The Killing Circle

by Andrew Pyper

  “That poem? The one they found by the Ulrich woman’s body? They published it today.”

  I haven’t looked at the National Star since being given the heave-ho, so I hadn’t noticed Tim Earheart’s triumph. It means two things are quite certain. First, my friend is out there somewhere, getting drunk as a donkey in celebration of his exclusive. Second, the police are no closer to finding the killer than they were when they asked the paper to hold off on running the poem.

  “So? What’s your Sandman theory?” Petra asks, looking first to me, then Angela, who has been watching me with an unsettling steadiness.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “C’mon! It’s good!” Len says.

  I continue to refuse. And then Angela leans forward, places an upturned hand on the table as though inviting me to place mine in hers.

  “Please, Patrick,” she says. “We’d be very interested.”

  So I tell her. Tell them.

  My Sandman interpretation sounds even more ridiculous when shouted aloud in a bar, the circle leaning forward to hear, an almost comically incongruous bunch who, if you were to walk in right now, you’d wonder what they could possibly have in common. The absurdity makes it easier to make my case, on account of it’s an argument that knows it has little chance of being right.

  Trouble is, the others take it seriously. I can see I’m convincing them even as I try to laugh it off. What is clear in each of their faces is that they have had similar thoughts these past weeks. They came here believing in the Sandman as much as I do.

  Once I’m finished, I excuse myself to call Sam and catch him as Emmie is putting him to bed. (I wish him sweet dreams, and he requests pancakes in the morning.) When I return to our table, the conversation has moved on to domestic complaint (Petra unable to believe how much she had to pay a plumber to replace the faucet on her jacuzzi) and sports (Ivan pleading the case for the Leafs to trade that big Russian kid who can’t skate). More pitchers, cigarettes on the sidewalk. Me eventually ordering a round of shots for everyone, and having to down Angela’s and Len’s when she’d pushed hers aside and he’d reminded me he doesn’t drink (I’d remembered, of course, and figured it was an easy way to double up).

  Yet even through the increasingly fuzzy proceedings, there are some moments that demand mention.

  At one point, there is only myself and Len at one end of the table and Conrad White and Evelyn at the other. The two of them almost cheek to cheek, whispering. Perhaps Len was right after all. Lovers would behave this way after a few drinks, wouldn’t they? And yet there is something grave in the secrets they share, a seriousness that doesn’t match any form of flirtation I’m familiar with. Not that I’m an expert.

  I’m pouring myself another, studying the two of them, when Len leans over with a secret whisper of his own.

  “I was followed last night. I think it was You Know Who.”

  “You saw him?”

  “More like I felt him. His…hunger. You know what I mean?”

  “As a matter of fact, I don’t.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “No? Well, let me tell you what I believe. You’re taking my read on that poem too seriously. It’s bullshit. I was just kidding around.”

  “No you weren’t. And I know what I felt. It was him.”

  “Him?”

  “The bogeyman.”

  “Look at me, Len. I’m not laughing.”

  “Whatever it was, it wasn’t like you or me.”

  “I take it that you’re talking about William.”

  “I might have thought it was William, but only because it can take different shapes. It’s why there haven’t been any witnesses. Think about it. Who knows what the bogeyman looks like? Nobody. Because it’s whatever scares you the most.”

  I have to admit this last bit unsettles me enough that I’m not sure I manage to keep it hidden. But it’s what Len says next that makes my calm act fall away completely.

  “I’m not the only one.”

  “You told the others what you’re telling me?”

  “They’ve told me.”

  “And?”

  “Petra saw someone out in her back yard two nights ago,” he goes on, sliding even closer, so that now Evelyn and Conrad White are watching. “And last week, Ivan was taking his subway train into the yards at the end of the night, all the stations closed. He’s just whizzing through, nobody’s supposed to be there. And at one of the stops he sees someone right at the edge of the platform, all alone, like he’s going to jump. Except he can’t be there, right? All the stations are locked up for the night. And this guy, he’s not security, he isn’t wearing one of those fluorescent maintenance vests. So when Ivan goes by he tries to see his face. And you know what Ivan said? He didn’t have one.”

  “You’ve got to take a little time away from those Tales from the Crypt comics,” I say, forcing out a laugh as the others join us from outside. Len wants to say more, but I steal a cigarette from the pack Evelyn left on the table and head outside before he has the chance.

  It’s only when I’m on the street, trying to light a match with shaking hands, that I allow myself to consider what Len’s disclosures might mean. The first possibility is that he’s nuts. The other option is he’s telling the truth. At best, the Sandman story has got us all jumping at shadows. At worst, he’s real.

  These worries are interrupted by the sense that I’m not alone. It’s Petra. Behind me, just around the corner, speaking with some urgency into a cellphone. She went out earlier with the other smokers apparently. A bit odd in itself, as she doesn’t smoke, and now she’s standing outside in the cold she often complains about. Thinking she’s alone.

  And then the Lincoln pulls up. One among the city’s fleet of black Continentals that prowl the streets, chauffeuring bank tower barons and executive princes between their corner offices, restaurants, mistresses, the opera, and home again. This one, however, has come for Petra.

  She snaps her cellphone shut and the back door is pushed open from within. A glimpse of black leather and capped driver behind the wheel. Petra seems to speak to whoever sits in the back seat for a moment. A reluctance that shows itself in her glance back at the doors to Grossman’s—then she’s spoken to from inside the car again. This time she gets in. The limo speeds away down a Chinatown side street with the assurance of a shark that has swallowed a smaller fish whole.

  What stays with me about Petra’s departure is how she left without saying goodbye. This, and how she entered the Lincoln as though she had no choice.

  The rest of the Kensington Circle’s final evening together goes on as one would expect. More drinks, more inevitable celebrity gossip, even some recommendations of good books we’d recently read. One by one the circle dwindles as someone else announces they have to get up in the morning. I, of course, being recently liberated from professional obligation, stay on. Pitchers keep turning up that I manage single-handedly. I must admit that my farewells become so protracted that, by the end, I’m surprised to find Angela and I the last ones here.

  “Looks like we’re closing the place,” I say, offering her what’s left in my pitcher. She passes her hand over her glass in refusal.

  “I should be getting home.”

  “Wait. I wanted to ask you something.”

  This is out before I know what’s coming next. The sudden intimacy of sitting next to Angela has left me thrilled, tongue-tied.

  “Your story. It’s most…impressive,” I go on. “I mean, I think it’s great. Really great.”

  “That’s not a question.”

  “I’m just stalling for time. My therapist told me that among the first warning signs for alcoholism is drinking alone. That was my last visit to him, naturally.”

  “Can I ask you something, Patrick?”

  “Fire away.”

  “Why do you think you were the only one in the circle not to have a story?”

  “Lack of imagination, I guess.”

  “There’s alway
s your own life.”

  “I know I may seem rather fascinating. But, trust me, beneath this mysterious exterior, I’m Mr. Boring.”

  “Nobody’s boring. Not if they go deep enough.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “How’s that?”

  “That journal of yours. Even if only a tenth of it’s true, you’re still miles ahead of me.”

  “You make it sound like a competition.”

  “Well it is, isn’t it?” I hear the squeak of self-pity in my voice that a cleared throat doesn’t make go away. But there’s no stopping me now. “Most great writers have had something happen to them. Something out of the ordinary. Not me. Loss, yes. Bad luck. But nothing uncommon. Which would be fine if you’re just trying to stay out of trouble. But if you want to be an artist? Not so good.”

  “Everyone has a secret.”

  “There are exceptions.”

  “Not a surprise in you, not a single twist. Is that it?”

  “That’s it. A hundred per cent What-you-see-is-what-you-get.”

  It’s a staring contest. Angela not just meeting my eyes but measuring the depth of what lies behind them.

  “I believe you,” she says finally, and drains the last inch of beer in her glass. “So here’s hoping something happens to you sometime.”

  It’s late. The band is packing up, the bartender casting impatient glances our way. But there’s something in Angela’s veiled intensity that holds me here, the suggestion of unseen angles she almost dares me to guess at. It reminds me that there is so much I need to know. Questions I hadn’t realized have been rolling around since the Kensington Circle’s first meeting. In the end, I manage to voice only one.

  “The little girl. In your piece. Is she really you?”

  The waitress takes our empty glasses away. Sprays vinegar on the table and wipes it clean. Angela rises to her feet.

  “Have you ever had a dream where you’re falling?” she says. “Tumbling through space, the ground rushing up at you, but you can’t wake up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that falling person really you?”

  Angela nearly smiles.

  She slips her coat on and leaves. Walks by the window without turning to look in. From where I sit, she is visible only from the shoulders up, so that she passes against the backdrop of night like an apparition. A girl with her head down against the wind, someone at once plainly visible and hidden, so that after she’s gone, you wouldn’t be entirely certain if she was there at all.

  Part Two

  The Sandman

  MAY, 2007

  Victoria Day Weekend

  It’s the fourth interview of the last five hours and I’m not sure I’m making sense any more. A New Yorker staffer doing a 2,000-word profile. A documentary crew from Sweden. USA Today wanting a “sneak peek” on what my next book is about.

  “I’m retired,” I insist, and the reporter smiles, as though to say Hey, I get it. Us writers like to hold our cards close.

  And now a kid from the National Star who I can tell is planning a snark attack from the second he sits across from me and refuses to meet my eyes. A boneless handshake, dewy sweat twinkling over lips and cheeks. I vaguely remember him—a copyeditor who was very touchy about having grown up in Swift Current.

  “So,” he says, clicking the Record button on the dictaphone he has placed on the table. “You’ve been on the London Times’ bestseller list since the pub date. Film deal with stars attached. And you’ve hit six weeks on the New York Times list. Was all this your plan from the beginning?”

  “Plan?”

  “To what extent were you aware of the market factors in advance?”

  “I didn’t really think about–”

  “It’s okay. There’s no need to be defensive. I believe there should always be a place for pulp fiction.”

  “That’s generous of you.”

  “I mean, your book—it’s not serious or anything.”

  “Of course not. I wouldn’t know serious if it kissed me on the lips.”

  The kid snorts. Flips his notebook closed.

  “Do you really think you deserve all this? Do you think what you’ve done–”

  He pauses here to toss my book on to the table like a turd he’s only now realized he’s been holding. “Do you actually think this thing is literature?”

  His lips keep smacking, but no more words come. I watch as the visible effort of searching for the meanest thing he could say squeezes his forehead into red folds. As for me, I squint, making a show of searching through my memory. Click my fingers when it comes to me.

  “Swift Current.”

  “What?”

  “I couldn’t get the accent at first. But I’m definitely certain now. Swift Current! Must have been such an exciting place to grow up. Exposed to all that culture.”

  I’ll give the kid credit. After he storms toward the exit, but is forced to turn back to retrieve the still recording dictaphone that I hold out to him, he has the manners to say thank you.

  The thing is, the kid was right to ask if I thought I deserved all this. Because the answer is no. And even as the publicist who’s been shuttling me around in a limo from interview to bookstore to TV chat show fills my glass and Sam’s with more sparkling water, I feel only the hollowness of the vampire, a man who has achieved immortality but at a monstrous cost.

  “Are you nervous, Dad?” Sam asks.

  More disgraced than anything. Disgraced and sorry.

  “A little,” I say.

  “But this is your last reading, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’d be nervous if I was you.”

  The two of us look out at Toronto passing by, at once familiar and new. A North American Everycity. Or Anycity. But this one happens to be home. The limo gliding past the cluster of glass condos and over the railyards toward Harbourfront, where in just a few minutes I, Patrick Rush, am to give a reading from my embarrassingly successful first novel.

  It was four years ago that the Kensington Circle gathered for the last time. Then, I was the only aspiring fictioneer among us who was without a story to tell. I never attended another workshop or writing class again. My dream of birthing a novel had been snuffed out once and for all. And I was grateful. Liberated. To be unburdened of an impossible goal is a blessing, believe me, though it admittedly leaves a few scars behind.

  Yet here I am. Travel to the foreign nations whose languages my words have been translated into. Dinners and drinks with famous novelists—no, colleagues—I have long read and admired from afar. Invitations to write opinion pieces in publications I had previously received only junk mail from. The kind of breakthrough one is obliged to describe as “surreal” in one’s Vanity Fair write-up, as I did.

  And even today, on the occasion of my triumphant home-coming, when nothing I would have dreamed of has been denied me, I know that none of it is real.

  “We’re almost there, Mr. Rush,” the publicist says.

  She looks concerned. More and more I’m lost in what she likely thinks are pensive moments of creativity, an artist’s mulling. Maybe I should tell her. Maybe I should come clean, here in the plush confessional of a limo. And maybe I would, if Sam weren’t here. If I did, I’d tell her that my silences aren’t caused by the churnings of the imagination. The truth is I’m just trying to hold the shame at bay long enough to get through the next smile, the next thank you, the next signature on the title page of a book that bears my name but isn’t really mine.

  Backstage I’m given bottled water, a bowl of fruit, a pee break. I’m told it’s a full house, asked if I would answer questions from the audience following my reading. People would love to know what it’s like to have a first book do what mine has done. I agree, I perfectly understand. I’d love to know the same thing.

  Then I’m being guided down the hall into the darkened wings. Whispered voices tell me to watch my step. An opening appears in a velvet curtain and I step through, alone. The
re’s my place in the front row. The publicist is in the seat next to Sam’s, waving at me, as though there is some threat I might turn and walk out.

  The director of the reading series appears at the lectern. He begins by thanking the corporate sponsors and moneyed donors who make such things possible. Then he starts on his introduction. A funny anecdote involving an exchange between himself and the featured author backstage just moments ago. I laugh along with everyone else, thinking how nice it would be if the charming guest he’s just described actually existed. If he could be me.

  And then I’m into dangerous territory again. Wishing Tamara were here. A wallop of grief that chokes the breath out of my throat.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it gives me great pleasure to present Toronto’s own Patrick Rush, reading from his sensational first novel, The Sandman!”

  Applause. My hands raised against the spotlight in protest at too much love. Along with a private struggle to not be sick all over the front row.

  Silence. Clear my throat. Adjust glasses.

  Begin.

  “There once was a girl who was haunted by a ghost…”

  A plain envelope bearing a Toronto postmark. Inside, a newspaper clipping. No note attached. A piece from the Whitley Register, the local weekly of a northern Ontario town. A pin prick along the rugged, unpeopled spine of Lake Superior.

  The story dated Friday, August 24, 2003.

  CRASH KILLS TWO ON TRANS-CANADA

  Author and Companion in ‘Puzzling’ Auto Accident

  By Carl Luben, Staff Reporter

  Whitley, Ont.—An automobile’s crash into a stone cliffside on the Trans-Canada twenty minutes outside Whitley has resulted in the death of both its passengers early Tuesday morning.

  Conrad White, 69, and Angela Whitmore (age unknown) are believed to have died on impact between the hours of 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. when their car left the highway. At press time, Ms. Whitmore’s place of residence has yet to be determined, but it is believed that Mr. White’s current address was in Toronto. It is unknown what purpose had brought them to the Whitley area.