Time to Murder and Create

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For seven consecutive Fridays I got telephone calls from him. I wasn’t always there to receive them. It didn’t matter, because he and I had nothing to say to each other. If I was out when he called, there would be a message slip in my box when I got back to the hotel. I would glance at it and throw it away and forget about it.

Then, on the second Friday in April, he didn’t call. I spent the evening around the corner at Armstrong’s, drinking bourbon and coffee and watching a couple of interns fail to impress a couple of nurses. The place thinned out early for a Friday, and around two Trina went home and Billie locked the door to keep Ninth Avenue outside. We had a couple of drinks and talked about the Knicks and how it all depended on Willis Reed. At a quarter of three I took my coat off the peg and went home.

No messages.

It didn’t have to mean anything. Our arrangement was that he would call every Friday to let me know he was alive. If I was there to catch his call, we would say hello to each other. Otherwise he’d leave a message: Your laundry is ready. But he could have forgotten or he could be drunk or almost anything.

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