The Shadow Man

by Sofia Shafquat

  “I’m sorry,” I said, pushing her door wide, “I need the telephone. Right now. I’m sorry to do this, but I need to make a call.”

  “Okay, okay,” she was saying into the phone, “I talk to you later.” She banged the receiver into the cradle and stuck the phone at me. “Take it. I didn’t know these minutes were so important to you.”

  “They’re not,” I said. “I just need to make a call.” I took the phone and gracefully steered it and the cord into my room. I sat on my bed. Steve had asked me to drop off some files at another law firm on my way home from work. If the place was closed, I was supposed to let him know. I had forgotten all about the call while we were eating dinner.

  I dialed. Cornelia stepped through my doorway, the black miniskirt she had worn at dinner tight about her legs. She had now added her low, pointed boots. She displayed a sign to me—a scrawling of pencil on a sheet of paper. I AM GOING OVER THERE. PLEASE LEAVE THE BACK DOOR OPEN. She let me read it, poorly concealing a grin.

  I pressed my fingers down to disconnect the call. I re-read the sign.

  “What?” I said. “You’re going over to Kevin’s—now?”

  She nodded, beaming.

  I was dazed. “Good luck,” I said.

  “Ya, thank you,” she replied. She turned on the pointed boots and was gone.

  I let out a deep, confused breath. Somewhere over my head was a ringing sound. I felt like I was getting malaria and any minute the room would be filled with the heat of the tropics and hundreds of green, flitting grasshoppers. The buzzing grew louder. I put the phone back in the hall and sat on my bed.

  Something had happened. I tried to think. The buzzing rang in my head and ears. I held my breath to force the turning of my brain. What was going on? Had Kevin invited her there? No. No. It wasn’t possible. In all the time I had known him, I had been in his house only once. Past the doorway. Once. He would not invite her.

  Then what? He had invited her, for some inexplicable reason, and I was not to be the judge. What? What was the reason? The grasshoppers flitted thickly. I felt sick. I was once again the ballerina, alone on stage. It was my solo. But I couldn’t dance. I wobbled. The humming filled my head and in front of me were giant spots that spun. Spinning, spinning away. My lead male, the dancer, whose grace made the dance more than ourselves, was gone, spun off by the snout of a speeding tornado. And I was left, dizzy in the whirling dust, unable to think, to hold oxygen, to patch together my disintegrating core. There was no more center. No core.

  The fire walk. I had danced on the fire walk. My toe shoes, once red with blood from the glass, were now scorched, sizzled, burnt. I was too stupid to look where I stepped.

  You’ll be sorry, Muriel had said. Sorry. Sorry. The word whirled in my head, flitting through the thickness of the grasshoppers. I put my hands on the bedspread, leaned forward, and breathed. There were two words that solved things in times like this. Smiled by the face of my brother, they beamed at me through the tunnel of the past. He had said it sweetly. Always sweetly. Without a trace of anger. Don’t get mad, Leslie, the brown eyes grinned. Get even. There was my cue. I had only to act.

  Slowly, like a person in a dream, I rose. I wound through the hallway to the back door. The night was blue outside. Blue indigo. I am going over there. Please leave the back door open. I shot the deadbolt. She might just have to sleep in her car.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Glen

  I sat on my bed, leaning up against the wall. I had no thoughts. I let myself breathe quietly in the blackness, the waves of confusion mounting and then slowly passing through. The space in my bedroom still hummed. A sick feeling blanketed me like an oversized raincoat, the questions looming larger as the hour passed.

  I did not address the questions. I would not think. I let the questions float, shapeless and formless, through the liquid that had become my brain, like golden dollar signs on an inky river, washing downstream in search of hands that would claim them, own them, give them a name.

  It was an hour later that I heard her rattle the door. I let her struggle with it for a few seconds, and then I padded out to the kitchen. The whitish light of the night lit up the outline of the fence and shed outside. Funny how sometimes the night was black and sometimes it was white. I undid the lock and opened the French door.

  “Cornelia.” I stood aside to let her in. “So now I have to rescue you again.”

  “Ya, thank you,” she said curtly. She flipped her hair up with her hand and some of the strands hit me. The kitchen was dark but I had the sense that she was wobbling on her boots and her face was white and exhausted. “Why did you lock this door?”

  I waited a few seconds. “I think what you did was in very poor taste.”

  “Ya, why?”

  “I don’t have to tell you why.”

  “Ya, so what?” She pushed past me in the direction of her room. She switched the light on and began to take off her earrings. The black mini was rumpled and her hair hung limp in strings. “So what if I am attracted to someone and they are attracted to me? Why do you care?”

  “Look, I don’t have to explain anything,” I said. “If you need an explanation, then you have a problem.”

  “Okay, I move.” She tugged at the second earring. “I move tomorrow.”

  I sighed. “Do what you like. I’m going to bed.” I turned to my door.

  She was trying to kick off her boots, wobbling as she put one toe against the heel of her other foot. She put her cast against the doorjamb for support. “Ya, I know what you will tell people. You will say that I am just a stupid cleaning girl from Germany.”

  “What?” I stared at her. She was still struggling with her shoes.

  “This is what you will tell people.” Her voice was high and insistent.

  “Oh, my God,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”

  I shut the door of my room and crawled under the covers. My bed, usually so soft and cosy, was hard and uncomfortable. The sheets were cold. I heard her begin to lug things around on the other side of my closet wall. She pushed and pulled and turned on the bright hall light. The yellow line shone around the vertical rectangle of my door. I turned my face into my pillow. She was in the kitchen. She banged the cupboards and rattled glassware. Oh, my God, I thought. What the hell is going on? She had to be moving. Why was she picking this minute, in the middle of the night? I hoped it would be quick. It had taken her ten minutes to pack up at Geoff’s. I pulled the covers tighter around my head and ears.

  I heard her drag a box past my door. Then she dragged another. Where was she getting boxes at this time? I waited. The light still burned in the hall. She was quiet and then she banged things again. I’m going to go nuts, I thought. No, you’re not. You’re just going to wait until she has everything packed up. She’s moving. Aren’t you glad? Now all the mess, all those little wrinkles that you couldn’t iron out, and the big wrinkles that had all spread hugely out of nowhere, will be gone. Over. There, Leslie. Isn’t that great? Isn’t that what you want? It’s what I want, it’s what I want, I thought. I tried to sleep. The sick feeling that was wrapping around me had climbed into my throat. I hoped I wouldn’t throw up. My insides churned. Doubt and nervousness hovered over me like two huge bats, wings hanging hollow and concave like gray sheeting glued onto a willowy frame. What did I do? What did I say? The thoughts raced. The questions. Here they came. They were running wild. Leslie, Leslie, calm down. Shut up. Don’t judge. Don’t judge her. Don’t judge yourself. I had forgotten all about Kevin. Leslie, Leslie. It’ll all be much simpler. You’ll see. This is what has to be. It was a nice stay, with her, but this is what has to be. It’s what I want, it’s what I want, I said.

  She banged and hauled and clattered and slammed. It took ages. In the wee hours of the morning when I could smell the cold, sweet air coming through my window, I heard the bang of the front door—yanked rudely through its two-step thud, and the churning of the Ghia driving away.

  I breathed slowly and quietl
y. The air had broken. The morning, friendly and gray, closed over me like a cocoon. I slept.

  I woke up to my alarm clock. I lay in bed for a few minutes, knowing there was something different about this morning. Quick, you fool, I prodded myself, what happened last night? The information wasn’t there. My brain registered a big hole. Come on, I thought. Get with it. Something happened. It had to be Cornelia. Then the big hole filled itself in.

  I rose like one of the wounded and made my way gingerly into the hall. I didn’t want to face whatever there was. I remembered the dragging sounds, the banging and the crashing. I looked into the spare room where she had stayed. My bedding and futon were slung to the side. There were a couple of pens and pencils on the floor. Funny, I thought. How come whenever there’s a wreck of any kind there are always pens and pencils scattered in its wake? I remembered the inside of my stolen car.

  I made my way toward the kitchen. The living room carpet was littered with bits of lint and paper. The furniture was pushed out of the pathway she had cleared to the front door. She had broken the light bulb over the stove. I went up close to it. The bare housing for the filament stuck out of the base of the bulb, which was still screwed into place. How she did that, I had no idea. Tiny flecks of glass glinted on the stovetop and, under my feet, more glass covered the floor. She had gone through the rest of the wine. A bottle lay on its side on the counter, its broken neck chipped into a craggy green leer.

  I stared around mechanically. What a way to end, I thought. I went back into her room. Then I saw the note. It was on the German graph paper I had often seen her writing on. The letters were indecipherable and huge. LESLIE: WHATEVER YOU WILL TELL SOMEBODY ELSE!! I NEVER MEAN ANYTHING BAD! SO, HERE IS SOMETHING GOOD! I PAID $60 FOR THE PHONE BILL! THE SECOND BILL IS:? MY NUMBER IS 421–7500 I WILL PAY EVERY PENNY! HAVE A GOOD ONE BYE CORNELIA

  I turned the paper over. She had scrawled more in black felt tip on the back. CALL ME FOR THE REST! CIAO CORNELIA THANK YOU C.

  “Wow.” I said it aloud. I looked at all the exclamation marks. She had had a wild night. The writing was all over the page. And the number, 421–7500. I knew the number well. So did she. It was Geoff’s.

  She had gone back. This was the full, complete circle, the way the story wanted to end. I stared at the number. It was hard to believe. Okay, life, I conceded. The grand prize is yours. I set the note on the little table in her room, and then I turned on the shower.

  Rodney was tearing out of the parking lot at work when I got back from lunch. I watched his red 300 ZX crunch gravel as it lurched into the road, Rodney reclining in his bucket seat behind the wheel. He was busy concentrating on the pomp of his exit and didn’t see me as I walked past the mailboxes by the hedge.

  “What was he doing here?” I asked Steve as I limped past the front desk into his office. There was something sharp and hard inside my shoe.

  “My cousin Rodney? Stopped in to say hello. He asked about you.”

  “Oh.” I sat on a chair and took off my shoe. A little pebble fell onto the rug.

  Steve grinned. “You can still go out with him. It’s not too late. Maybe it’ll help you get over the German wildcat you just tangled with.” I had told him all about the night before.

  I let out a lame laugh. “I’d rather give her to your Don Juan. He can ride her around in his penismobile.”

  “What?” said Steve. “Penismobile?”

  I put the pebble in the wastebasket. “His car.”

  “Why do you call it that?”

  “Because that’s what it is.”

  “I don’t get it. His car is a penis?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What makes it a penis?”

  “Just look at it, for crying out loud. All men like him drive those kind of cars. Hard-ons.”

  “Leslie, I’m shocked at you.” Steve feigned dismay. “I don’t see how you can say that.”

  “Well, it’s the truth.”

  “And what do I drive? A hard-on, too?”

  I looked at him and considered. “Well,” I said. “It’s sort of a hard-on. It’s a semi hard-on.”

  “A semi hard-on? I’m not sure I like that. That’s worse than a hard-on. Who wants to drive a semi hard-on?” He shook his head. “I don’t know about you, Leslie. You have some awful funny ideas.”

  I stopped at the Big Bear for light bulbs. I would have to figure out how to yank the splintered remains of the bulb from the fixture over the stove. Since the bulb itself was smashed, there was no way to tell if the switch was on or off. I had no desire to be electrocuted.

  A little girl and her mother stood in front of me at the checkout. The little girl, her blond hair in a braid, watched the checker copy her mother’s license number onto their grocery check. She stood on tippytoes and leaned against the handbag dangling from her mother’s arm. “Those sevens are not acceptable,” the little girl shrilled in her high, insistent little girl’s voice.

  The cashier and her mother were taken aback.

  “My teacher says crossed sevens are not acceptable in the United States,” the little girl shrilled again. The checker smiled kindly and shut the check in the drawer.

  The little girl was still telling her mother the sevens were no good as the two of them pushed their cart through the supermarket door.

  “Will you listen to that,” said the checker. “Little girls sure think they know it all!”

  Crossed sevens are not acceptable. I thought about the little girl as I drove home. Surely she meant accepted. Crossed sevens are not accepted. Crossed sevens are acceptable, but they are not accepted in the United States. The acceptable was often not accepted and, conversely, what was not acceptable often was accepted. I passed through traffic lights, following the changing colors dumbly, thinking hard. The little girl was sort of a wizard. What Cornelia had done was not acceptable, and therefore I had not accepted it. I had locked the back door. What Geoff liked to do was not acceptable, but whoever wished to stay stuck in that groove might like to accept it. Now that Cornelia had gone back to Geoff, she had accepted the unacceptable.

  This was tough, this theory. It took some thought. When you accepted the unacceptable, you devalued the person you believed yourself to be. The seven was not a seven if it was crossed. And this was how you made it simple: You set a rule. No crossed sevens.

  I yanked the parking brake as I pulled up to the curb. It seemed so clear. Next time, Leslie, make your rules. I wriggled my key into the lock and pushed open the front door. A housekey glinted on the floor. She had come by during the day and shoved it under the door. I picked it up. Locks, a car alarm—I had taken all kinds of precautions to protect myself from the bandits that roamed the world, but I had let two crazy bandits into my soul. I stood in the darkening living room and, breathing a long breath out, let the dead ghost of Cornelia finally still itself. Then I switched on the lamp and got out the vacuum. As the rubble was sucked into the roar, my house came to life—with me. I was okay. I was alone. I was clean and fine and free. All the mess was history—wrapped up, squared away, swept in a heap and thrown out. I was starting again. I was Leslie, after the hurricane, clean and clear and sober.

  My neighbor to the south took care of the bulb. I rang his doorbell and asked if he could look at the light above my stove. He was the handy type, grizzled and stout; he wore workboots and a lumberjack shirt. He shot me a long look of belligerence and, unlocking his screen door, followed me to my kitchen. I showed him the wire and shards of glass poking rakishly from the light socket. Without a second thought, he plunged his fingers in the hollow and gave the jagged base a twist. The bulb came loose with a ratchety sound. He dropped it in my palm, turned on the toe of his boot, and strode out.

  I was dazed. The phone rang. I picked it up.

  “Hey there, Leslie,” said Paul. “Long time no see. What’s going on? Wanna go for a run tomorrow?”

  I filled him in on Cornelia and the hurricane.

  “Geez,” he whistled. “So she went
back to him.” Paul let out a long hiss. “Isn’t that something,” he said slowly.

  I gave him a moment to marvel.

  “Would you have ever guessed she would do that, Leslie?”

  “No.”

  “Wow,” said Paul. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? You think she loves him, Leslie?”

  “No.”

  “No, huh? Then why’d she do it? Why’d she go back? You’d think, after all these weeks—”

  “I guess she was desperate,” I cut in.

  “For what? For him? For the sex?”

  “No. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it. What time do you want to run tomorrow?”

  I wound up cancelling the run. I had spent the morning on my knees with a bunch of files, and by noon I was groaning, knobby and sore. Steve was out of town, so I begged the rest of the workday off. A walk on the beach seemed a much better idea than a road run with Paul. Besides, I didn’t want to go over any more of the Cornelia business. I knew he would ask questions, throw out theories, and I felt I would have no patience. At times, he was very hard to take. I felt as though he were looking through a peephole—at me, my friends, and my life—and that if he could do more than just look at the girls on the beach, he might whittle out a life of his own. I was still bothered by his disclosure of so long ago.

  The sun burned clear and crisp through a deep blue sky. I ate an English muffin with strawberry jam, picked up a jacket, and headed out the door.

  He was once again by the boulders, rocking peacefully in the chair. I bounded, elated, over the sand.

  “Where were you?” I demanded, gasping.

  “Señorita,” smiled the Unicorn. His eyes, clear and brown as I remembered them, held a glint of the sun.

  “Where have you been?”

  The Unicorn held out his hand. I slammed my palm against his and he pressed it into his other hand. This was a union. “Had to go north for a while. But don’t worry about it, I’m back.”