Friendship

The empire state building is bounded by Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas and by 33rd and 34th Streets. He saw this little cluster of fact drop into focus in his mind, precious, a thing beyond value; it hung, a gold-wire mobile, just behind the curtain of his eyes, swinging in a black velvety cylinder. So, he said aloud, that's the top of the Empire State, there beside the moon; I know that, and therefore, I know where I am and I can get back to Betty's. Now, where am I? He didn't know. He leaned against the bricks of the building behind him, full of fright, worse than fright, terror, and wondered why he didn't know. It came to him after a while. He couldn't know where he was because he didn't know from which of the four primary directions he was seeing the Empire State Building. Half of me, he said, is blind drunk; the other half might as well be living inside an idiot.

A pair of headlights turned into the block and drifted toward him. He moved along the building to a doorway. The car ran dead silently in the dark street, a cardboard cutout pulled by strings, with two cop-faces in a bright green dashboard light, staring straight ahead. I didn't do it, he said. The butler did it. Did what? Whatever it was he might have done since--he looked at his watch, it was 1:20--since, let me think, since about 10. About 10, because he had left Betty at 8 to go to The Hole, and he remembered when he'd left The Hole because the 10-o'clock news was on the black little radio on the back bar. Then he'd made it to Pete Masconi's flat, where the party was; he remembered going up the two flights of stairs, and he remembered Pete coming to the door, and he remembered a redhead with a drink in her hand looking over Pete's shoulder at him. She was nude ... wasn't she? Yes, or had that been later? At any rate, he'd made it to Masconi's. And of course Betty hadn't been there, he'd told her he couldn't take her, and told her why; it had been some good reason but still she'd been hotly furious. The reel of his memory ran out there.

He moved out of the doorway, turned left and walked. It was a damned dark street and the dark and jumbled buildings lining it told him nothing, but in the fullness of time he saw a river. Whether it was the East River or the Hudson he couldn't know and it didn't matter. He turned himself around and went back the way he'd come. He told himself, with elaborate patience, that now he must come to an avenue, and on the avenue there would be a taxi, and that was how it turned out.

He had taken the key off the ring in the cab, and now he held it carefully in his right hand and guided it into the hole with his left, smoothly, noiselessly. There was no light in the apartment. He pulled out of his shoes and made the little distance to the living-room archway. The bed was down. He closed his eyes and waited 30 seconds or so and looked again. Yes, just one rounded shape under the covers. He undressed in the bathroom and he slid into the empty side of the bed, slowly, most carefully. He could hear her breathing, but she made no other sound. He lay on his back. He let a deep breath whistle softly out of him. My God, he said, I made it. I'm safe. He listened. The slow breathing beside him, the hum of the little refrigerator, outside the mad soft howl of the nighttime city, and that was all. His identity flowed back into him like new blood. He knew who he was and where he was. Courage rose in him. I'm still drunk, he said, but at least now I know where I am. Slowly, he moved his left foot until it touched her. He waited. He flexed his knee, and pressed that leg against hers. She stirred and sighed.

"Hi," he said.

She didn't answer, but her left arm came from under the warm covers and up his arm to his shoulder. He turned on his side and reached for her. She moved to him.

"I'm sorry about tonight," he said. "I know how mad it made you." She didn't answer.

All right, he thought. That's OK. He leaned gently on the far arch of her hip until she was flat on the bed again. He went into her. She sighed again, and held him, and moved against him gently three or four times. Her left arm reached out, he heard her hand brush the table, a glass tinkled, the light went on. She looked up at him. The whole room swung, he felt his brain bulge in his skull. He had never seen her before. She smiled, a pretty girl, a strong face, a big generous-looking mouth, her lips just open, her eyes slitted against the light.

"I don't think we've met," she said.

His heart raced. The blood surged into his head, his face burned with it. The girl was holding him tightly, laughing, laughing, laughing. Everything was clear enough: wrong building, wrong apartment, wrong city, wrong country, wrong world; he looked to the doorway, in which he knew a man must instantly appear, he would be eight feet tall and four feet wide, he would have seven wedding rings on his left hand and a bloody ax in his right. He tried to pull away from the girl, but her arms and her legs were strong and locked around him.

"Who are you?" he heard someone whisper. "And who am I?"

"I'm a friend of a friend of yours," she said. "And I know who you are: you're a friend of a friend of mine. Your friend, and mine, is in my apartment, not alone, and I'm in hers, not alone. You see?"

He nodded.

"You can kiss me again now," he said. "The joke part is over."

In the morning, when Betty came, they were making love again and laughing. Each forgave the other two, callousnesses, drunkennesses, infidelities, frights, all were forgiven, and for a long time after that, for a year nearly, they lived together in contentment. They laughed a lot.

"Who are you?" one would ask, and the others would say in unison, loudly or softly as it chanced, "I am a friend of a friend of yours."