Feast of Shadows, #1

by Rick Wayne

  “You have to do your job, of course.”

  I said my goodbyes and signed out on the paper attached to her clipboard. I stopped at the security door.

  “If you don’t mind me saying it,” I told her, “you don’t seem very happy here.”

  “Yes, well, there aren’t many jobs for people like us.”

  “No,” I said. “There aren’t.”

  “You seem to be doing okay. Working for the government.”

  “Looks can be deceiving. Thanks again.”

  The waiting room was silent and empty. The cover plate to the card reader was still on the floor. I walked out and down the concrete steps and found my companion sitting on a curb across the parking lot. Her hand propped up her chin, like the famous statue. She didn’t look at me.

  “It’s clean,” I said.

  She nodded once.

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “Someone should burn this place to the ground.”

  I glanced back to the dark cube of a building. “Sounds like some folks tried.”

  She stood and walked toward the back of the lot, away from the street.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  I watched her walk toward a grove of trees, like a giant tuft of hair, that rose from a waste of ground between the building complex and whatever was beyond. I looked around. Neither of us had a car.

  “You’re just gonna disappear again?” I caught up to her. “How about telling me why you’re here. How did you even find this place?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “You’d only balk. And anyway, it’s not important.”

  I stopped her. “Jesus, what is important?”

  She paused. “Has it occurred to you that every time you get a lead like this, it turns out to be a dead end?”

  I wasn’t sure I would’ve classified all my leads as dead ends, but the uncomfortable truth of my overall lack of progress, despite weeks of effort, made me shift awkwardly. “What are you suggesting? That it’s not an accident? That it’s orchestrated somehow? Like a cover-up?”

  She just looked at me flatly.

  “Then what?”

  “Is it unusual or not, in your experience?”

  I took my time answering. I had the sense that somehow I was walking into a trap. “Yes. It is a little strange.”

  “A little strange?” she asked. “Or very strange?”

  “Fine. Very strange. Damned frustrating, in fact.”

  “And what do you make of that?”

  I shrugged and shook my head. “Bad luck? It happens.”

  “Of course.” She started walking again. “Always easier to pity yourself.”

  “Wait!” I scowled at the insinuation. “If it’s not that, then what is it?”

  “You know the answer. You knew the answer at the school. You just don’t want to accept it.”

  “So tell me.”

  “No,” she said flatly. “Say it.”

  I didn’t, and she turned to leave again.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Say it. Say the word on the tip of your tongue right now. Say it.”

  “What? You want me to say it’s magic? Is that it?”

  “You’re in a labyrinth, Doctor.”

  “A labyrinth?”

  “I suspect you stumbled into it at some point.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Focus on what’s happened. Focus on the facts. The world around is folding away from you, like origami. Focus on the pattern, how every step forward leads you onward but away from the center.”

  “Why? I don’t get it. What for?”

  “Obviously, someone doesn’t want to be found. Since all this started, have you left the city?”

  I had to think.

  “Have you crossed the boundary of the circle?”

  I made a face that was somewhere between skepticism and disgust.

  She made one in response. “You learn to recognize it after a while. Things looks different when they’ve been manipulated. They have a different feel. There’s an abundance of spontaneous conveniences, for one. Usually bad.”

  “That still sounds like luck.”

  “Tell me, Doctor, how is your career going? While you’ve been off chasing this, what’s been happening back at the office? In much trouble, are you?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Yes or no?”

  I paused. I ran over our conversation in my mind. “You heard me on the phone with Ollie.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Have it your way. Goodbye.”

  “Wait.” But she didn’t stop this time. “Wait, please.” I trotted forward and grabbed her arm. I felt bad immediately and let go. It was rude. I thought she might deck me. But she didn’t.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “I just want to know what’s going on. Please. I just want the truth.”

  She seemed to pity me then, like I was a lost child who’d grabbed her hand at a carnival.

  “You can make it complicated or you can make it simple. Either you believe this is all a complex series of accidents, coincidences, bad timing—that it’s pure happenstance that the more you dig, the worse everything gets for you—you either have the wisdom to see through that or you don’t. It’s not my job to change your mind.” She turned to go again.

  I watched her for a moment. “I can go places he can’t. That’s what he said.”

  “Yes.” She waited again, impatiently.

  I strolled toward her. “But you don’t think I should. You’re trying to scare me away. Why? Because it’s dangerous?”

  “You have no idea,” she breathed. “You’re still in the phase where it all seems mysterious and enchanting. Like a puzzle. Or a game. But it’s not. It’s so very, very the opposite of that.”

  “I see.”

  “No. You don’t. That’s always the conundrum. People don’t see, so they don’t understand. But once they do see, they can never unsee. They can never go back. Your life will change, Doctor. Forever. I promise you. Keep on this path, and you will look out on an entirely new world. You will feel like an alien in it. You will never fit in. People will think you’re crazy. You will think you’re crazy. You will always be an outcast, a misfit. Think of your daughter. Think of how she’ll look at you as she gets older. Think about what she’ll tell her friends at school about her crazy old man. Is that really what you want?”

  “You seem to be doing okay.”

  Her reaction was physical. She almost flinched. “That’s different.”

  “Different how?”

  She started backing away casually. “Go back to your family, Doctor. Please. Let us handle this. It’s what we do.”

  “Sure. Be glad to. Just promise me one thing. Promise me no one else will get sick, okay? Promise me there won’t be any dead kids.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Five people were left to die—in a damned dungeon, for all intents and purposes—and no one cares because they weren’t born on this continent. A young woman died from an unspecified disease and no one bothered to look because she was a prostitute who would’ve contracted something sooner or later anyway. A community leader flat out disappeared, as if he was tossed down that labyrinth of bones everyone pretends isn’t there. And there’s a cluster of corpses in the basement of an old school. The New Jersey fire marshal seems to think they were vagrants. Homeless. Their bones showed evidence of poor nutrition. Wrong place, wrong time, they told me. Squatting on private property. Got drunk. One of them lit a cigarette. Poof. The building burns down with them in it.

  “Everyone I talk to says the same thing. They all have nice, rational reasons why there’s nothing to worry about. It’s a different jurisdiction, a different department, an unwarranted risk, an unfortunate tragedy. Nothing more.

  “One or two of those thing
s, I could believe. But when something keeps happening over and over, it’s not chance. There’s a reason. When black folks keep dying, there’s a reason. So, what do you expect me to do? Go home and forget? Pretend it’s someone else’s job? What would you do if you were in my position? Walk away? Clearly not, because here you are, out on your own, like me, wrapped up tight in whatever the fuck this is. I dunno, maybe some part of you wishes you could go back. But somehow I doubt you’d be able to live with yourself.” I stopped. I realized I’d almost been shouting at her. I lowered my voice. “Or maybe I’m wrong.”

  She studied me a moment with an uncanny gaze. It made me uncomfortable, like when I was a kid and my grandmother would sit in the corner etching the street hustler out of me with her eyes.

  I broke the silence. “Can I at least get you a ride or walk you to the bus or something?”

  “No need. The Jag can’t have wandered far.”

  “Wait. What?”

  “It was a nice speech,” she said, turning back to the trees. “We’ll pick you up tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” I called after her. “What are you talking about? When tomorrow?”

  “At the right time.”

  “But how do I get out of the labyrinth?”

  “Find the center!” And with that, she was gone.

  I went to the little boy’s funeral. I didn’t join the crowd. I saw his young mother, standing there, hunched and broken, and I couldn’t bear to face her. It wasn’t just that I’d told her we’d fix it. It was that she reminded me too much of my own mother, in similar circumstances. This boy, at least, had mourners—mostly older women in blacks and deep purples who glanced at the trembling girl, unsure whether to hug her or give her space. I still wanted to talk to her, to say something, whatever I could, but I wanted to do it away from all those shifting eyes. I was a coward, I guess. I didn’t want to admit to the public I was supposed to protect that I had failed. Or maybe it wasn’t cowardice. Maybe it was pride again.

  A small crowd gathered as I watched from behind a towering monument to some dead businessman nobody remembered. Words were spoken and more tears shed. The breeze was as still as the bodies in the ground, and I could hear the sniffles from across the lawn. About halfway through the service, a car pulled to a stop on the drive, a car I recognized. Ollie stepped out, dark overcoat covering a stiff formal suit. He wore a yarmulke on his head. I watched him join the crowd and bow his head in sadness as the tiny casket was lowered into the earth. It was sleek and shiny, like the occupant was riding a toy limousine to the other side. A prayer was read, and Ollie wiped a tear. For all his gruff talk, he was as human as the rest of us.

  Then it was over, and I felt a small panic. I’d taken a rideshare to the cemetery. I hadn’t planned on being a coward and needing an escape to the street. I turned about, looking for any retreat through the wide-open gravestones that wouldn’t leave me exposed, when I heard a familiar rumble, like the purr of a big cat. Behind me, past the tidy rows of the dead, the black Jaguar pulled to a stop. Milan was behind the wheel. She waited for me. She was alone.

  I wove through the headstones as nonchalantly as I could and got in without a word. I didn’t look to see if I was spotted. She, at least, seemed to understand my predicament and pulled away slowly. From the side mirror, I caught Ollie staring at us in the distance. My mind wandered to the little casket and the similar one my brother lay in and to my daughter and to the conversation with my wife the day before. I wondered how much extra was “extra money” and how many hours a week was “a few.”

  My left hand was on my knee, which shook up and down nervously. I only noticed when I caught Milan glancing at me glancing at my wedding band. Our eyes met.

  “Nervous?” she asked.

  “About what? You haven’t even told me where we’re going.”

  She nodded weakly, like she knew there was more behind my agitation but didn’t want to argue.

  “Just say it,” I said.

  “I don’t want to pry.”

  “I’m a big boy. I can say no.”

  “You wear a wedding ring.”

  “But?”

  “You don’t appear to be in possession of a wife.”

  “She’s at home. In Atlanta. Watching our daughter.”

  “Why didn’t they come?”

  “It’s a temporary appointment.”

  “Ah. And you didn’t want to take your daughter out of school.”

  I shook my head. “She’s not in school yet.”

  Milan turned from the road for a moment to look at my face.

  “Marlene thought it would be better for her,” I explained. “Our daughter does better with a routine.”

  “Don’t we all,” she added softly.

  “And you?” I asked.

  “What about me?”

  “What’s the deal with you two? Not that I want to pry.” I used her words. “You’re not his girlfriend, obviously. You’re not his family either. You seem a little overqualified to be his personal assistant.”

  “Overqualified?”

  “Yeah. So . . . ?”

  “It’s complicated,” she said, without sarcasm.

  “So you do mind me asking.”

  “Not any more than you.”

  I nodded once. “Fair enough.”

  “Perhaps we would both be more comfortable saving the personal affairs for another time,” she suggested.

  “Will there be another time?”

  She didn’t say, and I turned to the window. We were heading out toward Long Island. Rows of town homes and apartment blocks gradually gave way to drive-thru restaurants and neighborhoods with narrow yards.

  “My wife and I decided to use the appointment as a trial separation,” I said finally.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” She sounded like she meant it.

  I glanced to her slender, manicured fingers lightly turning the steering wheel. No rings.

  She saw me looking.

  “You ever married?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Once.” Then she bobbled her head like she was hedging. “Basically.”

  “Basically?”

  “Common law,” she explained, glancing to me politely. “Not in the States.”

  “Oh? Where are you from?”

  “A town in Poland.”

  “A town in Poland?” I asked incredulously. “That’s a very unusual way to put it.”

  “I’m sorry. English isn’t my first language.”

  “Your English is better than mine,” I said. “Damn near flawless actually. But okay. A town in Poland.”

  We were quiet for a moment.

  “What makes you think there’s any significance to it?” she asked.

  I motioned to her hands on the wheel. “Your nails are perfect. Your hair is perfect. Your skin is perfect. Every time I’ve seen you, your shoes have matched your blouse and your hair has matched your pants or whatever the rules are. But when I ask you where you’re from, you don’t say Poland, which is what a Polish person would say. I get ‘a town in Poland.’ And that’s it.” I turned to look at her as she drove. “But maybe I’m wrong.”

  “You’re not wrong,” she said without taking her eyes from the road.

  “So you’re from a town in Poland but you’re not Polish?”

  “Correct.”

  I waited for an explanation. When there was none, I turned back in my seat. “Okay.”

  It was a few minutes, maybe longer, before I understood. “The town is in Poland now, but it didn’t used to be Poland. It used to be a different country.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I wasn’t aware the Polish borders had changed in our lifetime.”

  She smirked. “He was right about you.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’re the clever man.”

  She emphasized the word ‘clever’ slightly—not enough to suggest it was a joke, just enough to imply there was something more. But whatever that was, she didn’t explain. Al
l I got was “I hope it’s enough.”

  “Enough for what?” I asked. But she didn’t answer.

  I studied her face. “Why’d he ask me about my daughter?”

  No reaction.

  “I don’t know,” she said finally. “You’d have to ask him.”

  “You don’t have a guess?”

  “I’ve learnt it’s usually better not to guess.” She glanced to me from the road again. “With him, things are rarely as they appear.”

  I nodded once more and added under my breath, “I’d buy that.” I spoke louder a moment later. “I have another question and I’d like a straight answer, please.”

  “Okay.”

  “How much of yesterday was a recruitment interview?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You showing up like that. It’s like what the military does with inner city kids—send a sharp-looking recruiter to the schools and playgrounds, see who’s got the moves, approach them and see how desperate they are. Then make a pitch.”

  “Did they approach you?”

  I nodded.

  “But you didn’t say yes.”

  “I was lucky. I had an alternative. Seems to me, yesterday was all about seeing if I could keep up. Whether or not I would take no for an answer. That kind of thing. Am I right?”

  She turned and smiled. “We’re here.”

  I read the brick sign next to the street. John D. Bailey Palliative Care Center.

  “A nursing home? Is this a joke?”

  She pulled around the corner to a burger joint, rather than into the center’s parking lot, and stopped.

  “You want to know who’s responsible for everything that’s happened,” she said in the quiet car. It was half statement, half question.

  “Of course.”

  “So do we.” She nodded toward the big block of a nursing home.

  The architecture was modern of course, but it was every bit as dour as an old English mansion. It was shaped vaguely like a typewriter. The residential block at the back was only two stories tall. The entryway poked out from the wider main floor. Doors marked “Exit” and “Enter” were separated by ten feet of wall and surrounded by sidewalk and shrubbery. The whole complex was covered in tan striated brick, the kind popular for government and university buildings in the ’60s and ’70s, and there were too few windows. AC units on the ground floor were covered in metal cages, apparently to keep them from being stolen. Box-shaped sodium lamps jutted from the exterior in pairs, like watchful eyes. All in all, it was oppressive—a utilitarian fortress designed, above all else, to prevent lawsuits.