Slipping Into Darkness by Peter Blauner Page B

building, leaving the entrance unguarded for a moment.
     
“So,” Hoolian said, seeing a chance to help himself in a different way. “Any of the old crew still around?”
     
“What do you mean?”
     
“You know, Willie from the back elevator. Nestor, the porter . . .”
     
The lashes batted in confusion. “Oh,” she said after a few seconds. “The older gentleman who worked in the cellar?”
     
“Riight.”
     
“Julian used to bring him up sometimes, to help rearrange the living-room furniture for me. Small but strong as a bull. Didn’t speak much English.”
     
“Exactly.”
     
He nodded again, sensing her slight unease. He knew it was too soon to be back. What did he expect, a “welcome home” banner? These people wanted to forget him, to act like he’d never existed. Look at it their way: They’d seen him grow up right before their eyes, let him into their homes, treated him almost like a son. He’d been the proof of their liberal good intentions, the evidence of their egalitarianism, the Puerto Rican boy allowed in their kitchens.
     
And how had he shown his appreciation? He’d betrayed them, he’d confirmed their worst fears, he’d destroyed their peace of mind and the sanctity of their homes. He’d gone and killed one of their own, a member of their class, the best of the best, a golden girl.
     
“He was a musician, wasn’t he?” Miss Powell said, still clinging to the veil of memory. “He had this rather small feminine face but big powerful hands with long fingers. He played the piano.”
     
“He sure did. Papi said he was in one of the best bands in Santo Domingo before he came here.”
     
If she caught the slip, she didn’t let on. “You remember, I have that old Steinway in my living room? It probably hasn’t been tuned since my Sweet Sixteen party. But he came up one afternoon with the boy and, my goodness, it was like George Gershwin suddenly appeared in my apartment.”
     
He could still see the old porter crouching over the keyboard right after they moved a couch behind the coffee table. Picking out the notes slowly, tentatively at first, like a man negotiating a spiral staircase in the dark. Wandering up and down the scale almost haphazardly, until you realized this random string of sounds was actually a melody. The left hand stirring up trouble, gradually locking into a groove. Deep pedal tones echoing off the ceiling and shimmering against the windows. Long crooked fingers stabbing and dancing, poking and prodding, plonking and tangoing, gliding and mamboing.
     
“Remember how we danced?” she said.
     
How did they end up like that anyway? Had she asked him or had he asked her? For a few seconds he was a boy again, waltzing on the old red Persian rug at dusk as Nestor thundered on, Cole Porter in one hand, Thelonious Monk in the other, the whole room threatening to fly away. They’d moved around each other awkwardly at first. Hoolian, usually sidelined by fatal self-consciousness at parties, had followed her lead, watching her perform pirouettes and arabesques that she’d probably learned in private ballet lessons in that very room. He remembered how she’d smiled, eager to delight him, and then spun over and put his arm around her waist. He’d held her gingerly, not wanting to break her, afraid of getting in trouble. But she’d persisted in falling into him, entangling his feet, engaging his arms and legs, as if she were pulling him into her own private memory. And for a few minutes, they danced as if she were still sixteen and he would never grow a day older, as if they were the envy of the whole East Side and this was the event of the season.
     
“I think you were thinking of my son,” Hoolian said gently, knowing he wouldn’t be able to suspend time for much longer.
     
“Oh, yes, of course.”
     
She bared her striated teeth in a shy coltish smile and in an instant he understood that she’d known exactly who he was all along.
     
“So does he still work here, that porter?” he asked, a little too