A Man to Conjure With

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Peter Becker stood at the top of the steps, shuffling his bulk, aimlessly knocking snow from the sides of his shoes. His feet were already wet. It was just a matter of not tracking dirt inside — the dirt already there its own responsibility. Waiting, he waited, though as he hadn’t pressed the buzzer (his index finger had hovered over it, had toured the air around it like a wary fly), it couldn’t be said that he was waiting for anyone other than himself. Peter Becker, meet Peter Becker — impatient but in no special hurry, waiting for himself. Now that he was home, now that he had traveled three thousand miles to return to New York, now that he had located Lois’s apartment in the Village and was, his feet cold, standing at the door, he saw no point in actually ringing the bell. What was there to say? If he stood in the cold long enough — the snow beginning to fall lightly again — he’d think of something or freeze his ass off in the process. Mostly he was afraid of discovering how the past thirteen years (almost fourteen since their last meeting) had changed them both. And after all — the reason for his coming to see her — what had they changed from? He wanted to know. In the afternoon from his squalid hot box of a hotel room he had rung Lois’s number but when she answered, an unfamiliar voice, he hung up without speaking. Without the benefit of being seen, he was unable to identify himself — a greater problem for Peter than for most. He had no memory of his own face; it surprised him each time he saw his youthful reflection in the mirror goggling out at him like an eavesdropper. In the wars of his life, he had been continuously and decisively defeated, while his face, through some private truce, continued to register the pride of indifference. He would be forty in March.

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