Shadow Traffic

by Richard Burgin

  “What do you mean, ‘what to do about it’?”

  “Don’t know if I have the right …”

  “The right to what?”

  “To live, I don’t know that.”

  I saw his face go extra white, like a field of snow.

  “Listen, you don’t want to kill me, do you? What would that accomplish? You know I had nothing to do with whatever you did, don’t you? Huh? Don’t you?”

  “I hit him in the cellar from behind with a shovel,” I said. “He used to beat me there when I was young, but this time I came back and hid and then hit him ’til he fell down and then I ran out and left him there by the clothesline.”

  “You said he fell down, didn’t you? Well, falling down isn’t dying, right?”

  “I know that. I heard that he didn’t die, just went to the hospital, but I think that’s a trick to draw me out. I think that he did die. That’s why I don’t know what to do.”

  “I didn’t hear of anything like that. You would have known if he died.”

  “How?”

  “You would have been arrested. That’s how you’d find out if someone died. Or, you would have heard it on TV. The TV would have told you what you did, or the Internet.”

  “How do you know?” I said, I was slowing down a little and I could see him getting encouraged.

  “That’s why they’re machines. They know these things. They don’t get emotional and make mistakes like people do.”

  I thought of my father chasing me around the house while I ran from him like a rabbit he was hunting. I thought of the sting of his belt on my bare back. His hot alcohol breath near me as he screamed. Then I pulled over and opened the door.

  “OK, you can get out.”

  He looked at me. He wanted to hit me with a shovel himself and then dig my grave. He was on my father’s side. I could tell but I let him go. He ran off the soft shoulder into the woods like a dog or a wolf/fox as the cars whizzed by. I saw the woods swallow him. Later, in the first house I went to, I wondered if I’d planned the whole thing, driving fast and blabbing about my father, so I could get it off my chest to someone—just so I could confess. I wouldn’t put it past me. Strange how we keep secrets from ourselves, like our mind is a house of endless rooms and the truth hides in just one of them.

  Of course I didn’t tell wolf/fox everything. Didn’t tell him about my apartment—dishes rattling, like they were out in a hurricane, glasses singing the way a choir of lunatics would, meanwhile the phone waiting for me, always waiting like an assassin. I knew Sun Cabs would fire me, on the phone, knew the passenger would call and that would be the last straw, and my apartment knew it too. No time to pack even, just time to find my way to some houses (according to my information just two were available in the area, including the one on Silver Place, where I broke the blue horse then buried it in the attic and where I’m still sitting, trying to sleep).

  My mother claimed she never slept. Said my father kept her from sleeping. There were a number of ways he could do that. I didn’t like thinking about any of them. Somehow my mother had transferred her inability to sleep to me. It hid at first in the house in my mind—maybe in the attic, maybe in the cellar (I couldn’t tell), until I got older and then it seeped into me. Yet sometimes I could sleep, even when I didn’t want to. It’s not as if our abilities are completely destroyed when we get older. They stay with us in diminished forms until we, ourselves, disappear.

  I remember playing hide-and-seek with my father when I was five. It’s become my first memory. I remember him laughing and hugging me when he found me. I remember his holding my hand when we went in the ocean—one of the very few family vacations we ever took, so long ago. I remember him helping me fly a kite on the sand dunes. A few years later he burned the kite one time when he was chasing me. Did it with his cigarette lighter, screaming like a billy goat at first then like a dog left out in the cold. I remember these things …

  Then I heard it—the door opening, like the sound of time ending. I came back to the present with a jolt. It was too late to run. Too late to even shift my weight. Since I could hear the sounds she was making I knew she could hear mine, if I made any.

  I heard a toilet flush. I heard her walking—probably on the linoleum floor in the kitchen. I thought I even heard her sigh. What would I do if she climbed to the top floor? No sooner thought than it happened—heard her climbing to the second floor, one floor below me. What would happen if she went to her living room and saw the blue horse missing? Would she scream? Call the police? What if she walked into the attic? What would I do then? Put up a struggle or give myself up? It’s the same question I always faced with my father whenever he was chasing me.

  Time goes in a circle, I said to myself, over and over as I heard her walking just a floor below me. The past never leaves us—only hides for a while until it reappears. The odd thing is, we cling to it as to our fathers, and even call it Father Time.

  How many deaths did I die awaiting my fate with him while I hid? And now I’m hiding again. My flesh ached but I was still afraid to even shift my weight. Like most intruders I’m a coward, or rather a coward who takes outrageous chances at times and then suffers.

  … I grew hungry, I kept imagining what food she had in her kitchen and then imagined feeding myself with it. I had to urinate too but held it in.

  It was hellish to stay so still. Like our planet, we’re meant to be in motion, I think. Maybe I’m an alien—the one the Internet is preparing people to meet. I’ve certainly behaved like one. My home had even banished me it seems. So why not just run for it?

  Still I waited like a nervous hornet guarding its nest, forcing itself not to fly ’til the dark finally came, when, holding my shoes and praying there were no alarms I didn’t know about, I finally snuck out into the night thinking, “I must move to another town, I must move on to other houses.”

  The Group

  It wasn’t until he’d finished coloring his hair that he realized he really was going to the group’s latest party. Throughout the afternoon, and for days before that, Summers had thought of various excuses he could make to Morton, who at this point hosted more parties per year than he wrote stories, yet he didn’t make the call. But why? Was he simply a glutton for punishment? Did he want to once more return to his apartment after the party feeling his mediocrity again confirmed in a public setting (though his career and overall life was no more mediocre than most of the group’s)? Perhaps it was a kind of programmed curiosity unconsciously motivating him. The fear that if he didn’t go, this would be the one party where something noteworthy would really happen, something along the lines of meeting a smart, successful literary agent who would take a sudden interest in him, ask him to send his few books, and eventually take him on and radically turn around his floundering career. Rationally he knew it wouldn’t happen, but apparently the irrational part of him was stronger. It was disappointing to have to once more realize this about himself, that he’d go to something like this party on a raw, rainy November night, having to take a cab from West Philly to Center City and then having to take another cab back when it was over (his soon to be ex-wife now had possession of their car), unless he could bring himself to ride back with someone from the group, probably Aaron—who would be self-promoting the whole ride or worse still, Lucas, the biggest, most self-deluded braggart in the group.

  What contempt he felt for the group, albeit mixed with pity, as he pictured them “networking” at their latest party. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and finished applying a few dabs of cologne, realizing that he also harbored the secret hope of meeting an appealing woman there as well—something even more unlikely than his agent fantasy.

  Another deep breath, followed by another closing and opening of his heavily lidded eyes. He felt calmer now. There was no point in thinking at all if he wasn’t going to be honest with himself, and to be honest he had to admit he also somewhat liked the group as well, or some of the members, though at the same time he found th
em unbearable, of course.

  There was Emir, who could be warm and witty, sometimes even generous in praising the work of his peers. But once he turned to the subject of his thwarted career he quickly became obnoxious. How he’d hold forth with his exasperating, elevated eyebrows, which always rose paternalistically as he’d expound on his latest theory about how a country’s (by which he meant the United States) literary influence reflects its political influence and so dominates less powerful countries (by which he meant his native Argentina) in the literary marketplace. In reality, Summers thought, Emir’s theory was but the most recent explanation to account for his lack of success. That was the only literary/political issue that really interested Emir—though he never considered any purely aesthetic reasons for it, such as the arcane, precious, tediously academic quality of his prose. As Emir grew older and his failure (though he’d published a few novels with second-rate university presses) became more solidified, his theories became more grand, comprehensive, and conspiratorial. For some years now Emir’s true art form had, in fact, become his theories, always cloaked in international intrigue, not his writing, which he rarely attempted now.

  With his pitifully transparent self-love and ill-disguised disappointment in his life, Emir was reason enough not to attend the party, Summers thought, but there were even more compelling reasons.

  There would be at least five to ten other blowhards there, who were even more exasperating than Emir (Emir was capable, at least, in the midst of one of his tirades, of being intermittently amusing). There was, for instance, Aaron, the self-proclaimed literary avant-gardist, who would tell you with a straight face that his writing had forever altered human consciousness. He’d published only with tiny presses that Summers suspected were partially or wholly financed by Aaron himself. “I wear my rejection by the New York publishing houses as a badge of honor,” Aaron would repeatedly say. “If they ever slipped up and accepted my work I’d know immediately that I’d lost it, that I was no longer cutting edge.”

  Aaron recently celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday by throwing a party for the group at his loft in South Philly. With great ambivalence, Summers attended, not quite ready to leave the group but vowing to do so to himself in the immediate, or at least near, future. Yet here he was, three months later, getting dressed for yet another group affair, this time celebrating the unlikely, indeed shocking, Pulitzer Prize for music criticism his former schoolmate, Howard Pike, had just won. Pike had actually left Philadelphia and the group for New York twenty years ago, to seek his fortune, which he’d clearly found as music critic for the Times. The fact that he’d consented to take a train to Philadelphia and attend a party in his honor was regarded as an act of great generosity on Pike’s part. Yes, the news about the prize was like suddenly being mugged. “I won’t forget it,” Summers said to himself, “It will always go on hurting me, and yet I’ll have to shake Pike’s hand and congratulate him if I go to the party.” But still he went.

  It wasn’t his imagination; almost everyone in the group (except Aaron, who always wore “avant-garde clothes” that he designed himself) was more dressed up than usual, and even most of the men wearing jeans also wore ties and jackets. The women also wore nicer than usual clothes and a full compliment of make up and jewelry, and all because of their mighty visitor from New York, Howard Pike, who stood in the approximate center of the loft-style apartment, a Cheshire cat smile on his face as he accepted congratulations from one obsequious well-wisher after another.

  Summers had already had a few opportunities when he could have made his move and shaken Pike’s hand, but despite two vodka punches was still hesitating, and while he stalled he found himself chatting with Emir and his American wife, Hanah.

  “Big crowd tonight,” Summers said to Emir, half gesturing with his free hand.

  “You noticed,” said Emir, in his dryly sarcastic mode, which Summers usually enjoyed, at least in small doses.

  “And so well dressed,” Summers said, feeling self-conscious, in spite of himself, for wearing his typical group party outfit of a sweater and jeans. Emir was wearing jeans too, but also a cleanly pressed white shirt and a navy blue tie and blazer.

  “Of course,” Emir said, “Americans, even American bohemians, like our group, must show the greatest respect to an American prize winner.”

  Summers forced a laugh and also forced himself not to remind Emir that he’d lived in the States since he was fourteen and had been an American citizen now for many years.

  “In case you’re wondering,” Hanah said, “his better half made him wear the sports jacket.”

  “I commend you on your courage and good taste,” he said to Hanah.

  Hanah forced a smile. She didn’t enjoy his or Emir’s sarcastic, bantering side and now looked as if she was only a few seconds from crying.

  “Well, did you do it yet?” Emir said, pointing his plastic cup, no longer filled with white wine, in Pike’s direction.

  “Do what?” Summers said.

  “Make your pilgrimage to Pike’s Peak and pay your proper respects.”

  “Alas, not yet.”

  “Don’t worry, he’s still just Howie Pike underneath it all, just a little less self-deprecating now, as one might expect, but not really insufferable about it yet, by any means.”

  “Coming from you that’s a ringing endorsement.”

  Emir shrugged. “Life has finally forced me to be humble.”

  “Really?” Summers said, as if playing his part to set up another joke, but the punch line didn’t come. Instead, of all things, Emir asked him about his ex-wife.

  “Are you still in touch with Judy? Do you hear from her?”

  “Sometimes. I talked to her on the phone a couple of weeks ago. Why do you ask?”

  “I always liked her, and never understood why you two didn’t get back together.”

  “Emir, you’re embarrassing him,” said Hanah.

  “No, I’m not Hanah. Am I?” he said, looking directly into his eyes.

  “No, of course not. Emir has put in enough hours listening to me whine about Judy that he can ask me more or less anything he wants to about her.”

  “So, what’s your answer?” Emir said.

  “Answer to what?”

  “Are you getting back together? What else would I be asking?”

  “Well there’s a short answer and a long answer.”

  “The short answer is the only answer. Do we even have time now for anything else?”

  “No, we’re not. I don’t think we ever will be either, I’m sorry to say.”

  Emir rubbed his eyes for a moment, as if Summers’ answer had suddenly made him tired. It was amazing that he still didn’t wear glasses.

  “That’s too bad. She’s a lovely person.”

  Summers shrugged—a nonchalant response more typical of Emir, he thought, that he immediately regretted. Emir’s atypical line of questioning and oddly earnest tone must be disorienting him, he thought.

  “So what’s the long answer?”

  “An explanation of the short one.”

  “Which is?”

  He caught himself trying to think of a pithy reply, as if his primary purpose was still to entertain Emir, who, in turn, was continuing to surprise him with his sudden sincerity. Finally he gave up.

  “It’s nothing you haven’t heard before. It just didn’t work out with our both being writers, I guess.”

  He hoped that Emir wouldn’t point out that Judy had achieved considerably more literary success than him and that it was he who couldn’t really handle it well. Instead, Emir looked preternaturally sad. It made Summers glance quickly at Hanah, who also looked sad, as if they both were attending his funeral.

  “But don’t you think that love is more important than writing?” Emir said.

  “Whose writing?”

  “Our writing, mine, yours, the group’s. What writer’s work is more important to them than a love they have for another person, for a wife or husband or for a child? Su
ch a person, who lived such a life of illusion and escapism couldn’t be a good writer, anyway. Don’t you agree, Hanah?”

  “I do agree, Emir, but I’m also staying out of this.”

  Now in addition to feeling nonplussed and vaguely disoriented, Summers felt wounded and began to look over at Pike, who was finally standing alone.

  “Well, I appreciate your concern,” Summers said. “I really do. I appreciate both of you and I will think seriously about everything you said, but now I think I need to pay my respects to the guest of honor. If I wait any longer it will be rude, don’t you think?”

  Pike didn’t look as old as he should have, as if winning the prize somehow drained some of the age from his face. We’re almost the same age, Summers thought as he shook his hand. He shouldn’t look younger than me too. Isn’t the prize enough?

  It was neither a tepid nor a strong handshake but it was a long one, as if Pike wanted to convey enthusiasm without a hug or any quotable words being said on his part.

  “Congratulations,” Summers said. “The world has honored you, now let me join it,” he added, realizing that what he said was awkward at best and might well also be confusing. He thought briefly about explaining what he meant to say (i.e., he was already in the world, of course, and not waiting to join it, though it was true he often felt alienated from the world) but, of course, it was too late to explain anything like that.

  “How are you, Roger?” Pike said, finally looking at him briefly.

  “Pretty well. Can’t really complain, though I do,” he said, with a little laugh, and probably to be polite, Pike managed a laugh as well.

  “The real question is how are you holding up against the world’s onslaught of attention?”

  “The world barely knows, much less cares.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Come on, Rog, it’s a newspaper prize. People don’t read newspapers anymore. Half the time I’m there I feel like I’m working in a museum or a crematorium. Hey,” Pike continued, “I didn’t see you at the big high school reunion.”