The Changeling

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The Changeling Page 17

by Victor Lavalle


  Apollo felt himself shudder. The other people in the room seemed to be moving at half time, the whole world in slow motion. Alice, Julian, Father Hagen, the rest—were they all looking at him, or did he only feel that way?

  “There were more pictures,” the woman continued. “Other places and days, but whenever I tried to show one to Gary, they were always gone. Deleted. Erased from my emails. Who could do that? I had the sense to hit print as soon as I saw this one. It’s the only proof I’ve got.”

  She leaned forward now, staring at the page as if she might dive in.

  “But when I looked at it long enough, I realized something else. That girl in the picture. That’s not my daughter. That’s not Monique.”

  Father Hagen came alongside her. He put a hand to the person in the chair next to her. The priest pulled this man up and out of the way, but he didn’t touch the woman. He sat beside her and spoke in a voice too soft for Apollo to hear.

  “I told Gary all this, and do you know what he said?” The woman looked up from the paper, back to Apollo again. “He told me to go on medication. They took my daughter, and he called me a crazy bitch.”

  Apollo needed to leave. Hit the escape pod. A sense of suffocation threatened him. He reached down for his phone but had to paw around because the woman’s gaze had captured him.

  “I had to find my own help,” she said. “No surprise, I found it with the mothers. The wise ones. Cal told me how to get my daughter back. Cal told me what to do.” Her eyes dropped, and she leaned forward. “But I don’t know if I can do it.”

  Apollo stood, pointing. “That woman is going to kill her baby.”

  Father Hagen looked up at him.

  Apollo pointed directly at the priest now. “If you don’t call the police on her, she’s going to go home and kill her baby. You can’t say you didn’t know this time.”

  His words had the force of revelation. He couldn’t stay in this room, this church. He moved toward the basement doors. Behind him the woman sobbed.

  “It’s not a baby,” she muttered.

  “DON’T MAKE ME chase you!”

  Apollo scurried down the block like a city rat. He didn’t look back until he’d reached Amsterdam Avenue. He couldn’t flee any farther east. The island of Manhattan was at an end. Across the Harlem River the Bronx came into view. The big, broad evening sky shrank that borough until its skyline of high-rises looked quaint. He wondered if he could make the swim.

  “Don’t make me chase you!”

  Apollo heard the voice a second time and, this time, realized it was a man and not that woman. He stopped on the corner of Amsterdam and 179th and let the man catch up. He recognized him. He’d been at Holyrood, too. It was the paunchy guy, the one who’d been caught using his cellphone.

  “You’re fast,” he said, when he finally caught up, “and I’m old. I’m William.” The man didn’t extend his right hand for a shake because it held his cellphone. His left quivered as he held it against his rising and falling belly. “William Wheeler,” he said more loudly. “Patrice sent me. Patrice Green? I want to buy the book.”

  Buy the book.

  Despite what he and Patrice had discussed last night, no sentence in the English language seemed stupider right now.

  “So buy the fucking book,” Apollo said. “Why did you need to come see me?”

  This man—William Wheeler—clutched his neck as if he wore a string of pearls. “Well, I didn’t insist. I mean, I’m sorry, but it was Patrice who told me to come here. If you’re going to curse at someone, you should give him a call, but I certainly don’t deserve it.” He dropped the hand and slipped his phone back into his pocket, hitched his pants, and straightened his posture. He turned away from Apollo, and Apollo watched him go. The man made it about five steps before he stopped and looked back.

  “But I really would like that book,” he said with a bashful smile.

  —

  Half a block from Holyrood, and they could see the ambulance lights. Apollo stopped and watched, and William Wheeler went quiet, too. Apollo recognized some of the Survivors standing in a small cluster on the sidewalk, talking to one another and gesturing toward the church’s basement doors. Eventually Father Hagen appeared, following two paramedics and two police officers. Hidden between the four uniforms was one wiry woman. She’d been handcuffed, hands in front. All these men led her to the ambulance and helped her inside.

  “I didn’t think they’d really call anyone,” Apollo said.

  “It was a pretty bad scene,” William whispered back.

  Wheeler offered to buy Apollo dinner, but Apollo suggested coffee instead. They crossed the street and walked toward Broadway—there was a Dunkin’ Donuts on 178th. As they moved, Alice looked up. Did she see him? She gave a faint wave, but maybe she was just stretching an arm. Julian stood beside her; they talked and looked around. Maybe they were wondering about him, where he’d gone. He’d write them later, on the Facebook page. For now he’d forge Father Hagen’s signature or Alice’s—he knew what hers looked like. Why hadn’t he thought of doing that right from the start? As long as he showed up with the signed paper, his PO would be fine. The man had a hundred other ex-cons to shepherd anyway. So Apollo went with William. For Apollo, getting back to business was the best way to survive.

  Inside the Dunkin’ Donuts, most of the chairs were already occupied. Loners mostly. Almost all of them men. At night the place had the aura of a holding cell. Much less crowded than the ones on Rikers. They found the last empty table. Wheeler sat down and scanned the room like a CCTV camera. The workers behind the counter—all Bengalis—chatted with one another loudly, casually, but their puffy, glassy eyes betrayed their exhaustion. Finally Wheeler turned back to Apollo. “I’ve never been this far uptown in Manhattan.”

  “Best roast chicken in New York is right on 175th,” Apollo said. “At Malecon.”

  Wheeler nodded and grinned as one does when learning about something one will never try. He asked if Apollo wanted coffee, and before Apollo could answer, Wheeler had gone up to the counter to buy for both of them. He chatted with the cashier, who watched his lips move with great concentration as she translated and tried to make change.

  “So I spent awhile on the phone with Patrice this morning,” Wheeler said when he returned with their coffees. “He served in Iraq, you know.”

  “Yes,” Apollo said.

  “Of course I thanked him for his service,” Wheeler said.

  “He loves that,” Apollo said, trying not to laugh.

  “Well, I certainly meant it,” Wheeler said earnestly, and Apollo’s laughter curdled. The man was sincere, and Apollo didn’t want to mock him for it.

  “So you must really love Harper Lee,” Apollo said.

  Wheeler nodded faintly, took two sips of his coffee, nodded again. “I’ll be totally honest with you,” he said. “To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the two books I’ve ever read for pleasure.” He leaned back in his chair. “That must sound pretty stupid to a man in your business.”

  Apollo tapped the side of his coffee cup absently. “You’d be surprised how many book men aren’t readers. It’s not romantic to say this, but for a lot of the guys, the books are just things to sell. I’ve known some who go into fits talking about the condition of a book. What kind of endpapers it has. Whether it’s bound or just cased. Whether it has an insert or an inset. But if you ask what the book is actually about? Six out of ten have no idea and act like you’re stupid for thinking it matters.”

  Wheeler brought his coffee cup to the side of his head and bumped it against his temple. “Boom,” he said. “You just blew my mind.”

  They spoke like this for some time. Wheeler turned out to be a curious man. He found the book trade endlessly fascinating. And Apollo felt happy to talk about something, anything, that didn’t revolve around his grief. You could even say Apollo was having a good time with him.

  “We had a drink with each other,” Wheeler said. “That’s a sign of trust.”
>
  Apollo looked around the Dunkin’ Donuts. Wheeler had spoken so loudly, so lacking in any self-consciousness, that he seemed childlike. Apollo peeked at the lone men who still sat by the windows and caught two of them giving Wheeler a glance. Was Apollo being paranoid to think Wheeler had suddenly made himself seem like an easy victim? The kind of person they might follow outside and rob of his phone and wallet? Probably it was paranoia, and yet Apollo made sure that all of those men saw Apollo scoping them. Telling each, silently, He’s with me.

  “Tell me where you found the book, would you?” Wheeler said, gulping down more coffee. “Tell me how it all came about.”

  They’d been sitting for half an hour by now. Where else did Apollo have to be? He told him about the house in Riverdale.

  “Imagine if you had given up after six boxes,” Wheeler said, sitting back in his chair and shaking his head in wonder.

  “I wouldn’t have given up,” Apollo said. “Not with a child to feed.”

  Here Apollo stopped speaking and reared up straight. Thirty minutes had passed without a direct thought about Brian. A new record. It had been a relief, he realized, but maybe also a betrayal. Why should he ever be without that pain? What gave him the right to enjoy anything?

  Wheeler misread the moment, though. He grinned as he set his phone on the tabletop. “I have two daughters, so believe me, I understand.”

  He opened his phone, found the gallery app. A limitless supply of photos of two no doubt lovely—and living—children was about to be revealed. Wheeler’s naïveté, his sweetness, were about to turn into tone deafness. Hadn’t the man heard Apollo talking in group therapy? Hadn’t he seen Apollo’s story all over the news?

  In an instant Apollo tracked back over the way Wheeler had been speaking to him all this time. No sense of trepidation, no tone of grave concern or condolences. With a short sigh, Apollo realized this guy might not know who the hell he was. In group therapy he’d talked about the children’s book that Brian West used to read to him. Maybe Wheeler thought Apollo was just a guy with serious daddy issues. Which was also true. But this only made him like Wheeler more. He didn’t know a damn thing about Apollo’s story, or at least he didn’t care all that much. He only wanted to buy a rare book. Maybe this was what Patrice meant when he said he liked Apollo because he didn’t give a damn about his military service. Every human being is a series of stories; it’s nice when someone wants to hear a new one.

  “I saw my daughter in the computer.” Wheeler shook his phone. “Oh damn it,” he said. He hadn’t brought up photos of his healthy children—instead he’d tapped the newest file in the gallery, a video. Made only an hour ago. “I turned on my laptop and there she was. My baby girl. A picture of her, out in the park with her grandparents.”

  “I’m sorry!” Wheeler said, shaking his phone.

  Wheeler moved to tap the screen, turn off the phone, but Apollo reached out and brushed his hand aside. He pulled the phone down so Wheeler had to lay it flat on the table. The image hardly registered, just blurs. Wheeler must’ve been making the video with the phone by his leg. Apollo had already forgotten nearly everything that woman had said. All but those last four words. It’s not a baby. Now he felt a morbid fascination growing as he waited to hear her say them again.

  Another shift of the camera as Wheeler rose from his chair and moved back into a corner, and now the camera caught the scene: Father Hagen moving toward the woman. The other Survivors staring in shock. I once opened my Gmail account, he began.

  “I don’t know why I taped this,” Wheeler said. “It’s a bad habit, I know. First thing I do when something strange happens is reach for my phone. I’m sorry. Let me delete it.”

  Wheeler’s words drowned out Father Hagen’s Gmail anecdote.

  “Wait,” Apollo said, and leaned closer to the phone. Wheeler did, too.

  I had to find my own help. No surprise, I found it with the mothers. The wise ones. Cal told me how to get my daughter back. Cal told me what to do. But I don’t know if I can do it.

  Suddenly Apollo tapped the screen to stop the video. This was the moment when he jumped up. That woman is going to kill her baby. He didn’t want to see himself saying the words. It would’ve felt too much like he was talking about Emma.

  Wheeler, seeing Apollo’s pain, flipped the phone over so the screen faced the table. “It’s a stupid habit,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Apollo slumped in his chair.

  Wheeler sipped his coffee quietly. “Who’s Cal?”

  “I don’t know,” Apollo answered.

  They both sat quietly for a minute longer. Apollo replayed the woman’s words in his head another time.

  “ ‘The wise ones,’ ” Apollo said. “You ever heard of that?”

  Wheeler took up his phone and tapped at it with concentration. A handful of seconds passed, his eyes moved across the screen. “Oh,” he said softly. He looked up from the phone, caught Apollo’s stare, and looked back down, almost embarrassed.

  “You found something?” Apollo asked. “Tell me.”

  “ ‘In the villages were invariably found one or two “wise ones.” ’ ” William looked up. “This is from a book.”

  “But does it say what ‘wise ones’ means?”

  Wheeler opened his mouth and closed it. He squeezed his lips together, then turned the phone toward Apollo.

  Apollo took the phone and read the screen. “Come on,” he said. “Is this for real?”

  Wheeler looked away, as if he’d stumbled across someone else’s mess and felt too embarrassed to mention it.

  Apollo stared at the screen and read the words again.

  “Wise Ones.”

  Witches.

  “WELL, THAT’S JUST some bullshit. You know that, right?”

  Patrice and Apollo stood together on a platform at the Long Island Rail Road’s Jamaica station. They were waiting for a train to Long Beach in Nassau County, due in six more minutes.

  “He said he wanted us to bring the book to him,” Apollo explained. “And when a man has agreed to pay seventy thousand dollars for a book, you best believe I’ll take a train ride to get it to him.” He raised his eyebrows at Patrice. “And you will, too.”

  Patrice waggled his head. Though he was the bigger man, his movement made him seem smaller, younger. From a distance they pantomimed a parent and scolded child.

  “I feel like we’re two drug dealers out to make a sale.”

  “Drug dealers don’t gift wrap,” Apollo said.

  Apollo opened the case that carried the book and slid it out. The book was wrapped perfectly in paper that had been silkscreened with an ornate gold medallion pattern. Apollo had even applied a bow.

  “That’s some fruity shit,” Patrice said, waving the package away. Then he leaned closer and touched the wrapping paper gently. “Is it from Kate’s Paperie?”

  “Hell yeah. It’s called Yuzen Paper, Gold Medallions.”

  Patrice nodded. “That shit is tight.” Now he looked in either direction. “But put it away before someone sees two grown men talking about wrapping paper.”

  Apollo felt the temptation to hold the wrapped book in the air and run up and down the platform calling out Patrice’s full name and address. With his luck, though, he’d play that prank and stumble, and the book would fly out of his hands and fall onto the train tracks, where it would be crushed by an arriving train. He slipped the book back into the bag. Now the two of them returned to silence on the platform. Apollo hadn’t mentioned anything about the woman at the church or Cal or the Wise Ones to Patrice. What would he say about it? He didn’t even know what to think about it.

  —

  The Jamaica station had been renovated in 2006. New train platforms, elevators from the street level, and brand-new escalators. A pedestrian bridge linked the station with the newly complete AirTrain to John F. Kennedy Airport. A steel and glass canopy rose over the train platforms, allowing riders to be protected from bad weather but
still enjoy the open air. There was a slightly European railway feel after renovations, a distinct difference from the Jamaica station as Apollo remembered it from the 1980s. Dresden after the bombing and Dresden today. That’s how drastic the change.

  But when he looked around, he could still see the old platforms, and down on the street level, the old Jamaica, Queens. If his mother had been with him, would she have seen a third Jamaica, the one she first encountered when she was a young immigrant in the United States? How many Jamaicas might there be? If you were a thousand years old, you’d remember when all this was marshland, and Jamaica Avenue was the Old Rockaway Trail used by the Rockaway and Canarsie Indians. And before that? In the 1800s city workers dredging the bottom of nearby Baisley Pond found the remains of an American mastodon. A mastodon sculpture had been raised in Sutphin Playground. All those tales were told right here, one after the next, each informing the one that came after. History isn’t a tale told once, it’s a series of revisions.

  Would it be so surprising if once there had been witches here, too?

  —

  The train car was nearly empty. Few were headed out to Long Beach at one in the afternoon on a Wednesday. Outside, Queens whipped by.

  “I’m all for this sale,” Patrice said. “But think about if we waited until this lady was dead. We could double what this dude is paying.”

  “It’s 2015,” Apollo said. “She might not die for another ten years. Meanwhile this guy wants to buy it now. For seventy thousand dollars. I bought this book for a hundred bucks. Think about how much of a markup that is already.”

  Patrice crossed his arms, looking out the window. “If you’re going to make rational arguments, I’m not going to keep talking with you. But she might die, like, next year and then I’m going to be pissed we sold it too soon.”

  Apollo patted his friend’s shoulder. “That won’t happen.”

  “You’re going to have a quick turnaround,” Patrice said casually. “You got another meeting tonight, right?”

  Patrice was right. Despite running off for coffee with William Wheeler last week, Apollo did plan to attend tonight’s meeting of the Survivors. He missed them. Plus his parole officer had looked at his sign-in sheet pretty funny. He hadn’t come out and accused Apollo of forging Alice’s signature, but the man stared at the sheet cockeyed before filing it. There was a warning in the gesture, and Apollo decided he wouldn’t risk it again. So yes, he’d be back with the Survivors. He even checked in on the Facebook page, saying he’d be coming in case the PO sniffed around his online trail.

 

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