Jailbird

13

I was about to say to him gravely, watchfully but sincerely, "How are you, Leland? It is good to see you again."

But I never got to say it. The shopping-bag lady, whose voice was loud and piercing, cried out, "Oh, my God! Walter F. Starbuck! Is that really you?" I do not intend to reproduce her accent on the printed page.

I thought she was crazy. I thought that she would have parroted any name Clewes chose to hang on me. If he had called me "Bumptious Q. Bangwhistle," I thought, she would have cried, "Oh, my God! Bumptious Q. Bangwhistle! Is that really you?"

Now she began to lean her shopping bags against my legs, as though I were a convenient fireplug. There were six of them, which I would later study at leisure. They were from the most expensive stores in town — Henri Bendel, Tiffany's, Sloane's, Bergdorf Goodman, Bloomingdale's, Abercrombie and Fitch. All but Abercrombie and Fitch, incidentally, which would soon go bankrupt, were subsidiaries of The RAHJAC Corporation. Her bags contained mostly rags, pickings from garbage cans. Her most valuable possessions were in her basketball shoes.

I tried to ignore her. Even as she entrapped me with her bags, I kept my gaze on the face of Leland Clewes. "You're looking well," I said.

"I'm feeling well," he said. "And so is Sarah, you'll be happy to know."

"I'm glad to hear it," I said. "She's a very good girl." Sarah was no girl anymore, of course.

Clewes told me now that she was still doing a little nursing, as a part-time thing.

"I'm glad," I said.

To my horror, I felt as though a sick bat had dropped from the eaves of a building and landed on my wrist. The shopping-bag lady had taken hold of me with her filthy little hand.

"This is your wife?" he said.

"My what?" I said. He thought I had sunk so low that this awful woman and I were a pair! "I never saw her before in my life!" I said.

"Oh, Walter, Walter, Walter," she keened, "how can you say such a thing?"

I pried her hand off me; but the instant I returned my attention to Clewes, she snapped it onto my wrist again.

"Pretend she isn't here," I said. "This is crazy. She has nothing to do with me. I will not let her spoil this moment, which means a great deal to me."

"Oh, Walter, Walter, Walter," she said, "what has become of you? You're not the Walter F. Starbuck I knew."

"That's right," I said, "because you never knew any Walter F. Starbuck, but this man did." And I said to Clewes, "I suppose you know that I myself have spent time in prison now."

"Yes," he said. "Sarah and I were very sorry."

"I was let out only yesterday morning," I said.

"You have some trying days ahead," he said. "Is there somebody to look after you?"

"I'll look after you, Walter," said the shopping-bag lady. She leaned closer to me to say that so fervently, and I was nearly suffocated by her body odor and her awful breath. Her breath was laden not only with the smell of bad teeth but, as I would later realize, with finely-divided droplets of peanut oil. She had been eating nothing but peanut butter for years.

"You can't take care of anybody!" I said to her.

"Oh — you'd be surprised what all I could do for you," she said.

"Leland," I said, "all I want to say to you is that I know what jail is now, and, God damn it, the thing I'm sorriest about in my whole life is that I had anything to do with sending you to jail."

"Well," he said, "Sarah and I have often talked about what we would like to say most to you."

"I'm sure," I said.

"And it's this." he said, " 'Thank you very much, Walter. My going to prison was the best thing that ever happened to Sarah and me.' I'm not joking. Word of honor: It's true."

I was amazed. "How can that be?" I said.

"Because life is supposed to be a test," he said. "If my life had kept going the way it was going, I would have arrived in heaven never having faced any problem that wasn't as easy as pie to solve. Saint Peter would have had to say to me, 'You never lived, my boy. Who can say what you are?' "

"I see," I said.

"Sarah and I not only have love," he said, "but we have love that has stood up to the hardest tests."

"It sounds very beautiful," I said.

"We would be proud to have you see it," he said. "Could you come to supper sometime?"

"Yes — I suppose," I said.

"Where are you staying?" he said.

"The Hotel Arapahoe," I said.

"I thought they'd torn that down years ago," he said.

"No," I said.

"You'll hear from us," he said.

"I look forward to it," I said.

"As you'll see," he said, "we have nothing in the way of material wealth; but we need nothing in the way of material wealth."

"That's intelligent," I said.

"I'll say this though:" he said, "The food is good. As you may remember, Sarah is a wonderful cook."

"I remember," I said.

And now the shopping-bag lady offered the first proof that she really did know a lot about me. "You're talking about that Sarah Wyatt, aren't you?" she said.

There was a silence among us, although the uproar of the metropolis went on and on. Neither Clewes nor I had mentioned Sarah's maiden name.

I finally managed to ask her, woozy with shapeless misgivings, "How do you know that name?"

She became foxy and coquettish. "You think I don't know you were two-timing me with her the whole time?" she said.

Given that much information, I no longer needed to guess who she was. I had slept with her during my senior year at Harvard, while still squiring the virginal Sarah Wyatt to parties and concerts and athletic events.

She was one of the four women I had ever loved. She was the first woman with whom I had had anything like a mature sexual experience.

She was the remains of Mary Kathleen O'Looney!