Recapitulation, Chapter 19 (p. 306-310)

It had been easy for Nathaniel to forget that he had once wandered these streets aimlessly, and the distance of a New York City block, which struck him as much longer than he remembered, superimposed his feeling of the past over the discomfort of the present. He had crossed Washington Square Park, which never looked quite right except in the spring and summer when it was filled with people. He had paused beneath the Washington Arch and stared up 5th Avenue as he used to do often, trying to picture the difference of view that one might have from under the Arc de Triomphe. As before, he pretended to walk down the Champs-Élysées, trying to lose all sense of being in America as he brushed by New Yorkers. He used to wish that he really was in Paris because America's version seemed a poor imitation. He wished the same now, though he was less concerned with authenticity. He had just never seen it.

His old habits continued to return as he walked uptown. He glanced around at the buildings, never looking all the way to the tops because that might mark him as one who did not know the city. But even that, he knew, was regional pretension: Nobody knows this city, he thought. Each building, rather, each room, was a city of its own, and the larger city outside its walls was only a reflection of what was within. Inside some of these buildings were people doing obscene things, the experience of which led the doer to trust that each window shade hid similar lechery. But in the next building, indeed the next room, might be found a shrine to some long departed lover whose partner had remained faithful in uneven death. But it was not a city made up concretely of the sinners and the pious; every degree of each might be rubbing up against Nathaniel in the rolling throng. Some faces, it is true, read only of benignity. Other faces, more forcefully wholesome, all but writhed at the cheeks for all the murky thoughts beneath. Yet there were others away from whom none would be blamed for walking, but who might walk so strangely, themselves, for fear of disturbing even the slightest bit of life.

As in place, so in time. While a moment held for one citizen the realization of untold dreams, another member of the insulated society watched an entire lifetime of tribulation congeal, as if instantly, into a reality-snapping failure.

Just as a business person, high in a conference room, gathered up the articles of his flawless presentation, a hooker gathered up her clothes. He reached out to shake hands; she reached out for wrinkled bills — each gathering the same thing, really, with the gestures: currency. In this very same city, such different lives were lived as the fairy-tale one of the stars and the nightmare horrors of the homeless. For the first, night meant another social gathering, replete with wine, hors d'oeuvres, and habillements so costly that some poor families could live an entire generation through for the same amount. For the second, night meant another trial to survive, replete with frostbite, starvation, and murder.

Though the wealthy, educated group might argue that there is less difference than there might seem between these experiences of the night by adding the word social to the word existence without diminishing the import of the latter, Nathaniel knew the truth. He shivered because of the cold and because he knew that the second group had become so resigned to their position that they nearly justified for themselves the wasteful lives of the stars and better-offs with the fantasies that those lives made so much easier for the have-nots to have.

For Nathaniel, the coming of the city night, as it was coming now, did nothing more nor less than remind him that he was wandering aimlessly, with no clear goal nor sense of process. The windows began to darken around him, and it occurred to him suddenly that behind some of them there had to be dead bodies. With all of the rooms and all of the people, there simply had to be. He wondered how many there were undiscovered in the city. Probably more than one per street; perhaps one per building. Add to that the dead in the cracks and in the subway and in the rivers and in the sewers and in the parks and in their cars and in the cement and in the walls and in the air. "They're all dead," Nathaniel concluded.

He caught a quick movement out of the corner of his eye that, for some reason, stood out among all of the bustling movements of the city evening. He walked on but got the feeling again. A dark car passed by. Knowing that it was highly unlikely, Nathaniel still could not shake the impression that it was the same dark car that had been behind him that very morning over one hundred miles away.

Nathaniel's heart began to rap more loudly inside his chest as the car slowed, but when it moved on, Nathaniel realized that it had only been traffic that had slowed it. He laughed at himself, trying not to worry that he was going crazy. A car horn startled him, and he looked up at a sports car that had stopped beside him blocking traffic. More horns sounded until the racket bounced from cement wall to cement wall up into the atmosphere.

Nick stuck his head out of the sports car's window and shouted for him to get in.

It occurred to Nathaniel that, if it were not his life, but a book or a movie, this sequence of events would seem too unlikely to be plausible. He stepped tentatively off the curb. "How did you find me, Nick?"

Nick responded, "There are so many people looking for you that you're easy to find. Get in."

The shouts and horns, which blended together in one monotonous cry, seemed to be urging Nathaniel to do as he had been told. He glanced up and down the street. It was getting dark. He walked around the car and got in, and they headed back downtown.

Both men remained quiet for a moment, as if to give the built up traffic time to loosen, and it was Nathaniel who spoke first, "So what do you want?"

Looking at him with slight bemusement, Nick replied, "It sounds as if you've had a surfeit of surprise requests of late."

Nathaniel didn't respond, he just looked into Nick's face.

Nick wet his lips, "Well I don't want anything, Nathaniel. I'm only worried about you. A man like you can't be wandering around the streets of New York."

"What do you mean 'a man like me'?"

Gesturing toward the car's front window and the Arch beyond, Nick said, "Hold that thought. Where do you want to go?"

"I was going to my publisher's."

"Alright, then. I'll have to drive around the park."

"Do you know where it is?"

"Of course."

Nathaniel was confused; he felt as if everybody had been privy to the script of his life but him. "How?"

"Oh never mind," Nick comforted with a boyish secretiveness. "As I said, you're really not that hard to find."

"Yeah, I know," Nathaniel said. "A man like me..."

He left the sentence open and looked through the glass as the car circumnavigated the park. Then he continued, "So what do you mean by that?"

At first laughing with measured incredulity, Nick told him, "You really don't understand the ripples you've caused, do you?"

"Ripples?"

"Of course. You're the all-things-to-all-people guy."

Absently, Nathaniel spoke to himself, "But I thought I had been so clear."

"You had," Nick spoke, having overheard the more or less private comment. "But that doesn't matter. Strange to say, but it almost seems as if the more clear and honest one is, the more misunderstood one will be. I guess nobody believes that anybody is really as they seem. People who want a hero will find one; people who want a villain will find that."

Something in Nick's voice made Nathaniel ask, "So what do you want?"

With a chuckle, Nick responded, "I just want to help."

"How?"

Now Nick checked his rearview mirror and turned toward Nathaniel, like a character in a movie who drives for miles without looking at the road once, and got down to business, "Nathaniel, you're not going to believe that I've got your best interests in mind, especially if you've spoken to who I think you've spoken to, but I've got some" pause "friends who're used to dealing with people in your situation."

"Like the 'friends' who threw you out of the car when you first came to the Pequod?"

With a laugh that Nathaniel thought was much too hearty for the subject matter, Nick said, "No, no. I don't associate with them any more." Then with sudden seriousness, "This is a different kind of scene. All you'd have to do is be in a couple of pictures and that sort of thing, and you're in with a powerful group of people."

"So what's in it for you?"

Nick shook his head with a salesman's best sincere frown, "I'm not going to lie to you, Nathaniel; I have a vested interest in you, as it happens. But it may not be like you think. There's no money involved... directly... you'll just be helping some of my pieces to come together."

Nathaniel placed his elbow against the armrest on the door and rubbed his forehead.

"You don't have to give me an answer now, you know. It's just something to think about. What was that? I didn't hear you."

"I said, 'No,'" he repeated himself more loudly. "I don't need to think about anything. I'm not interested in your offer or any offer that you or anybody else could make. I'm going to take my book off the market; I'm going to go back to Rhode Island and convince my fiancé that I'm still the same man that I've been; and we're going to get back to our lives. I don't want this. I never did, or if I did, it was because I didn't know what the hell I really wanted."

"Nathaniel..."

"I said 'No,' Nick!"

Nick motioned graciously around them. "We're here," he said. The car had stopped.

"Where?" angrily.

"At your publisher's office."

"Oh," Nathaniel said, somewhat ashamed.

"Are you sure that you want to get out in this rain?"

Nathaniel raised his head. It had started to drizzle. He hadn't noticed. His mind drifted.

"... a place where you can stay. They're friends of mine." He heard Nick talking.

"No," Nathaniel spoke himself as if out of a dream, "I'll be fine. Thanks for the ride. And," pause "sorry."

As Nathaniel stepped out of the car, he heard Nick call out from behind him, "Not a problem. I'm mostly trying to help you, and if you don't need it... Hey! Even better! But Nathaniel..."

Nathaniel bent down to look into the car. For some reason he gave himself the impression of a hooker. "What?"

"If you should change your mind..."

Interrupting sarcastically, "I know, I know. I'll find you."

"Actually, I think it'd be easier for me to find you."

That said with a mysterious smile, Nick leaned across the car and pulled the car door closed and drove away.

If you're going to find me, how will you know that I've changed my mind, Nathaniel thought to himself. He thought he could guess what Nick would have said if he hadn't sped away so quickly.

Nathaniel braced his palm against a tree as he paused to think. The tree was gnarled and dead: a city tree. The rain was coming down a little harder now. Freezing rain. Painful rain.

Noticing only fleetingly that a single hair was sticking across his forehead, Nathaniel looked across the street at what was apparently his publisher's building.