Free Thirst by Ken Kalfus Page B

hurrying again, but with less confidence, unsure now what he would say to her if it were indeed Anna. He saw the woman at the end of the block, which teemed with office workers and businessmen. She walked briskly, in a gait that Harrah now recognized as characteristically Anna’s. As she reached a set of revolving doors, Harrah called her name. The doors swept up and devoured her.
    She was gone when he entered the lobby. Harrah told the uniformed man at the desk Anna’s name but couldn’t recall the name of her firm (which he knew, anyway, was located uptown). Harrah smiled helplessly, apologized for being in the wrong building, and left.

    He met Anna for dinner in the evening of the day that began that night when he went to bed.
    “I thought I saw you down by Nassau Street,” Harrah said. “Was it you?”
    “Me? When?”
    “Yesterday. Or maybe it was today. Things have been hectic. I’m not sure.”
    “No, I can’t imagine the last time I was that far downtown,” Anna said.
    “I was sure it was you.”
    “What was I wearing?”
    Harrah couldn’t remember. As he tried to summon the details of the encounter from his memory, they evaporated. “I don’t know. I called your name, but you didn’t turn around.”
    “How could I? It wasn’t me.”
    Harrah used his lunch break the following day to return downtown, though he knew that finding this woman, this other Anna, was a nearly impossible task: the volume of people on the street was too great, they moved too quickly, most of them were rarely on the same block at the same hour every afternoon. Harrah didn’t even know if the woman worked in the building she had entered; like him, she may have been on an errand from another part of the city. Nevertheless, in subsequent wake-on-the-East-Side days, whenever he could get away from the office, he stood on the corner of Pine and Nassau, in the roaring traffic’s boom, eating a hot dog, waiting for her to show up.
    He never told Anna that he was doing this nor, of course, did he tell Lillian. The hot dog vendor, however,
guessed that he was waiting for a woman and winked every time Harrah bought his lunch from him. Meanwhile, as the memory of the chance meeting faded, Harrah began to doubt that it had ever happened. Then one afternoon he saw her, walking jacketless down the street, carrying a white paper deli bag gingerly, as if it contained a cup of coffee or soup that had already spilled and wet the bag.
    “Anna!” he called, approaching.
    She smiled uncertainly and squinted into the oncoming mass of people, looking for a familiar face. He called her name again and saw that she was puzzled.
    “Do I know you?” she said, not quite stopping for him.
    “Yes, it’s me, Harrah. You don’t recognize me?”
    She studied him for a moment. Harrah, who looked no different regardless of which apartment he left in the morning, offered her what he thought was his most typical expression.
    “No, I don’t,” she said, shaking her head—exactly how she always shook her head!—and breaking eye contact. She pushed on past him, her head down, evidently dismissing him as another street crazy.
    “Anna,” he repeated, hurrying to keep up with her against the tide of other pedestrians.
    “How do you know my name?” she asked sharply.
    Harrah produced his most disarming smile.
    “I know all sorts of things about you,” he said.
    He paused to give an example, such as some funny personal detail about her apartment, or where she had summered as a child, or her favorite movie, but none
was at hand. He was aware now that what he had just said was vaguely threatening.
    She broke away and surrounded herself with a small group of office workers headed down the block.
    Harrah stood there, blinking in the raw sunlight. He watched her as she lost herself in the crowd, just the back of one head among many.
    The next morning he called Anna at work.
    “Did someone accost you on the street yesterday?” he asked her.
    “No.