Man in the Empty Suit

by Sean Ferrell

  She turned, naked except for underwear, to retrieve her clothes and found Joshua standing in a gap between the wall and the white sheet. He smiled at her. He’d changed into a pair of jeans and a dark shirt, his hair falling across his eye. He looked older, but no more comfortable. Sara didn’t know where he might look comfortable, wondered if such a place existed. He stared at her body, her face.

  “Sorry, sis, couldn’t help myself.” He laughed. She told herself later that she had been too shocked to cover herself. That her standing before him unashamed had been an accident.

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Is where I’m coming from.”

  She reached for her own clothes and began to dress. He pulled the sheet between them. Through it she could still see his shape and knew he could still see hers. She worked her shirt over her head. Eventually she heard his footfalls cross the room and become distant in the hall.

  When she finished dressing, she returned to the dining room. Mana and Joshua were arguing as she counted out money.

  “You’re going too far,” she said. “He’s going to end this, and that will be that. Good-bye paycheck.”

  Joshua recounted the money he had just seen her count and stuffed it, folded in half, into his back pocket. “The old man needs this too bad. Not gonna end it just ’cause I go off script a little.”

  Mana shook her head, noticed Sara in the doorway. Her face softened to a smile, and she came toward her, arms outstretched for a hug that Sara returned, surprised that she craved it.

  “You did wonderful,” Mana said. “Next time try to keep him from taking Phil’s focus.” An accusatory thumb in Joshua’s direction. “Maybe between the two of us, we can keep him here and make sure Joshua doesn’t ruin it.” She leaned in close and whispered into Sara’s ear. “Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s been trying to sabotage this since before I started doing it.”

  Joshua, already on his way out, called over his shoulder, “You can talk about me when I’m gone. If anyone is interested, I’ll be in the bar at the corner.” His heavy footfalls were oddly reminiscent of Phil’s.

  Mana threw her cigarette out a window and said, “Seriously, don’t even talk to him. He’ll try to get you kicked out or make you want to quit. It’s what he does to the Saras.”

  Sara nodded and followed Mana to the door. As they descended the stairs, Mana paused at one of the landings. “Also, sometimes when you come here, you’ll find other apartments open. Never go in them. Just shut the door and go upstairs.”

  Sara looked up and down the stairs. There were no sounds except for her and Mana’s shoes on the steps. “Who lives in them?”

  “No one. Phil has things he’s sure will be stolen. If he finds doors open, he’ll question you, and sometimes he gets paranoid about new actors stealing from him.”

  Sara nodded, as if this could be normal.

  The next two weeks included three performances. Sara was always paid afterward, and always by Mana. The three subsequent dinners were better than the first. Joshua kept to the script and nearly made himself look interested in playing the part of a bored teenager. He occasionally broke to stare at Sara or wink as if they shared a secret. She was careful not to react the first few times. She later found that complaining loudly that he was making faces across the table was better; Phil and Mana could reprimand him for childish behavior, and everyone could pretend he hadn’t broken character.

  “Pretty clever, aren’t you?” he said after the fourth performance. They’d eaten their meal at half past ten in the morning. It was only noon now, and Sara had the rest of the day and her money to do something with.

  She said, “If I don’t react, you get what you want.” She was no longer intimidated. She looked him in the eye until he looked away. She noticed and enjoyed the flush in his cheeks.

  “What I want is a drink. How about it? The bar at the corner?”

  She pulled the sheet between them and returned to her own clothes. He walked away on the other side. He hadn’t tried since the first day to look at her as she changed. She was always acutely aware of where he was and always let him finish dressing before she did and leave first.

  She’d collected her money and was on her way out, the sound of her steps bouncing around her in the stairwell, when Phil’s voice stopped her. The door on the second-floor landing was ajar. He was crying between words, and she couldn’t understand anything but her name, repeated. “Sara,” he said over and over again. She stood beside the door and peered inside. Phil’s lanky figure moved through a room stacked to the ceiling with junk, boxes crushing one another, broken machinery and tools piled in the corner, bundles of papers and magazines mildewed and black, plastic bags spilling old clothes onto the floor, muting Phil’s footsteps as he shuffled through the room. “Sara, Sara, Sara.”

  She left the building, her own chest heaving. The noontime sunlight blinded her. How would she escape that name she’d been given, the sound of Phil’s voice in such horror and pain? Near tears, she looked around and found herself beside Joshua’s brown-fronted bar. Through the open door, she saw figures on barstools hold drinks to lips and ignore one another in the dim light. No music, no conversation. She stepped to the doorway and waited for her eyes to adjust.

  Before they had, Joshua called to her: “Hey.” She followed his voice into the bar.

  “I changed my mind,” she said. “I could use a drink.”

  “Know just what you mean.”

  They sat in the bar and drank until the bartender told them to go. Joshua’s arm wrapped around her, his hand moving to places she normally would have protected from even his eyes. She let him steer her downtown, a long, hot walk past Bryant Park and then continuing down Sixth Avenue. They stopped at a bodega for some water. She sobered as they walked, her sweat making her shirt heavy. From the park rose the call of parrots, half-meaningful words squawked into crowds that tossed seeds and dried bread. She wasn’t certain she didn’t hear them crying “Sara” in anguish.

  Sara followed Joshua to his apartment, a walkup trapped between two taller buildings. Joshua climbed the three flights without looking or speaking to her. She wondered if he’d forgotten she followed. The halls were dark. No sounds came from the other doors.

  At last he said, “The lights have been iffy.” She asked if the building was abandoned. “Not yet,” he said with a laugh. As he opened the door to his apartment, some streetlight spilled through and caught the side of his sweat-shined face. Sara reached out and touched his waist, searched the gap between his shirt and jeans to put her hands against the skin of his chest. His ribs stuck out as if he were underfed, and she thought how she had never seen him undressed, only hidden in the too-large school uniform. In the dark she sought out his mouth with her own. As he bent to kiss her, his nose caught the light and his profile for an instant was that of a great bird. She felt at his back, certain that in a moment she would find nude wings branching out from his shoulder blades, that his arms were an illusion.

  His bed was a mattress. It sat on the floor beneath a window that was both open and uncovered. The light that came through did little to reveal his home, or him. She felt herself wrapped around him, but she couldn’t see him. Her hands slid over the bones of his ribs, his shoulders, his arms. He was too light and frail, she thought. When he came, she thought he might disappear, as if he weren’t really there at all but only a memory of someone who used to be there in that space, someone who had vanished long ago.

  She woke the next day to find him gone. His apartment was a nest of filth with no furniture, a table of cinder-block legs and a wood-plank top beside the mattress. Clothes covered the floor from doorway to mattress. Behind a blanket curtaining an open closet was a shelf of neatly folded clothes, copies of the same outfit Joshua always wore—jeans and tees, in only two colors, repeated often enough to reduce laundry to an idea.

  Her phone vibrated, and she answered it on the fifth ring. Mana’s voice at the other end. “I was afraid you wouldn’t
answer. Get here as soon as possible.”

  “Already?” Sara searched for a clock in the room. Her head called out every movement as if piano strings rang taut through her skull. She closed her eyes against a splash of nausea and held the floor down with her free hand.

  Mana was insistent. “Get here. Right now.”

  She pulled on last night’s clothes. They smelled of spilled drinks and sweat, and she thought with some relief that the school uniform she wore for Phil would be cleaner, possibly even laundered. She made her way north in a bicycle-driven hansom cab, her eyes closed, listening to the birds in the park. She arrived at Phil’s building nearly asleep.

  Inside, Mana waited in the lobby. “He’s upset. The power is out, and he can’t get anyone at the diner.” The diner around the corner supplied the food they ate during their performances. Sara had never seen the deliveries but had seen the bags in the garbage.

  “Has anyone gone around to put the order in?”

  Mana shuffled a damp tissue from one hand to the other. “No. I wanted to make sure you both made it here.”

  Sara walked the two blocks to find the diner’s windows dark, a handwritten note on the front door: “Out of business. Thanks for thirty-nine wonderful years.”

  Sara stood in front of the diner for a minute. All the neighborhood buildings were dark, some long vacant. Storefront windows with signs advertising hardware, books, and pet supplies were covered with newspaper. The few buildings that showed life were vagrant tenements or hooker-friendly hotels.

  Sara returned to the apartment, where she heard a mechanical hum. Mana stood in the living room smoking, and Phil and Joshua sat in the dining room. Joshua wouldn’t look Sara in the eye. His bravado was gone, flown away in the night. She heard his heartbeat across the room, high-pitched and fluttering, a fearful animal in a cage, dreaming and dreading escape. Phil’s face hung between his hands, his mouth open. The droning mechanical sound came from him.

  Sara said, “The restaurant is closed.”

  Phil’s moan peaked and stopped. He dropped his hands and stood up, blind to everyone else, and turned toward the bedroom, away from the actors he’d gathered as a family.

  Sara went to the nearest window and looked down onto the street. Traffic lights at the nearest corner were all dark, the street empty. At last a car approached, a yellow cab. It slowed but didn’t stop, turned the corner, and drove the wrong way up the street.

  She pulled her face from the pane. Beside her, Mana puffed on her cigarette and stared at the wall. Joshua concentrated on his hands. Sara walked past them, followed Phil down the hall. She passed the changing room. The sheets gusted around the open window, swinging over the floor, twisted on themselves. She stood outside the third bedroom and listened through the door. When she felt his sobs through the crystal knob, she almost let go and left the apartment. She knew in that instant that if she did, she would never come back.

  She opened the door. Stacks of books and unopened reams of papers sat on a table, along the walls, beneath the windows. Here, as in the downstairs apartment where she’d found him wandering, there were boxes piled high enough to crush themselves. Phil sat at the table, papers spread out before him, copious notes in a cramped, neurotic hand. The breeze created by the door blew pages onto the floor. Phil’s frame rocked with heavy sobs. His gray beard was beaded with tears.

  She said, “We’d really like you to come out and see us.”

  His sobs continued. He made no move to betray whether he’d heard her. She stood in the doorway and held the knob, vaguely aware of an unexpected fear of falling out the open window, of hurtling toward the crumbling city. Behind her, Joshua and Mana talked in muted voices, wondering what she was doing and why, what they should do. She ignored them and tried again.

  “I really needed to tell you about—” She stopped, unsure of what to say, what lie to promise him without the food and Mana and Joshua. She understood that they couldn’t be counted on, that their ability to play roles depended on props and the promise of money. Their being there, playing at family, even a dysfunctional one, was a deception. It was morbidly funny, she thought, that the liar in each of them had found comfort not only in the paycheck but in one another, chewing on terrible food they pretended was edible, a liars’ banquet. She ached for the lie, and for the security the lie provided. They can have the money, she thought. I need the lie.

  She said, “Listen, I know that Mom wasn’t able to make dinner tonight, but I’d still like to sit down with you and talk. We can talk without eating, right?”

  He still didn’t face her, but his crying softened. She pulled the door closed again, slowly shut herself out of the room, left Phil on the other side of the door, and returned to the dining room, where Mana and Joshua regarded her with suspicion.

  “Is he coming out?” Mana asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I heard you blame me for the lack of food.”

  Sara stared at her. She whispered that it was part of the role, that circumstances demanded the improvisation, but Mana didn’t care. Sara took her glare in silence. The room was hot despite open windows. She sat at the table, mentally followed a sweat trail from her temples to her cheek and neck, watched the birds through the windows. Joshua had retreated to the other room. She understood now why Mana had warned her about him. But she was beyond his games. Beyond Mana’s as well.

  An hour later Phil returned to the dining room. The sun had moved on. It was darker without direct light, yet no cooler. He regarded the three actors, his liars’ gathering. He took his seat at the head of the table. His hands shook as he looked at Sara. “So you wanted to tell me about something?”

  Sara smiled. She was exhausted. Her stomach was empty, and the headache she’d brought with her had snaked down her back and left her sore and stiff. Her mouth was dry, and it was hard to work the words out. “Yes,” she lied. “I need to get your permission to join an after-school club.”

  Mana moaned. “Oh, God.” She lit another cigarette.

  Phil ignored her. “After-school club? What sort of club?”

  Sara’s mind turned over. “Theater arts.”

  Mana waved a hand, her cigarette drawing signals in the air. “Hold on. Before we go much further with this, what are we going to do about food? And will we still be paid the normal rate?”

  Phil’s eyes darkened. He pointed toward the front door. “Go. I’ll send your money.”

  Mana looked as if she’d been struck. Her head snapped back, and she exhaled a long, stale breath, smoke wisps at the tail end. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Go, before I throw you out.”

  Mana glared at each of them in turn, letting her eyes linger on Sara. Sara tried not to look back but couldn’t help herself and met Mana’s gaze. Mana gave a half smile. Her eyes had started to water. “I got you this fucking gig, street tramp.”

  Phil stood and lifted a fist above his head. As tall and thin as he was, his raised fist and voice cracking in anger made Mana step back as he shouted, “Don’t you ever talk to her like that.”

  He had not said “my daughter” but might as well have; everyone in the room heard it in the echo.

  Mana stumbled across the living room. When they knew she was gone, Joshua went to the front door and shut it, returned to the table and sat. Phil watched the wall for a minute, then turned back to Sara, tears on his face, and said, “So an after-school club?”

  They talked in circles for hours until Phil finally tired of the new game and went to bed. Through the door they could hear him talking to himself and drinking. He cried out at odd times, names Sara didn’t know. Joshua sat quietly with her after Phil left the room. Hours later, when Phil was silent and probably sleeping, they watched each other from opposite sides of the room.

  She said, “I’m not going anywhere.” She had meant in the long term, that she would keep coming back to Phil, that Joshua’s attempt to make her feel uncomfortable had failed, but Joshua thought she meant that she woul
d not leave Phil’s apartment that evening, and so he left without her, without his money, without a word. After he’d gone, she realized that she had no reason to leave, that the Romanian couple waiting in their apartment for her money didn’t need her to return, that they could have what she’d left behind.

  In the changing room, she took down the sheets hanging from the ceiling and laid them on the floor, folded one over the other until she made a small, soft pad. After drinking her fill of tap water from the bathroom, she lay on her makeshift bed, and as the sun sank across the river, she watched the window darken to black.

  They went out the next day for food. Ten blocks away they found a deli and returned to Phil’s apartment with ham and cheese sandwiches, enough for a week. They placed them in the barely cool refrigerator. Sara complained of the lack of furniture, and Phil nodded. “We’ll go get some tonight. Okay? I’ll call Joshua.” She had begun to recognize when he was really there and when he was lost in his fantasy, when he saw her and not some other Sara.

  For the first few days of the new scenario, Joshua arrived when called. As it became obvious that the roles had stretched and changed, that conversations were more natural and rooted in reality, Joshua became superfluous. Some days Phil neglected to call Joshua at all, and soon a week had gone by without their seeing him. I may never see Joshua again, she thought. And then she thought of Joshua himself, realized he might never be Joshua again.

  But she was Sara.

  Once they settled into a routine, once the apartment was usefully cluttered with tables and chairs, clothes and a hand-cranked washer and decks of cards and candles to fill the evenings, she told Phil she must leave for a bit and would go for hours to window-shop or find the evening’s meals, to catch her breath, to escape the clutter of an apartment now exploding with collections grown beyond the confines of the lower apartments. She would return to find Phil passed out, his drinking having crawled from the solitude of his bedroom to the living room with her as witness. In his hand he clutched a strange metal device, silver, with tentacles and a needle. It disappeared during the day, hidden when he woke. She saw it only at night.