where every day it seemed someone was shot, or into the streets between Dixwell Avenue and the gun factory, where James used to work with troubled teenagers. And I never walked west, out to my old neighborhood where I had lived so miserably after Emile left me and before I met James.
The weather became prematurely springlike, and, after my talk with the Orin Pierce of Parker Properties, I began taking long walks in the afternoonsâmy reward for a morning spent working on the books for Jimmy Luigiâs or trying to paint. The air was warm and wet, and the browns and greys of the sidewalks gleamed in the fitful rays of sunshine that emerged every day just before it began to get dark. I used to walk out Orange Street, past the markets and the pretty old churches and the building where Pierce used to live (a gloomy stone pile that has since been turned into condos), and end up at the park. I marched up and down the path with my hands stuffed in the pockets of my old plaid jacket, watching elderly ladies walking their dogs, and groups of nursery school kids who ran for the swings every mild afternoon. I felt I could watch these people for hours. Or Iâd walk the other way, up to Whitney Avenue, and down to the Green and up Chapel Street. Sometimes Iâd stop in and say hello to James and Raymond, but often I would just keep going, as far as the British Art Center, where I liked to sit in the library and read English periodicals, or over to the Yale Art Gallery, where I would stop in and stare compulsively at âThe Night Café.â Then I would have a cup of tea at Atticus or Willoughbyâs, andâthinking of Denisâwatch the students with their spiked hair or their preppy sweaters or any variation in between.
I didnât allow Pierce into my mind at all. Even standing in front of the Van Gogh, I didnât let myself think of Pierce. I puzzled over the bleak yellow light from the starry lamps, and the clock whose hands didnât work together properly to register the time. (Was it 12:15 or 1:15? Neither seemed quite right.) But I didnât think of Pierceânot because I was taking the advice of Proust and letting the past lie until it leapt out at me, but because the idea of Pierce exhausted and disturbed me. I wasnât even sure how to think of Pierce any more. For a long time, through all the vicissitudes of my life, I had been able to take a certain comfort from the thought of him. Now there was only confusion and anxiety. It was mad to believe he was alive, sitting in an office building, answering extension 667 when it rang, talking price ranges and number of bedrooms: that Pierce was unreal and impossible. But so was Pierce dead and crumbled to dust in his graveâthe last poor oryx. What would I think if I let my mind settle on Pierce? My beloved friend was dead, even if he wasnât dead. And of course he was. But either way, he didnât bear thinking of.
I walked the criss-cross paths of the New Haven Green. Occasionally, there was a musician, a hot-dog stand, a balloon vendor. Teenagers carried huge blasting radios on their shoulders. There were construction noises from the old town hall and the library. Pigeons scattered when I approached them, then regrouped, their wings making papery sounds. People asked me for moneyâmostly young black men and old white womenâand sometimes I gave them a quarter or two and sometimes I just shook my head. I walked briskly, thinking about what to cook for dinner, noticing the way the late afternoon sunlight turned the wet brown sidewalks to bronze. If I met someone I knew, I stopped to talk about the wonderful weather, the progress on town hall, the news. Sometimes I stopped to buy a magazine or some cookies. And then I would come to my narrow blue house, where the cats, just waking up, would hear my key in the lock and come to meet me, and James would come in soon after, and we would work in the kitchen, and have dinner,
The weather became prematurely springlike, and, after my talk with the Orin Pierce of Parker Properties, I began taking long walks in the afternoonsâmy reward for a morning spent working on the books for Jimmy Luigiâs or trying to paint. The air was warm and wet, and the browns and greys of the sidewalks gleamed in the fitful rays of sunshine that emerged every day just before it began to get dark. I used to walk out Orange Street, past the markets and the pretty old churches and the building where Pierce used to live (a gloomy stone pile that has since been turned into condos), and end up at the park. I marched up and down the path with my hands stuffed in the pockets of my old plaid jacket, watching elderly ladies walking their dogs, and groups of nursery school kids who ran for the swings every mild afternoon. I felt I could watch these people for hours. Or Iâd walk the other way, up to Whitney Avenue, and down to the Green and up Chapel Street. Sometimes Iâd stop in and say hello to James and Raymond, but often I would just keep going, as far as the British Art Center, where I liked to sit in the library and read English periodicals, or over to the Yale Art Gallery, where I would stop in and stare compulsively at âThe Night Café.â Then I would have a cup of tea at Atticus or Willoughbyâs, andâthinking of Denisâwatch the students with their spiked hair or their preppy sweaters or any variation in between.
I didnât allow Pierce into my mind at all. Even standing in front of the Van Gogh, I didnât let myself think of Pierce. I puzzled over the bleak yellow light from the starry lamps, and the clock whose hands didnât work together properly to register the time. (Was it 12:15 or 1:15? Neither seemed quite right.) But I didnât think of Pierceânot because I was taking the advice of Proust and letting the past lie until it leapt out at me, but because the idea of Pierce exhausted and disturbed me. I wasnât even sure how to think of Pierce any more. For a long time, through all the vicissitudes of my life, I had been able to take a certain comfort from the thought of him. Now there was only confusion and anxiety. It was mad to believe he was alive, sitting in an office building, answering extension 667 when it rang, talking price ranges and number of bedrooms: that Pierce was unreal and impossible. But so was Pierce dead and crumbled to dust in his graveâthe last poor oryx. What would I think if I let my mind settle on Pierce? My beloved friend was dead, even if he wasnât dead. And of course he was. But either way, he didnât bear thinking of.
I walked the criss-cross paths of the New Haven Green. Occasionally, there was a musician, a hot-dog stand, a balloon vendor. Teenagers carried huge blasting radios on their shoulders. There were construction noises from the old town hall and the library. Pigeons scattered when I approached them, then regrouped, their wings making papery sounds. People asked me for moneyâmostly young black men and old white womenâand sometimes I gave them a quarter or two and sometimes I just shook my head. I walked briskly, thinking about what to cook for dinner, noticing the way the late afternoon sunlight turned the wet brown sidewalks to bronze. If I met someone I knew, I stopped to talk about the wonderful weather, the progress on town hall, the news. Sometimes I stopped to buy a magazine or some cookies. And then I would come to my narrow blue house, where the cats, just waking up, would hear my key in the lock and come to meet me, and James would come in soon after, and we would work in the kitchen, and have dinner,
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