The Shadow Man

by Sofia Shafquat

  “Hey, Rodney,” he said. “This is my lovely young law assistant, Leslie. You know all about her from the things I’ve been telling you, don’t you? And here she is—in the flesh. Have a glass of wine, Leslie.” Steve jammed a plastic cup of purplish wine into my hand. Nancy whisked it out.

  “Steve!” she moaned. “These aren’t the good glasses! I’m so sorry, Leslie, let me get you a real glass.”

  Steve shrugged. “Hey, less to wash, know what I mean? Look, I hope you two guys get very well acquainted.”

  Rodney had aviator eyeglasses and a large, bristly mustache. My defenses went up immediately. The empty silver platter awaiting the turkey, I thought. Huh, not me. I was no turkey.

  “So,” said Rodney. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Thank you,” I replied. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Rodney smiled engagingly. “Really? And what has Steve told you?”

  “That you gamble, date hundreds of women, waterski, and drink. That you have a golden retriever which represents your one and only longstanding female relationship, that the transmission in your Nissan failed last week for the second time in two months, and that you are a public defender in Pasadena.”

  “Wow,” said Rodney, rubbing his mustache. “I guess he’s told you a real lot.”

  “And what do you know about me?”

  “Huh.” Rodney laughed. “He said you were very pretty, which of course you are, and that you kind of always ran into the wrong men. Now, that might just be his opinion.”

  “No, he’s right.” I picked up a piece of celery from a tray. I looked at the celery, and then I held it in front of Rodney. “Celery is like a lot of men. It puts you into calorie deficit.”

  “Huh?” said Rodney.

  “It takes more calories to digest celery than the celery gives you.”

  “I get it,” said Rodney. “Like the men you go out with?”

  I nodded, my mouth full of celery. I took a big sip of wine from the glass Nancy had handed me. “I am the Celery Queen,” I said.

  Rodney laughed loudly. “I love it,” he said. “The Celery Queen.”

  Steve came over to me as everyone was lining up to fill their plates. “So how are you getting along with Rodney?” he grinned.

  “He’s okay,” I replied, “except for his mustache.”

  “What’s the matter, you don’t like his mustache?”

  I shook my head.

  “Aw, come on,” said Steve, “Give the guy a break.” He looked around. “Where’d he go?”

  “To the bathroom,” I said.

  “Good.” Steve leaned close to me. “Listen. He’s going to be around for a couple of days. You want to go out with him?”

  I made a face.

  “Oh, come now. The guy’s my cousin. He can’t be all that bad.”

  I shook my head. “Leave me alone.”

  “Leslie!” said Steve. “He’s a good-looking guy.”

  “Not good enough for me.”

  Rodney came back from the bathroom, his neck red from all his Christmas drinks. “Steve, my man!” He clapped Steve on the arm. “We eating?”

  I stood behind Rodney as he piled his plate with turkey and stuffing. He had tried to let me go first, but I told him he looked hungrier. I let myself stand close to him. Two months ago, I would have laughed with Rodney at the Christmas party, and would have dated him afterwards at Steve’s suggestion. Two months later—now—I was feeling the hot wet air around his back, seeing the pink skin on his neck and hearing the loudness of the jokes he made as he sucked down his rounds of screwdrivers. I had once dated a guy who ate a large steak with grated pepper on the top and drank several whiskeys with it and then he had kissed me in his red Corvette and all I tasted was stale meat and pepper and alcohol. He invited me to the Jersey shore for the following weekend—“Dutch,” he emphasized—and when I frowned and said that was a hell of an invitation, he shrugged his big white hands and said, “Hey, toots, I have a hell of a car payment.” He had slept with me afterwards, sweating on top of me in a world of his own, and when he was done I began to itch, and no amount of rubbing at the semen draining out of me would make the piercing, twisting pinpricks stop. And as I stood behind Rodney and smelled the dampness of his shirt, I remembered the hot shower I went home to take and the long minutes I spent brushing the steak taste off my tongue. And still the itching didn’t stop.

  I waited for Rodney to move past the dish of cranberry sauce. He turned to me with the turkey spatula. “Will you have any of this?” The spatula waved in the air.

  I paused. “Why not?” I said gamely, holding out my plate.

  Cornelia had spent the whole of Christmas Eve out. I had asked her no questions, saying only that Geoff had been by to leave a present in her car. She stood on the terra-cotta pavers of the kitchen and looked at me. Her face remained set, unrattled, but in her eyes a flicker of worry turned on and off.

  “Ya,” she said briefly. “He is weird.” She pronounced it weert.

  “I have no idea what he gave you. I told him I didn’t want mine.”

  “Ya,” she said again, turning to the cupboard door, “I don’t want it either.”

  The gift, she showed me later, consisted of two books by Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and The Bridge Across Forever. The second was a love story. To Cornelia, Geoff had written, Love Always, Geoff. “I am sure,” said Cornelia tonelessly, “he was getting the same two books for you.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Pines

  “It’s got to be a bad week,” said Muriel, cupping her hand under her chin to catch the crumbs of the pear bread she was eating.

  We were on a pear-bread craze. Cornelia made it every couple of days. She had burned the early batches, laughing shrilly at the blackened loaves. “This is what you get when you leave peer-bread too long in the oven!” Damp from the shower, in a terry turban, she gave the bread a poke. “I guess we are throwing this away,” she concluded, erupting again in her trademark laugh. To me, there was no joke. I watched her kill off another two loaves, but then her skill improved and they began to turn out okay.

  Muriel cut herself another slice. We were sitting in the back yard. “We’re right between Christmas and New Year’s. There’s just no one that’s thinking about work.”

  I agreed. Muriel had run an ad for a freelancer and was getting no response. “You’ll have to wait till after the first,” I said.

  The bread, fragrant and full of bran, came apart in Muriel’s hand. “Cornelia made this?”

  I nodded.

  “Pretty good,” said Muriel. She chewed and thought. “So, Wesley,” she said, turning to me. “You think I should try Cornelia?”

  I waited. Then I shrugged. “Why not,” I said. “What would you lose?”

  Muriel grunted. “She could screw up the job.”

  I stood up with the plate of bread. “She won’t screw up your job.”

  Muriel frowned. “How do you know?”

  “She won’t,” I said.

  Muriel looked dubious.

  Cornelia was more than happy with the idea. “This is great,” she said to me over tea, her eyes going full and round.

  I nodded. The money part would be a little tricky. Muriel would pay her in cash and not report it. The job would not be long-term, only long enough to get the bulk of the art boards done.

  “I will start on the second of January,” said Cornelia. She looked off into space, her artist’s fingers wrapped around the handle of the mug. She left out the c in second, pronouncing it seh-nnt.

  The seh-nnt dawned bright and crisp and Cornelia revved the Ghia at the curb as I pulled away for work. I wondered nervously about the two of them on and off during the morning. Stop it, Leslie, I scolded myself. You’re not anybody’s mother. Still, the nagging trailed me among the shelves of the law library and up and down the length of the pool.

  It was quelled in the evening by Muriel. “She’s great!” Muriel crowed. “
I can’t believe it! I left her by herself in the afternoon, and when I got back she had finished everything and she caught a bunch of errors in the line space in the type. I didn’t expect her to be looking for that!”

  “I told you she was good,” I said. I was glad. She was what she said she was, and I had expected it.

  The first few days went well. “I really like this work,” said Cornelia. “I know it is kind of boring, but I really like to do this again.”

  We were heating tortillas in a pan for dinner. Cornelia had chopped avocados and cheese and I was hunting in the refrigerator for salsa. I found the jar and shut the door. “That’s great,” I said.

  “And Muriel is letting me do a lot,” she added. “This is what is really great. She is going out in the afternoon, to see people she is doing jobs for, and I am doing what we are starting together in the morning. And this house of her mother is really nice. All quiet. And this downstairs where Muriel can work is great. For painting, not just her commercial work.”

  I nodded. “It’s beautiful. But it’s still her mother’s house. And she needs to get out.”

  Cornelia sprinkled cheese down the center of a tortilla. “And why is she not moving?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve quit asking her. She has her own issues.”

  “Issues?” repeated Cornelia.

  “Things. Matters. The way she feels about things.”

  Cornelia nodded, watching the cheese melt. On an impulse, I broke into the Shogun story.

  “She was getting married because of this one page?” demanded Cornelia. She put the folded tortillas on plates. “And where is this book now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think she still has the book and he still has the page.”

  Cornelia stared at me. “They were never fixing this book?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know. The whole thing is beyond me.”

  Cornelia grunted. “Me too,” she said.

  Cornelia was both diligent and exact, and her good artist’s eye brought improvements to the layouts. She worked fast. “I lucked out,” Muriel told me exuberantly over the phone. “This catalog is going to be dynamite. But,” she added darkly, “the crunch is still to come.”

  I prayed for calm at sea. The role of middleman was driving me nuts.

  The deadline tightened as the second week moved on. Muriel dashed from the client to the printer to the color separator. Cornelia worked later, putting in more hours to accommodate the squeeze. “This is still not bad,” she said, pouring a glass of white wine late one evening. I was huddling by the heater, my hair in damp strings from swimming at the Y. The nights had turned sharp and cold. “I have to work incredibly fast, and I cannot make any mistakes, but it is still a lot of fun. And with a glass of wine, it is going even better!” She held the glass up in the air.

  “Well, that’s sort of after the fact,” I replied.

  Cornelia looked through the wine at the light. “No. I am having wine there.”

  I frowned. “There? You mean at Muriel’s?”

  She nodded. “Why not? They have a lot.”

  I moved away from the heater and put the kettle on the stove. “Is that okay with Muriel?”

  Cornelia shrugged. “Ya, she is not saying anything. I am only doing this in the evening. About four o’clock. Just a couple glasses from the refrigerator. It is making it much easier to work.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “I wouldn’t do it if I were you.”

  Cornelia shrugged again, downing a large amount of the chablis from her glass. “It is not even a great wine, what they have.”

  I gripped the handle of the kettle. “I wouldn’t push it if I were you.”

  Cornelia sauntered to her room.

  Muriel objected to the wine. “What am I going to do, Leslie?” she asked me over the phone.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Tell her you don’t want her to drink.”

  “I’ll have to,” said Muriel. “Besides, it’s my mother’s wine.”

  Cornelia did not come back the next night. I did a load of laundry and sat down on the couch to read. Maybe she had stayed late at the Y.

  Muriel phoned at around ten to tell me that the scene had not gone well. “I let her know,” said Muriel, “I let her know today. I made it simple and clear. I told her Don’t. Please don’t drink while you’re working for me.”

  “And what did she say?” I asked.

  “She just … well, she looked at me.”

  “And then what?”

  “And so I repeated it. I said, Look, this is just not a good situation. I don’t want you drinking wine. You can drink anything else.”

  “And?”

  “Well, then she stood up. She said something like, Okay. I don’t think this is working, this job with you.” Muriel gave something between a groan and a sigh. “And then I lost it. I said, Fine. So get out. She was holding a ruler and I grabbed it out of her hand. We had this—I guess you would call it a scuffle. And then the table fell. She shoved it at me.”

  “What?” I said. “You had a fight?”

  “Well, I guess that’s what you would have to call it,” admitted Muriel dully.

  “So what happened?”

  “Well … the table was falling right on top of me and so I caught it and heaved it back up. And then it hit her hand or something.” Muriel stopped.

  “And was that the end?”

  “More or less,” said Muriel. “She simmered down and went into the bathroom for a minute and then she took her jacket and left.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said. “I can’t believe you had a fight.”

  “Well, we didn’t give each other a black eye,” protested Muriel.

  “Sure, but anything other than a scuffle would have been a better way to end things. Don’t you think?”

  “Of course,” groaned Muriel. “But what could I do? Suddenly the drawing table and the lamp and all the stuff on it was crashing onto my shins! What was I supposed to do?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “You did what you had to.”

  I figured Cornelia had stayed with Erich the microbiologist, her long-time friend from Germany. I found her in her room when I got home from work the next evening, sitting on her bed, the light from the lamp throwing sweeping shadows on the ceiling and walls. Her knitting bag was between her knees. She was picking at the wool in a strange, jerky way, and it was then that I realized her arm was in a cast.

  “Oh, my God!” I exclaimed.

  Cornelia’s eyes flicked upward. “Ya.” Her tone was flat. “This is really what you see.” She shoved the knitting to the side. Her face, pale and moon-like, seemed larger than usual, the pupils swimming in it, big and black.

  “Is it broken?” I breathed the words in a slow, dawning horror.

  She nodded.

  “Wow.” I put my briefcase on the floor. The cast went almost to her elbow.

  “I cannot hold this needle anymore.” She crammed the knitting into the bag.

  I shook my head. “Was this what happened yesterday?”

  She nodded.

  “Oh, boy,” I said.

  Muriel still did not know. I took a cup of tea into my bedroom and dragged the phone with me. Cornelia had shut her door.

  Muriel was furious. “Goddammit,” she snapped. “I knew I shouldn’t have hired her.”

  I said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  Muriel raved on. “I can’t believe I went ahead with it. I knew it was a bad idea. I knew it from the beginning!”

  I sighed. “You didn’t, Muriel. You took a gamble. And it didn’t work out.”

  “I’m not a gambler!” yelled Muriel. “At least not when I go by my instincts! This time I didn’t—and look at what I got!”

  “Muriel.” I paused for a second. “There are times when you have to just go ahead and do things. Maybe they won’t work out. But at least you have to do them, try them, just to stay in the practice of trying. And then maybe one day when
you try something it will work out, and it’ll be the luckiest goddamn thing you ever tried. But you’ll never find it unless you try.”

  Muriel was silent. “You know I don’t agree with you,” she said.

  “Well,” I sighed. “I really don’t know what else to say.”

  “The whole thing is perfectly clear,” insisted Muriel, pushing chopped onions and circles of zucchini in a skillet. I watched her from the kitchen table. “Next time—however next time shows its face—I’m going to go by whatever my gut instinct says. I’m not going to listen to a soul.”

  I opened my mouth to reply. Muriel was digging at the bottom of the pan with her spatula. I watched the point of her elbow jerking in the air. I decided to let her talk.

  “I’m very pissed off at the moment,” she ranted. “I feel guilty, responsible—who knows what else! All because I didn’t listen to myself!” Muriel banged the spatula on the counter and put her hands to her head. “And why should I be feeling this way?” She lifted her face to glare at me.

  I kept silent.

  “Did I do it?” yelled Muriel. “Tell me, Leslie! Did I? Did I break the silly bitch’s thumb?”

  “She’s not a silly bitch,” I said.

  “There’s no doubt in my mind that she is,” responded Muriel. “I can’t understand what you see in her.” She turned her back to me and fiddled with the pan.

  I let my breath out slowly. Muriel poured a dishful of tomatoes into the skillet and turned up the heat. “You’re a fool to be living with her, Leslie. You’re asking for it.”

  I bit my lip.

  “She’s a wild woman,” continued Muriel. “You’re going to be sorry. By trying to help her, you’ve let her into your life. I’m warning you. I let her into mine.” Muriel turned from the stove. I met her eyes. “She is disaster, Leslie, disaster. And what’s amazing is—she makes everything seem like it was somebody else’s fault!”

  “No one’s blaming you,” I said, after a while.

  “Great!” uttered Muriel sharply. “Then why do I feel guilty? Do I have to carry this around for the rest of my life? Thank God it was just her thumb!”

  I sighed. “I’m sure she doesn’t think you did it. I’m sure she knows she brought it on herself.”