by Lev Raphael
We passed our favorite building: the big square sandstone courthouse from 1893 whose Romanesque revival style and tower could make you think of castles and sieges and torture chambers if you were in the wrong mood. In the right mood, it was dramatic and romantic, and we still treasured the night a few years back when we’d walked by and the moon was hanging so low in the sky that it seemed like a reflection of the huge white clock face up in the tower.
At the end of Ludington’s main drag we turned right onto North Lakeshore Drive and were quickly pulling up to our condo, which was a short walk from the harbor formed by Pere Marquette Lake. The condo was in a building that had formerly been a brewery back in the early 1900s: a solid red brick building decorated with square towers at each corner. The thick old walls made for sublime quiet when it was converted into condos a decade ago. Our bi-level condo was only 750 square feet but the fourteen-foot ceilings and the view made it impossible to feel cramped. Reached by an open stepped stairway, the tower bedroom with windows on three sides was what had sold me almost instantly. Stefan and I had once stayed at a hotel in the Loire Valley that was a nineteenth-century version of a Renaissance chateau, and our bedroom there had been in a turret. So this place reminded me immediately of one of the most romantic vacations we ever had, and I was thrilled to have a piece of the past imported so easily into our present. Stefan said it reminded him of the books he had read about King Arthur as a child, so for him, too, the building evoked something deep.
The décor was very spare and urban, all redone after Stefan’s memoir started hitting best-seller lists. Stefan had shopped at Herman Miller in Grand Rapids and bought us two black leather Eames chairs and an Eames sofa, which were arranged around a large black and white marble square that served as a coffee table. Near the kitchen we had a round white Eames table and four matching molded chairs. The floors were red oak, and the walls everywhere were bare; the ones that weren’t exposed brick we’d had painted apricot. The colors glowed thanks to light streaking in from all the rounded-top windows and Deco-style hanging globe lights. My cousin Sharon had only seen photos and said it was a bit severe for her taste, but I think she might have felt differently if she’d seen the warmth of the light and the unobstructed views from our bedroom, which was in effect a tiny penthouse. Stefan and I found the simplicity restful, and there were no pictures or knickknacks to dust or clean.
We always kept the Liebherr freezer and fridge well-stocked, so we defrosted some ground lamb for lunch, making burgers with blue cheese. Neither one of us had grown up in a kosher home, but even now, people would sometimes see me mix meat and dairy or have bacon at a restaurant brunch and wonder about it. For some reason, non-Jews seem fixated on the laws of keeping kosher, or maybe that’s about the only aspect of Jewish culture they’re cognizant of, aside from the fact that we don’t celebrate Christmas (of course, I did now, with Stefan). We each drank a Warsteiner with our burger, and while I felt invigorated, the beer seemed to knock Stefan out. He went upstairs for a nap, and I told him I was going out to explore, but I had another agenda. He was too sleepy and worn out by the week’s stress to suspect anything.
The tiny branch campus of SUM was actually one square, four-story building set in the middle of its own tree-lined parking lot overlooking Pere Marquette Lake, which Ludington clustered along and which also connected to Lake Michigan. The building had a gorgeous setting; too bad it looked as bland inside and out as a pile of photocopying paper. SUM had bought the structure from a Bible college that had gone bankrupt (after an embezzlement scandal involving its president and founder). So it was ready-made for an extension campus since it already had offices, classrooms, even a cafeteria. Stefan and I had both been invited to teach summer classes there before, but we’d declined because we didn’t want Ludington to be anything more than an escape for us. Associating it with teaching, no matter how good the students were or how much fun we had, would have been a bit of a buzzkill.
I drove there cautiously because, being Saturday, the sidewalks were jammed, the streets were choked with cars, and dozens of vacationers crossed at every light. But I didn’t mind. Even when Ludington was crowded, it still felt open to me compared to Michiganapolis, which wasn’t huge, but the state capital nonetheless. Ludington was hardly Big Sky country, but the low elevation of the buildings, the views of Lake Michigan, the good weather, all typically made me feel I had escaped.
I suppose I could have walked from our condo, but I was concerned about making a quick getaway if I needed to, not that my thinking had advanced any further than that. I had abandoned my half-formed idea of confronting Stone and figured I would just do some snooping to begin with, perhaps even spy on him from a distance, maybe even follow him. After all, hadn’t he been following me?
But the urgency of my quest had diminished the closer I got. I confess that I felt a little more relaxed, and it was more than being away from home, or the beer. The weather was perfect: sunny and mid-70s with a slight breeze, and the bright skies were filled with wheeling and diving gulls. I know people from out of state can grouse that Lake Michigan isn’t the Atlantic or even the Gulf of Mexico, but it looks big enough to me since I can’t see the other shore. And the lake can get rough enough to make enormous waves.
When I pulled into the campus parking lot, which formed a U around the squat little building with its weirdly Gothic-letter SUM sign over the main doors which were glass, there were dozens of cars there. I parked and prowled among them, and then saw, off by itself, a black Cadillac XTS. I approached it carefully across the blacktop, as if it might start up by itself and chase me like in a Stephen King nightmare. My heart was beating a little faster now as I re-experienced the feeling of thinking I was being followed the other day. The XTS was a low-slung luxury sedan, with all kinds of sophisticated sensors for safety I’d read about in various magazines, and I vaguely remembered something unusual about its lights. I wondered if it was even filming me as I crept around the car, looking in through the clear front windows to see—see what? If Stone had a photo of our house in Michiganapolis? A map with a big red circle marking our street? What evidence would anyone leave lying around on the front seat of his car?
But then wasn’t he arrogant enough to take that kind of risk? And didn’t criminals always think they were smarter than anyone else? He sure thought he was smarter than Stefan, and more talented as a writer.
“Hey, asshole, get away from my car!” someone shouted from behind me.
When I jumped back from the passenger-side window and turned, it was Stone, his narrow face red and twisted with rage.
Standing twenty feet away, he growled, “Wait! I know who you are! What the fuck are you doing here? Are you stalking me?”
10
Since the day he’d torn into Stefan’s essay and sent the abusive email, I’d developed a mental image of Stone angrily typing away in some dank New York basement apartment like an unsavory conspiracy theory blogger afraid that his coffee pot was bugged. Sure, I’d seen some publicity photos of him, but I imagined him grungier, unshaven and smelly, like he slept in his clothes and rarely showered. That was clearly a fantasy. Six feet tall like me, but rock star slim, Stone looked annoyingly hip in a tight white shirt with the short sleeves stretched by his ropy biceps, loosened skinny black tie, black jeans and black crocodile slip-ons with no socks.
Just moments before, the world had seemed large and open; now it was very small and cramped, a tunnel with me at one end and Stone at the other. As he approached, he whipped out his key fob and pressed it. LED lights unexpectedly came on all around the car—including the door handles and rearview mirrors—in some complex sequence that was like a bomb being armed in a sci-fi movie. I was startled and distracted by the light show—which was what he intended, I’m sure—and turned partly away from Stone. That was a mistake.
He rushed me and grabbed at my left shoulder. I whirled around, clamped my hands on his arms, pinning them to his sides, and shoved him hard against the side of
his Cadillac, which did not start yowling. It may have sophisticated security lighting, but it did not seem primed to deal with a vengeful college professor. Not that I cared if an alarm went off outside my head; inside I felt all the clangor of fire trucks and ambulances rushing to a blaze. More noise wouldn’t have bothered me.
My face was hot, my senses so alive it was hallucinatory. I could smell his fear as intensely as I could smell his Cool Water cologne. I could see it. It sounds crazy, but I could have sworn I even felt the blood rushing through the veins in his arms.
Even though I was easily thirty pounds heavier and more muscular than ever before from swimming laps five days a week, he struggled and tried to knee me in the groin. I blocked his leg and stomped on one of his expensive shoes, grinding my sneakered heel into it.
“You’re fucking crazy!” he yelled. “I’m going to get a restraining order on you. I’m going to sue your ass and crush you.”
Stone was practically foaming at the mouth and I could smell the coffee he’d been drinking, even the artificial sweetener he’d used. I wanted to hurt him more badly than I already had, head butt him or punch him in the stomach till he passed out or puked or both. I had never felt such an onrush of violence in me before—and I loved it.
Each time he tried to struggle, I grabbed him tighter, feeling like a vigilante cornering a thief. I understood in those moments the thrill of being a bully, of dominating and humiliating somebody weaker than yourself—and I wasn’t remotely ashamed of what I was doing. It was new, it was amazing, it was revenge for having been so powerless.
Despite his rage, or maybe because of it, I could tell he was surprised that I’d manhandled him. His deep blue eyes were scared, and they were very guilty eyes; there was no other way to read them. I was dead sure of that.
We were alone in the sunny parking lot, and tightening my grip even further on his muscled forearms, I said, “You’re a liar and a thug. You’ve been following me, harassing me and Stefan. Admit it! And you set us up for the SWAT team invading our house. I know you did.” What would it take to get him to confess?
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. You’re delusional!”
“You’re driving a black XTS. I’ve been followed by a black XTS.” At least I thought so.
“And there’s only one of these in the whole fucking state? Are you on crack or something? Why the fuck would I follow you?”
“Because you hate Stefan.”
“I hate all lousy writers!”
“No, you’re jealous of him.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Publishing is full of losers like Stefan. Give me a break.”
“Stefan’s a loser? His memoir was a best seller.”
“Right. Christian nut jobs bought his book,” he sneered. “That’s a great audience. He’s a fucking joke. He was a nobody before his memoir, and now he’s a clown. His book is crap, it’s wishful thinking, sentimental noxious crap.”
If our confrontation had swept me up like a roof in a tornado, I was suddenly dropped to earth. I let Stone go, stepping well back. I’m not sure why. He shook himself like a dog emerging from a bath.
I suddenly felt disgusted with myself, as if the contempt on his face had been painted there by me, as if he were some dark aspect of myself I was getting too good a look at. I wondered what the hell I was doing there not just roughing somebody up, but arguing now about a book. A book! That was truly bizarre.
Stone rubbed his arms, shaking his head at me. “You’re a pathetic wannabe,” he said. “All you academics are the same. You think teaching can fill you up. Nothing can. You live with a writer because you’re a parasite. Too bad the writer you live with is emptier than you are.” He picked up the key fob he had dropped when I grabbed him and limped quickly around to the driver’s side, opened the door and slipped in, driving off before I could say anything or even think of what to say. I watched him disappear, wondering if he was going to find the police station and report me. Should I stay there? Would leaving be seen as “flight” and make me guiltier than I already was?
I couldn’t believe it. Just a few days ago Stefan had been taken away to jail for something he hadn’t done, and now I might be really jailed because I was a criminal. I was guilty of assault, and who knew what other legal charges the cops could throw at me.
I trailed back to my own car, sweating and mortified. I got in slowly, awkwardly, started it, but didn’t go anywhere, turned up the air conditioning and pointed every possible vent at my face to cool off. I’d never lost control like that before in my life, never. I had never hurt someone deliberately and enjoyed it, reveled in it. Had I already become what I hated? Had being victimized by cops turned me into a monster so quickly? What I had just done was reprehensible. There was no sugarcoating it, no excuse. It was assault. If he did sue me and take me to court, how would I defend myself ? I couldn’t prove any of my charges, and even if I could, that didn’t give me the right to attack him.
The SWAT team had made me completely slip my moorings. Stefan would be furious, and rightly so. And I couldn’t imagine what my parents would say if this incident came out, or Sharon, or anyone who liked and respected me.
But in the midst of my recriminations, something else bubbled up: Why had I backed off ? Was it what Stone had said about Stefan’s literary standing that had made the difference? Was that a claim I couldn’t contest, something I half-believed myself ? I had told Stefan I loved his memoir when I read the early drafts, but that was when his conversion was so new that I felt off-balance, hesitant, and even threatened. I don’t know if I could have read it with a clear mind and honest intentions. I didn’t want to say anything negative that might push him away since I was worried enough that his becoming a Catholic would separate us.
Whatever the subject, if you live with a writer, can you ever truly judge their work? Be objective? You’ve seen the struggle behind the book, the career anxieties and disappointments, the external pressure to produce, the more insidious internal pressure to make people notice this new book if the previous one has somehow been slighted. Puzzling over all this, I started to feel worse than I had been feeling already.
I’d been exposed. Stone was insidious, and his charge about Stefan’s book wasn’t haphazard. He had intuited my doubts and gotten under my skin as readily as if I’d confessed them to him, drunk at a bar one night, and forgotten all about it the next morning. Only a sociopath had that uncanny ability to manipulate people’s weaknesses. And here I thought roughing him up had given me the advantage, had made me a winner, however briefly. He’d probably expected me to get overly physical as soon as he’d discovered me near his car, and had played me as easily as he’d switched on all those pretty lights on his XTS. What a moron I was.
And then something even more terrible hit me: What if I’d backed off because I was starting to have doubts about Stone being the culprit?
I probably sat there a good fifteen minutes before I was calm enough to drive to the condo. I had to tell Stefan what I’d done, and I dreaded his reaction, fearing a look of contempt as corrosive as Stone’s.
I was about to call you,” he said, when I let myself in. He was sprawled on the couch, looking more contented than he’d been since before our lives were pulled inside out by the police.
I didn’t delay by making coffee or fixing us drinks or asking if he wanted to go out for a tapas dinner. I sat down at the other end of the couch and told him what had just happened with as much detail as if I’d been giving a deposition. When I was done, Stefan was grinning at me so broadly, I was worried.
“You’re amazing,” he said. “You’re the last person I’d expect to go postal.”
“Come on, it wasn’t that bad.” I hadn’t shot or killed anyone. There wasn’t even any blood that I could see.
“Given who you are, it was. And I love it.” He shook his head admiringly. “We don’t need a bodyguard, we have you.”
“You’re mocking me.”
“No w
ay. I’m proud of you.” He got up to give me a warm hug, but there was a hard edge to his voice that troubled me. Did I want him to be proud of me, did I want him to relish my stepping over the line? Where were we headed?
Sitting next to me, Stefan made me retell the whole story of my “fight.” What was I, Othello home from the wars? But I complied, because it made him happy and the last few days had been beyond hellish for him. And I was relieved to see that he was no longer shell-shocked—or at least not right then. Why not enjoy it—who knew how long this would last?
“I wish I’d been there,” he said.
“To watch?”
“To finish him off.”
I waited for him to chuckle or somehow indicate he was kidding, but his face was now set and grim, and his eyes distant.
“I thought you were detached from Stone, you’d gone all Zen and Let it Be.”
Stefan shrugged. “I thought so, too. But man, the picture of him practically pissing his skinny jeans—”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. People like that are weasels, they’re cowards, they’re scum. They’re like that pathetic car salesman in True Lies who pretends to be a spy so he can get laid, but ends up freaking out when he meets a real spy.”
I wanted to tell him to chill, but who was I to get all directive? I’d said worse things about Stone. Besides, I was the one who’d hurt him.
Stefan jumped to his feet. “Let’s go out and celebrate.”