Reunion by Proxy

I SAW him over the heads of the crowd coming toward me on the Avenue. He was about my height and could see me the same way. He looked vaguely like someone I used to know, but it was n’t until I saw recognition in his eyes that I tried to think of his name.

We were shaking hands cordially a moment later. I had prefaced my greeting, while he was still at some distance, with an ejaculation like ‘Pranhnn! ’ — which, in the confusion of our meeting, could have sounded like the slurring of many different names.

‘What have you been doing since I saw you last?’ I asked, and let him tell me. I listened enough to nod at the right places, but mentally I was running through the alphabet, pausing a second at each letter to see if it conjured a picture of his name. It did n’t work.

He was still talking, so I went through the alphabet again, differently. I said the letters very rapidly and without consideration, hoping that my subconscious mind would make a selection.

It made two: R and S. They sounded equally promising as the letters his name should begin with.

‘And what the dickens have you been doing?’ he asked me at that moment.

‘Not a thing,’ I said. ‘The usual things, that is.’ I paused, then hazarded, ’I never see you around town any more.’

He made a gesture of disgust. ‘I got fed up with that. I was wasting a lot of money and not getting any fun out of it.’

While he told me how it was possible to waste money amusingly — living in the suburbs was the answer — I resumed my research by putting the letter A after the inspired R and trying every letter of the alphabet as a third. Somehow I only came to the surface with Rafferty and Rabinowitz, and I knew they were n’t right. I abandoned the R’s and was just going to work on the S’s when I caught his eye.

‘And you?‘ he was saying.

‘Oh, me?’ I said quickly. ‘Er — you knew I was married?’

‘No! That’s swell! Who to? Do I know her?’

Under the circumstances I had no idea whether he did or not, so I told him my wife’s maiden name. He shook his head.

‘Are you married, by the way?’ I asked. It was a good question, because he went on to tell me about his wife and her rich aunt in Harrisburg who was pretty sick. At another time I might have thought him wordy, but it was a godsend at the moment.

‘Forget his name for a minute,’ I told myself calmly. ‘Where did you know him?’ I ticked off the more inclusive groupings swiftly: College, Camp Kinnimacuk, Wall Street, and the National Guard. None of them clicked, offhand.

Then he stopped talking, and for the first time I began to get panicky. I realized later that if I had n’t been so harried I should have seen that he was n’t completely at ease himself.

Neither of us seemed to be able to think of another topic for conversation, so we just stood there for a few seconds and grinned at each other.

He laughed suddenly and slapped my shoulder. ‘Don’t get sore,’ he said, ‘but all the time I’ve been talking I’ve been fishing for your first name. I did n’t want to call you plain Coggeshall.’

I stared at him. ‘Call me — what?’

His grin became a little strained. ‘It was “Butch” we used to call you at St. Elmo’s, was n’t it?’

‘I’m not “Butch” Coggeshall,’ I said after a moment. ‘And I’m afraid I never went to St. Elmo’s.’

It was pretty unpleasant to watch him blush. ‘I can see now where I made the mistake,’he admitted. ‘Well—’ He stopped. ‘Pardon me,’ he said very slowly, ‘if you’re not Coggeshall and we’ve never met before — well, just who the heck did you think I was?’

‘That’s my problem. I not only don’t know who you are, but I can’t even recall who I thought you were’ I did n’t mean it quite the way he took it. ‘Of course you’re someone,’I apologized swiftly.

He did n’t swing at me. Instead he made a strangling sound in the back of his throat and struggled for a moment to translate it into words. Failing, he turned abruptly and walked away from me.

I did n’t have time to resent it. As he pivoted, I was aware that I had almost thought of the name he should have had. When I was n’t trying at all, it sneaked up on me. I started to say it and it slid back into a blur of Scotts and Seeleys.

I walked over to a drug-store window and concentrated on a coffee percolator. I knew one thing: the name I sought, beyond any quibble of a doubt, began with an S. Its owner had been a counselor at Kinnimacuk.

After a while, staring at a set of Dickens, I got it. The name was Smith, as a matter of fact.

The more I thought about the whole thing, the sorer I got at the fellow who looked like Smith.