Coincidence (8 page)

So where was the help I still felt in need of to come from? No sooner was the question framed than I knew the answer. Somehow
it seemed inevitable, the only thing that, in the circumstances, offered some kind of lifeline. I took down the
I Ching
once again, dug into my pocket for three coins, and threw them six times. The baseline was three tails, therefore a changing
line, giving first:

This was “T’ai,” or “Peace.” The judgment read:

The small departs,

The great approaches.

Good fortune. Success.

“This hexagram,” I read, “denotes a time in nature when heaven seems to be on earth.”

Next, I looked up the alternative hexagram that was created by the changing baseline.

This was “Sheng,” or “Pushing Upward.” The judgment read:

Pushing upward has supreme success.

One must see the great man.

Fear not.

Departure toward the south

Brings good fortune.

Between the two of them, I thought, I should feel reassured, even encouraged. The only possibly questionable note seemed to
be “departure toward the south,” but I didn’t suppose that in ancient China “going south” had acquired the same negative connotation
it has in our day.

I looked out of the window again. It had stopped raining. I knew it was impossible to concentrate, to keep my mind on either
reading, writing, or watching television for more than a few seconds at a time. And it was hardly the calm moment I’d been
telling myself for months I needed to get back into meditation. I decided to take a walk in the park.

The noise and movement all around me helped. Rollerblades, running shoes, kids in strollers, ice-cream sellers, shrieks and
laughter, deafening blasts of clashing music battling for air space—the whole cacophony created a welcome numbness in my brain.
I looked without seeing and heard without listening. Somewhere at the back of my mind the worm of rationalization stirred
and began whispering its poisonous balm into my inner ear. Sara didn’t mean it. She would come to her senses. It was just
a temporary fling, a renewal of an old passion that would burn itself out as it had last time. And as for that absurd letter,
whoever typed it had simply made a mistake. It would all be sorted out on Monday with apologies and red faces all around.

I was walking north, and the Saturday morning crowds had thinned a little, the raucous music grown more distant. Back into
the growing silence came the tantalizing doubts and fears that I knew would drive me to distraction before the weekend was
through. Maybe the best thing I could do was call a friend and get some Prozac, or whatever the tranquilizer of choice was
these days. Maybe I could just sleep most of the weekend.

There was a bench in the corner of a winding, narrow path around which rocks and overhanging branches had created a kind of
grotto. It was unoccupied and welcoming, a secret oasis in a public place. I sat down, hunched forward, elbows resting on
my knees. I found myself playing with the three coins I’d used earlier to cast that last hexagram in the apartment. I realized
I’d come out with no other money, but it didn’t matter; there was nothing I needed to buy so urgently that I didn’t have time
to walk back to the apartment and collect my wallet—which is what I thought I probably would do, then go to a movie. Anything
to occupy my brain and get me through the day.

I continued to play with the coins, absently shaking, turning, and tipping them from hand to hand, until one slipped through
my fingers and hit the ground with a sharp metallic clink. It landed on its edge and, before I could catch it, started to
roll down the path to my left, the path I had climbed a few minutes earlier. Another man was coming up now. He stopped the
coin with his foot, then bent to pick it up. He wore a soft felt hat and sunglasses. I thought there was something oddly familiar
about his face when he looked up at me. Then he removed his hat and sunglasses.

And I froze.

My first thought was that it was like looking in a mirror, except the image wasn’t reversed. Nor was it identical except in
the face and general build. He wore well-cut jeans and a good jacket in contrast to my sweater, old cords, and scuffed loafers.

Gradually I became aware that our confrontation came as no surprise to him. In fact he was watching my confusion with amusement,
even enjoying it. He took the last few steps up the path and stood before me, holding out the coin I had dropped. I accepted
it automatically without taking my eyes off his face.

“Who the hell are you?” I managed to demand, once I’d remembered to shut my mouth before trying to speak.

“I’m Larry Hart,” he said. “Hadn’t you guessed?”

I stared at him. I could think of nothing to say, yet everything I could think of was spinning through my mind.

“I know how you feel,” he said. “I’ve been watching you for the past ten minutes. It’s weird seeing yourself, isn’t it?”

“Where the hell did you come from?”

He smiled. “It’s a long story.”

I felt a sudden suspicion, and asked him, “Did you have anything to do with that letter I got this morning?”

He nodded with, I thought, a hint of apology. “It was rather infantile, I agree. But any way I sprang this thing on you was
going to be a shock. At least this way you had some warning.”

I toyed with a
variety
of nonconciliatory answers, but in the end let my indignation drop. It seemed a petty thing in the face of the discovery
I found myself on the verge of making.

“Why don’t you just tell me about this from wherever it starts?” I said.

H
e put his hat and sunglasses back on. As we walked, no one gave us a second glance. Whether it was his intention to disguise
himself I didn’t know and didn’t ask; I was, however, glad to be spared the idly curious stares that we might have otherwise
attracted as such obvious twins.

“The day before yesterday,” he said, “Thursday, I’m walking across town minding my own business, when suddenly I hear this
woman’s voice saying, ‘What a coincidence, Mr. Daly. I was just about to call you.’ Naturally I don’t pay any attention because
I’m not Mr. Daly, and whoever the woman was couldn’t possibly have been talking to me. Then I feel a hand on my arm, and I
stop and turn. And I find myself looking at this very attractive young woman. Darkish blonde hair, smart business suit, kind
of sparkly eyes, and this big mouth. I’ve always gone for women with big mouths. I’m not trying to be crude, but it’s a fact.
They turn me on.

“Anyway, I must have been looking kind of blank or something, because she says, like she’s jogging my memory, ‘Nadia Shelley.
From the agency. Last week. You remember me?’

“Now, I have never seen this girl in my life before, but I am not about to let an opportunity like this go to waste. But I
swear I only meant to play her along for a little while, then make some joke and let her off the hook. Naturally, I thought,
who knows, maybe I’ll get her phone number and we’ll have a date some time. So we carry on walking, and she’s saying, ‘I was
going to call you and ask you to come to the office, but if you have time you could step up right now. As you know, we’re
just around the corner.’

“So now I’m wondering, Is this a pick-up or some kind of a scam? Looking at her, it’s hard to believe, so I look at my watch
and say something vague about maybe having a couple of minutes. She gives a big smile. Oh, that mouth!

“I’m letting her lead the way. We turn a corner, catch a light, and cross the street. As though just making conversation,
but in reality trying to find out something of what’s going on here, I say, ‘And what exactly was it you were going to call
me about, Miss Shelley?’

“She looks at me, kind of surprised, and says, ‘About that inquiry you hired us to undertake, Mr. Daly. Tracing that English
couple, those actors you were interested in—Jeffrey Hart and Lauren Paige.’

“I don’t know what kind of expression was on my face at that moment, because she frowned and said, ‘You know, I believe you
really
didn ‘t
recognize me just now, did you? You were just being polite.’

“’No, I recognized you,’ I said quickly. I didn’t want to blow it now. ‘Of course I did. It’s just that my mind was elsewhere,
that’s all.’

“She flashed me that big smile again. But this time it didn’t do anything for me. Because suddenly my thoughts really
were
somewhere else.

“The two names she’d just mentioned—Jeffrey Hart and Lauren Paige—were my parents.”

The way Larry told the story, I knew I would have done the same thing he did at that point. I would have jettisoned all my
good intentions about letting Nadia Shelley off the hook and telling her she had made a mistake. Just as Larry did, I would
have followed her into the respectable-looking suite of offices, I would have met the same junior partner whom I, George,
had spoken with the previous week, and I would have continued to let him labor under the misapprehension that he knew me.
I would have wanted, just as Larry did, to learn everything I possibly could about this Alice-in-Wonderland situation that
I seemed to have stumbled into.

Larry listened. He hoped that the other two in the room with him, Nadia Shelley and the junior partner, would take his stunned
silence for interest and would not ask any questions or expect him to comment just yet. He was not ready to speak for the
moment. He just checked every fact as it emerged against his memory. There was an absolute correspondence every time.

Why were these people telling him the story of his life? He listened to the familiar and painful story of how his parents’
lives had gone from the glamour of their early success in the West End theater, when they had briefly been stars and their
future looked assured, to the dismal end they had both endured. The sixties had wiped out their style of acting, singing,
and dancing at a stroke. Everything they were and did was suddenly old hat. Overnight they were has-beens. They struggled
on as long as they could, with provincial tours and summer seasons around the country, but they were relics of the past in
the age of the Beatles and actors who looked and talked more like construction workers than matinee idols.

First they had gone bankrupt, then in 1974 they had divorced. Jeffrey had enjoyed a brief Indian summer hosting an afternoon
game show on television, but Lauren (“Larry”) was already in and out of clinics with a drinking problem that she seemed unable
to master, and probably didn’t want to. She had died in 1978.

Jeffrey, despite his brief popularity on television, had fared little better. By the mid-seventies he was terminally out of
work, and in 1984, six years after his ex-wife’s death, he had gassed himself in the tiny apartment he was renting in south
London.

Then Larry heard the words he had been waiting for, wondering if he was going to react. There had been a son. Laurence Jeffrey
Hart. Larry.

He sat there listening to the junior partner speak of him as an abstraction, a name to which no face or physical reality was
attached. He heard how he’d been born in 1960, a late child who must have seemed like the crowning happiness in the lives
of his, at that time, still famous and successful parents.

Jeffrey had seen photographs of his early childhood, though he remembered little of it. His parents had weathered Elvis and
rock and roll by that time, which had instilled in them a false and very unfortunate confidence about the future; after all,
there had still been an audience throughout the fifties for what they had to offer, so why wouldn’t there always be one? They
had lived to regret the money squandered on fashionable living, the rented house in Mayfair, the nanny and the cook, the Rolls-Royce
and uniformed chauffeur. It had been a hard lesson, all the harder because too late.

The first surroundings of which the young Larry was really aware were a series of theatrical “digs” that his parents lived
in while touring old West End hits around the provinces. It was not a glamorous life, and his mother’s drinking habit was
beginning to make itself felt. She was still a lively and often flirtatious drunk, but the hangovers were getting worse.