Shadow Traffic

by Richard Burgin

  “Why? What does that mean?”

  “Because that made my failures real, too.”

  “Don’t talk that way. Is this your door?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “Don’t worry. I have my cell phone with me if anything’s wrong.”

  Your phone won’t work here, he thought.

  “Give me your key. I’ll open it.”

  He handed the keys to her thinking he’d just given her the key to hell.

  And then they entered his apartment as easily as if entering a smooth pool of water. Immediately he could feel the heat and smell the bitterness in the air, which seemed to have grown still stronger. She turned on the kitchen light and gasped, then tried to muffle it, hand to her mouth. They each took a step forward and stopped. The air was coiling like water stirred by wind, and though it was invisible, there was an unmistakable sense of movement around them.

  “Oh my god,” she whispered. She looked like she’d been electrocuted, eyes rolled back in their sockets for a second like Little Orphan Annie’s. Then they both looked at the door behind them, which was shut.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but she wasn’t listening, had instead begun talking out loud more to herself than to him.

  “This is worse than what I saw before, this is worse. I shouldn’t have come here, I wasn’t supposed to and now I’ve ruined myself at the society, now I’ll never get married.”

  “Why? What?”

  “I broke my pledge, don’t you see? I’ll have to confess it.”

  “What should I do?” he said. “What can I do?”

  “Go to a hotel. Don’t come back here, it’s too late.”

  He decided not to tell her about the Holiday Inn where he was already staying.

  Then she started dialing her cell phone. “Archie, is that you?” she said. “Can you come here right away? I’m in trouble. I have an injustice to confess. I’m so ashamed and scared. Please come here as soon as you can. I’m with member Mason.”

  A moment later she asked him for his exact address, so she could give it to Archie.

  “He’s coming. Archie’s coming to save us. I wouldn’t touch anything if I were you—it’s probably all infected.”

  “No, I won’t,” he said.

  “Archie said to inhale as little as possible and not to move until he knocks.”

  He nodded, wondering if he would throw up from the air and everything else that was making him sick. Then they waited without moving, like statues.

  “When is he coming?” he finally asked, feeling like a child, and wondering if he’d just spoken in a child’s voice.

  “He’s just a few minutes away. Be strong,” she said, but he could hear her crying softly, like a muted violin, then wondered with a shudder if it was really hell that created that image in his mind.

  The knocking came in triplicate, reverberating like drumbeats. The two of them came unfrozen and ran to the door, which opened quite easily despite his fears that it wouldn’t.

  In the hallway she fell into Archie’s arms, sobbing. He held her while staring bullets at him.

  “I’ve committed an injustice, please forgive me. I only meant to help him.”

  “We’ll discuss it,” Archie said tersely.

  “Please don’t tell the Founder, please.”

  “You know I’ll have to.”

  “But he’ll expel me, he’ll …”

  “We’ll discuss it later,” he said firmly, separating himself from her so he could look her in the face. Then he turned his gaze on Mason.

  “You,” he said, pointing a finger at him. “In the name of the Founder, I hereby expel you from the Global Justice Society forever.”

  Then, grabbing her hand, they walked briskly, almost running to the front door, which roared like thunder as it shut behind them.

  He stood still, staring at the outside door after it shut behind them. Or rather, he stood in place but was shaking as if the hell winds of his apartment were still blowing through him. He realized he was stunned by the suddenness of their disappearance even more than by hell’s sudden invasion of his home. It’s as if the door murdered Julia, just as a different door brought her into my life, he thought. Was hell just a variation or subset of time? Then he began shaking more, and his teeth also started chattering, as if determined to play their part in the sickening symphony his body was playing in spite of his efforts to stop it.

  “This is the end of reality,” he thought, as he ran toward the door. Yet it opened as if only too eager to let him escape into the streets. “Taxi,” he started yelling, “taxi,” already yearning for his hotel.

  He was sitting in the bathtub with only the hotel’s bed-table light on. It was like dusk. He felt he’d been in the tub a long time but really he didn’t know how much time had passed. Tomorrow he would look for a new apartment and buy a new computer, too. Some new clothes also, he supposed. Certainly he wouldn’t miss his old place. Without a woman in it all that time it had already been like hell long before hell took it over.

  He shut his eyes. He didn’t want to think but it was hard to stop. He saw an image of Julia’s face, which quickly disappeared, then an image of his father, which stayed. It was just a picture of his father’s face smiling at him when he was a child. Hell hadn’t destroyed that, at least. Yes, that was a kind of justice, he thought. That and this good hotel bath water.

  The Interview

  The jeans were a disaster—a failure on every level. Not sexy enough, not classy enough, too preppy, like something from a different era. What was she thinking to even consider them for the interview? Her mind had been off lately, she knew that, as if it were taking delight in sabotaging her with one trap after another. Even this morning, just after Eric left, she found herself thinking about the farm in Chester Springs, jumping from the tractor that she used to climb every day as a little girl and landing in the hay below, then laughing after she landed when she looked around her—suddenly surrounded by a yellow world.

  And then, no sooner remembered, than the guilt for remembering it. It was a Pennsylvania memory, and Eric didn’t want her to remember Pennsylvania. He’d bristled when she’d first told him about it—pretended he didn’t but really did—which was so often his way. She was supposed to be from the South just like him, the self-styled “cowboy director,” was supposed to be from Arizona though he really grew up in New Jersey. It would hurt both of them if that came out, not just her, but both of them, he’d said, staring hard at her when he first told her, as if he were her father catching his little girl in a lie. It was like acting, Eric said. Once you accepted the part you had to live it completely. If you started remembering things that didn’t match up with the part, the next thing you knew you’d be talking about them and then you’d betray the character and lose the role. She had nodded and agreed. Who was she to disagree with Eric West, the great director, when he talked about acting? But what she wondered was, if you weren’t allowed to remember yourself, who were you? Maybe that was why she wanted a baby so much, to have something she could remember that would be real.

  She was doing it again—giving in to the bad thoughts that these days were always just a second away. She opened her closet in search of the right jeans and felt like she was entering a forest. It was obscene to have a closet this big, the way people were living all around the world. But even the most socially activist stars lived like royalty, every single one of them from Angelina on down. Who was she, to think that if she ever became one and had her own money that she’d live any differently? It was just another self-sabotaging fantasy, she supposed.

  She began thinking about her conversation with Jaime two nights ago at Lillian’s party. He was obviously an intelligent guy, kind of attractive, too, in a non-Hollywood way. Of course she assumed it was Eric he wanted to interview. Why wouldn’t she assume that? When they met people, journalists or otherwise, they stared at her breasts for a few seconds, then turned toward Eric and quickly told him how much they loved his movi
es and proceeded to ignore her for the rest of the night, treating her more like a poster than a person.

  Ah, these were better, she thought, taking a new pair of jeans with her as she emerged from her closet, then throwing them on the bed next to her prospective shirt. Sky blue jeans and a pink shirt. Was it too cute a look? Too “Barbie?” She caught a glimpse of herself in the wall-length mirror and held her stomach in. She ate too much last night when Woody was over. She was nervous around him (she thought even Eric was a little wired), and when she was nervous she ate too much, drank too much, too. Who wouldn’t be nervous around Woody Allen? She’d kill to be in one of his movies. And now, as if it were a punishment for the dinner, she could see the results in her stomach. Stomachs were like cancer, when you thought about it. They only got worse with time. Almost everyone had one when they died, too, no matter how hard they’d tried to get rid of it. If that was your fate in life, your stomach fate, why not get one from having a baby? Even Eric had laughed when she tried that line on him. “You gotta do comedy, babe, you gotta. You’re a really funny broad,” he’d said, tapping her on the bottom, while avoiding what she wanted to talk about once again. Still, maybe she really was funny. Eric told her a funny woman with a hot body was “a million-dollar combination.” “Look at Pamela Anderson,” he’d said. “Think how much she’s made. You look hotter than her, and you’re younger too. You could be the next Pam, if you let me market you that way.”

  She loved Eric when he talked like that, as if he really believed in her. It didn’t happen often but when it did it was sweet. Jaime thought she was funny too. She remembered how hard he’d laughed at one of her jokes at Lillian’s. She was telling him how she hooked up with Eric and Jaime was encouraging her, as if it fascinated him. A lot of those journalists, especially the younger ones, were still in awe of movie stars, even a very minor one like her.

  “I was just a bit player in one of his movies,” she’d said to Jaime. “I think I said ten words in the picture, but one day during rehearsal our eyes met in a special way and he invited me to dinner that night and then boom, we just clicked.”

  “It was that way with me and my fiancée too,” Jaime had said.

  “So, yuh,” she’d continued, cutting him off, “I was crazy about him right from the start, but I also had a lot of hang-ups about dating a man who was so famous and, you know, older—a man who knew so much more about the world than I did.”

  “But your hang-ups all went away, obviously.”

  “Not completely,” she’d said, laughing as she finished her drink. “I mean, you see the nice tits,” she said, pointing to them for a second, “but behind them beats the heart of a hick.”

  Jaime had laughed then. It was a real laugh, too—he even spilled part of his drink, and she’d laughed as well, holding his wrist for a few seconds as if to steady him. So maybe there was something to this Pam Anderson idea, after all. Maybe there really was.

  There was less than an hour left and she still hadn’t done anything with her hair or makeup. He’d be right on time. A young guy like that with his own new magazine interviewing Eric West’s wife would definitely be on time. But she knew now that she needed a more classic look with her jeans and top if she wanted Jaime to take her seriously as an actress—which was the whole point of the interview, wasn’t it? He’d even agreed on using that angle on the phone, and flattered the hell out of her in the process. So maybe not show off her new breasts (Eric’s best present yet!), maybe not show any cleavage at all and that way make a statement. Of course, that’s what she should do, how could she not have realized it?

  She picked three new pairs of jeans from her closet (she was still ruling out a dress) and two new tops—one beige, one black, and began trying them on in front of her mirror. Sometimes everything in her life seemed like an audition. Even the first time she made love with Eric (the first few months actually) she felt she was auditioning to be his girlfriend and constantly worried if she was pleasing him enough. Of course, she did everything he wanted and acted as if she loved it all. What choice did she have? There were a million girls in Hollywood who would trade places with her, who would pay her a lot to trade places. It was a fluke, a one in a million chance for a hick like her from a little farm town in Pennsylvania to even get to be mentioned in a gossip column with Eric West, much less marry him. So all the things she did (even though some of them really hurt) were well worth it. His cheating was harder to take, of course, but it was still all worth it, she’d be a meaningless speck without him. And, besides, she’d gotten him back for his cheating more than once, and though she worried about it, it made her feel like she wasn’t such a dupe after all, and that was a good kind of feeling.

  She had to start her make up. The make up and hair issues had to be addressed now. After all, Jaime already knew what she looked like dressed up. Her yellow dress had been a hit at Lillian’s, and he must have liked the way she looked to want to interview her that quickly and to promise her a cover too. She wondered how much money he had, then, and whether the magazine had its own money or was largely his.

  It always happened when she was about to meet someone important. She’d suddenly have to go to the bathroom, which was where she was now. Was Jaime important? Her body obviously thought so even though his magazine hadn’t even come out yet. She should have asked him what kind of distribution deal he had. If it wasn’t at least a million copies it wasn’t worth it, that’s what Eric always said.

  Maybe she should have told Eric about the interview. A man was coming to his home to interview his wife. He probably should have been told. Besides, she could have used his advice in general and about her clothes in particular. But he said he had meetings all day long and a lot of things on his mind, and she also wanted the satisfaction of handling something as essentially simple as this, by herself.

  She got up from the toilet. The cramps were stronger now so she swallowed more Mylanta. Then she sat down again, and in the intervals between her intermittent pain began reviewing Jaime’s phone call this morning. It started with his asking very modestly if she remembered him from Lillian’s the other night.

  “Of course I remember youuu …” she’s said, extending the “u” to a comical degree and then letting him hear her trademark giggle. “We sat next to each other at Lillian’s and had that fascinating talk about babies and then about art and immortality. ‘Art is the last illusion,’ you said, right?”

  “Right,” he said, laughing a little himself.

  “See how well I remember? I’m not as dumb as they make me look in the movies.”

  “Of course not, I’m very impressed.”

  “You’re the publisher of a magazine, too, that’s just about to debut, a film magazine.”

  “You’ve got a fantastic memory,” he said. “That’s actually one of the reasons I called you, though I didn’t really expect to get you on the phone.”

  “Why wouldn’t you get me? I gave you my number, darling, who else would answer my phone?”

  “I thought your secretary or someone like that.”

  “Eric and me always travel alone when we come to New York. We like to keep it simple. That’s why we never have any help staying with us in our New York apartment. That’s a no-no. Otherwise they end up selling stories to the tabloids.”

  “I see your point. Well, I certainly won’t do that.”

  “Oh no, of course not. You’re going to write a novel, I remember that too. I know what a great intellectual you are.”

  He seemed stunned by her compliment for a moment but managed to say thank you. She had a habit of overcomplimenting people, even by Hollywood standards, and Eric had told her to work on it, so why did she keep doing it?

  “I was hoping, though I know it’s a long shot, to try to schedule an interview,” he said.

  “I’m sure that’d be cool,” she said, cutting him off. “But Eric’s in meetings all day today, and tomorrow we’re off to L.A.”

  “No, no, I was calling about intervie
wing you.”

  “Me? Really?” She really was surprised, shocked even.

  “Yes, I thought I told you that at Lillian’s. Of course I’d be deeply honored to interview Eric West at some point, who wouldn’t, but I wanted to interview you as an example of a terrific young actress and rising star. I think your story would fascinate our readers.”

  “Wow, I’m really flattered. I don’t know that I have that much to say. My career’s been pretty much just showing off my body so far. You could blink and miss the acting I’ve done.”

  “I’m sure you have lots to say,” he’d said, polite as ever.

  “Well, I do have a few free hours early this afternoon. What would we do about pictures?”

  “I can send a photographer the next time you’re in the City or fly one out to L.A. at your convenience.”

  “OK, I’m starting to like this, Jaime.”

  Then he’d suggested a number of restaurants for the interview, but she’d said she didn’t want to risk dealing with the paparazzi.

  “Eric pretends not to care, but it really pisses him off when these lies about us come out in the sleaze rags.”

  “Of course,” he’d said. “Who wouldn’t be angry?”

  “And let’s face it, because he’s so famous and also, well, an older man, although he’s the youngest man I know in energy and spirit, they pounce on me every time I’m spotted with someone around your age and write these awful stories about my cheating on Eric, which just about tears my heart in two.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “So if it’s OK with you I’d rather do it right here in my apartment, so long as you promise not to take any pictures of me I don’t approve.”

  “Of course not. I won’t take any pictures at all during the interview. What about a tape recorder? Would you like me to tape it or not?”

  “Yah, I think I’d rather you tape it. I’m not exactly the world’s best speaker and sometimes I blurt out things I wish I hadn’t and then Eric gets upset. So if you tape it and type it up and promise to send me a copy, I can read what I said and get a chance to edit out the stupid parts, which will probably be about half of it,” she’d said, laughing, and he laughed too.