the flying dinosaur like bird that was hanging from the two-story ceiling. A few feet below was a small-suspended harness-like seat—the kind you’d expect to see in a walking trainer—containing a large life like doll. Suspended below that was a gilded rope hanging down to the floor that children and adults tugged as they passed, making the wings flap like some prehistoric Wright Brothers’ experiment.
With its wingspan of fifteen to twenty feet fanning our faces, the older woman with the flowered hat said, “Imagine having a house large enough to put that toy in? Need to have a barn for a nursery. Land sakes.” She wandered off into the crowd.
A harlequin decked out in the old European classic look of brightly colored diamond shapes, came walking through at that moment, passing out F.A.O. Schwartz balloons bearing an old antique looking carnival scene. He handed me one with a charming, “Vous aussi, Monsieur.”
I looked around and other adults were taking them as well. “Merci...merci beaucoup,” I said and strolled off. I was enjoying this.
The second floor was a totally different look. Model train platforms, sales people with small kiosk like areas demonstrating toys, row upon row of boxed toys, toys on display. Everywhere, children and their parents were examining, playing with, and breaking toys. What a place, I thought. I stepped up to the engineer on one of the train platforms. He was controlling several trains, winding them in and through the little villages and towns that covered the landscape. As I became somewhat mesmerized by the sounds and movement of the little cars and engines, I leaned into him and whispered, “Must be a ball playing this way all day long.”
“Fuck off faggot,” he whispered back, followed by a patronizing smile.
I did a double take and moved away. The rest of the walking through the store wasn’t the same. Flashes of the cab supervisor at the airport, the sidewalks earlier, and the troubled engineer kept interfering with my enjoyment of the rest of the store. I kept trying to figure out why there was so much anger. New York was very unsettling so far.
It was noon when I got back to the hotel. I was anxious now, very anxious. I went immediately to Mathews’ room and knocked, but he didn’t answer. I entered my room and rushed to the telephone. The little red light was off. No messages. I checked my watch again. “Where the hell was he?” I muttered to myself. I sat down on the bed and stared at the lifeless phone. The temptation to call was irresistible. I picked up the phone and dialed. It had rung three times when the hotel switchboard punched in the beep to indicate there was a call waiting. I hung up and took the incoming. “Hello?”
“Your room or mine?” said Mathews.
I raced out, down the hall and through the already open door, slamming it behind me. Mathews was pouring himself a drink from the well-stocked minibar. “Care for one?” he said.
“After last night? Talk to me for God’s sake.”
He took out a microcassette recorder. “Well, I’ll let you hear it yourself.”
Mathews and Charlie have a dinner and drinking bout that reveals more than Charlie was ready for.
Like just before the commercial, you always make it imperative that I "stay tuned."
Ron