“Is there something on your mind?”
“Speak up, dude. Can’t hear you.”
Or she’d open her notebook and tell him she was going to read him a poem, and when he didn’t answer, when he just walked away, she’d tell him, “Well, you gotta listen. You’re my prisoner.”
It was hilarious, after all, the whole thing, the whole idea that this was her brother: a creature made of flesh and in the shape of a person. He didn’t answer, no matter what. He never spoke. He didn’t know where he was. This whole great preoccupation of their family, their big lawsuit against the hospital, he didn’t even know about. But his heart was beating because she could hear it through his T-shirt and his skin, metronomic, and when she finished the vocal she listened to the playback with her head tilted back, and then she gazed at the engineer and his boy on the other side of the glass, knowing they were waiting for her to say something, to say let’s go again or we nailed it or can we take a break, something, but she wasn’t looking at them; she was looking at her own face reflected in the soundproof glass, wondering in what sense she was the same person who had loved her brother so much in the movie star’s backyard.
She kept forgetting how she got here. She’d grown up, drifted out of high school and into a first band and then another one, lived on and off with her parents, fucked the boys she had fucked and gone to the parties she had gone to, and all of these points of experience somehow connected in a backward arc to the girl poolside and forward to the girl in the studio with the bulky black pro-grade headphones on and the sound of her own voice a disappointing echo in her ears. It’s like there are all of these individual stars, specific small points of light, dozens of them or millions, and it is possible to look at them a certain way, if you want to, not as lots of small things but as one big thing, one complete thing: a human being, an experience of existence, stable over time. And the stars become constellations, if you choose to let your eyes see them that way. Otherwise they are only stars. Or even less: balls of gas. Flicking mirages. Each a distant illuminary nothing.
Evie started singing again, not asking if they were rolling or telling them she was going to, just started singing like a boulder tipped down a hill. She sang a moony waltz that was about a monster in the woods but which was really about her brother because they were all about her brother, and as she heard herself sing she was listening, too, to the small sound of the pool lapping against its tiles, and then she got to the chorus and stepped away from Wesley and looked him in the eyes that did not see her back, and asked Wesley if, as long as he wasn’t using it, maybe she could borrow his guitar?, and then she asked him again, and when she asked him the third time and he stayed silent, she took it for a yes. She stepped out of his way and let him keep on walking.
Her phone was supposed to be off, but it rang loudly in her pocket and ruined the take, and she took off her headphones and rushed outside to answer, the recording engineer muttering “fuck’s sake” as she blew past.
“Evie? Hey. It’s Ruben. Um—Ruben Shenk?”
“Yeah, hey.” Evie, in the stairwell of the studio, noticed immediately that the acoustics in here were at least as good as in the booth. “I don’t know any other Rubens.”
“Oh right. Sure.”
There was static on the line on his side, the faint hiss of distance. Ruben’s voice made Evie warm and glad.
“Where are you calling from?”
“Alaska. I’m—”
“Alaska?”
“Yeah, but—” His voice was swallowed by a blast of noise behind him—the distinct crack of pool balls colliding. A blast of classic rock, the bulletproof opening measures of “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
“Hold on,” he said. “I might lose you. Service is weird up here.”
“Are you at a bar?”
“Yeah. Kinda. It’s kind of the post office.”
“OK.”
“We can get him acquitted. Your dad.”
“Ruben.” No. Evie closed her eyes. No, no. She leaned against the wall of the stairwell.
“That gun was not his gun. Pileggi brought it with her. She stole it from a ranger station in Alaska and brought it to Los Angeles to kill him.”
“Ruben.”
“They said he was waiting for her, but she was waiting for him. He hit her with the lamp because she was shooting at him.”
“Ruben. Dude.”
He stopped talking at last, and she heard all around him the chatter of conversation, the bellow of laughter and the ordering of drinks, the dumbass bar-rock song reaching its climax.
“It’s too late.”
“No,” he said.
“It’s over.”
“Wait—” he said. “What day is it?”
She could picture him up there, handsome, quiet Ruben, fretful and young and sweet, surrounded by Alaskan strangers. A fish forever out of water. “My father’s been sentenced already, Ruben. He’s on his way to Chino. It’s over.”
A long devastated silence on the other end, and she tried to imagine just what the hell Ruben had been up to—what he had gone through, trying to figure this thing out. She leaned forward over the stair rail, the stairs going down and down and down.
“Hey,” she said. “Call me when you get home, OK?”
“OK.”
“Will you?”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I will.” And then, out of absolute nowhere, he said, “I’m sorry we didn’t get to go to that dance.”
Evie laughed. Oh, Ruben. Ruben forever. “Me, too. I was pretty pissed at you, actually, about it.”
“Were you?”
“I was.”
“Did you end up going? Like, by yourself, or with a group of friends?”
“Nope. Stayed home. Hung out with my brother, as I recall. You should have taken me. You said you were going to.”
“I guess I just figured you would be mad at me because we let you down.”
“You didn’t let me down, Ruben. You were fifteen. Remember?” Evie felt adamant. She stood up straight, alone in the stairwell, and said it loud to make sure he was hearing her. “You were just a kid.”
“Thank you,” said Ruben.
“Anyway,” said Evie. “You know, they have it every year.”
“Have—what?”
“That dance. At my school.”
Ruben gave a mournful laugh, barely audible, but Evie wasn’t laughing. “We would be outliers, for sure. But they do have it.”
The Rabbi, with his phone smashed against his ear in the Legion Hall adjoining the post office in Kusiaat, watched a middle-aged lady in a long hippie skirt spin alone on the center dance floor with her hands outstretched. Tears formed behind the thick windows of his glasses.
“Are you serious?” he asked Evie Keener. “About going to the dance?” But then the next song started, the opening riff of “Werewolves of London” eliciting clamorous applause that swallowed up whatever she said after that.
February 10, 2019
Midway through the first leg of the long journey back to Los Angeles, Ruben went into the bathroom of the plane and slowly unwound the mummy gauze around the index finger of his left hand. Gingerly he touched the swollen raw end, and then he pursed his lips and blew gently across it, feeling his breath on his exposed nerves.
It was not healed, but it was healing.
Back in his seat he used the wounded finger to press the call button and asked politely for a cup of coffee, black. Then he simply sat with the coffee, feeling the soreness of his joints, the bruising on his back, the tenderness at his wrist where Samir had bitten him. Feeling the fog of the last week begin to lift, feeling himself come back to himself. He didn’t make small talk with the grizzled Alaskan fisherman in the seat beside him. He didn’t look at the New York Times he’d bought from a departure lounge newsstand; he didn’t turn on the tiny, grimy screen on the seat back in front of him. At the layover in Sea-Tac the grizzled fisherman got off and was replaced by an old lady with spiderweb wrinkles an
d tightly curled white hair.
The Rabbi stayed still. He had a secret, impossible and invisible, nestled inside himself.
It was not his secret, but Theresa Pileggi’s.
The revelation that she’d had, at home, at last, the revelation that she had brought with her all the way to Alaska.
The bad truth about the good and golden world.
Don’t do it. Bursting into the cabin, burning with understanding, shouting at them to stop. You can’t do it.
Don’t let it through.
Don’t let it in.
The Rabbi sat in silence, for thousands of southbound miles. It stirred inside him, the fledgling feeling of new knowledge. It fluttered as it came to life. It pulsed delicately as if perched on the end of his finger.
At some point over northern Oregon, after he had risen to let the old woman go to the restroom, after he had sat down again and maybe begun to drift off, head lolling slightly sidewise, the Rabbi found that he had returned to the ranger station.
Not as he had found it, but as Theresa had found it, when she arrived in Alaska. As it had been when she smashed into the cabin, wheeling wildly up from the lower forty-eight, determined to make them stop. To make them see.
He gazed out the window, watched the changing shape of the sky.
It was playing in his head as a short loop, the dance steps of violence—Pileggi coming into that isolated cabin in a fury of intent, grabbing the gun, the uncertain weight of it in her hands. The weight of its purpose: To make them stop.
Ruben lived the final moments as Samir had described them—Katy grabbing for the gun, Theresa firing—Samir trying to pry them apart—the three of them whirling—
The three of them.
The final understanding starting now to grow and glow inside of him, like the dense blue gathered light at the heart of a candle’s flame.
Ruben was on the plane and Ruben was at the ranger station and Ruben was back at Cosmo’s, too, examining the crime scene.
Three people in the room. Three.
“Oh no,” the Rabbi said out loud. “Oh God.”
“It’s OK,” murmured the old woman. “Don’t you worry.”
“Oh. Thank you,” Ruben said. She put her hand, small and sandpaper dry, on top of his. She was talking about the juddering motion of the plane as it began its descent. Small, lurching, turbulent jumps that Ruben hadn’t noticed.
“My husband was always very steady, on airplanes,” she said. “He would encourage me to breathe through it. Just breathe. His name was Edward. He was a doll. Just a doll.”
“He sounds like it.” Ruben put out his hand and laid it over hers. “I’m not frightened,” he told her. “I’m OK.”
“Oh,” she said. “Then why were you crying?”
In his Koreatown apartment, Ruben hung up the black North Face rain slicker and put away the thick-soled winter boots.
He drank some water, and used the bathroom, and opened the manila folder his father had handed him twenty-six days ago in the courthouse cafeteria. He settled cross-legged on the floor and spread the few scant pages out once more before him.
He read for a while, made a few new small underlines, and then went to his window and watched cars stop and start at the red light on Wilshire.
The previous tenant owned a cat, and Ruben noticed for the first time that there were light scratch marks in the windowsill. Maybe he should get a cat. Would this be how it turned out, in the end: that he was just the same person, except with a cat?
The investigation was over; there was one more part of the investigation. He had to go now; he didn’t want to. He wanted to sit down on one of his two chairs and sleep. Then when he woke up he would go for a run. Then he would take a shower and go to work.
That’s all he wanted, for things to go back.
The Rabbi wanted to go back in time.
April 15, 2010
“Good morning, Ms. Pileggi. My name is John Riggs and I’m representing the Valley Village Hospital Corporation in this matter.”
“OK. Hi.”
Shenk looked up sharply. Riggs had called her Ms., and they had known that he would do that, accidentally-but-not-accidentally putting her in her place, and she knew what to do: don’t get upset, but gently correct him. Don’t let him talk down or bully you. Shenk caught her eye, and Theresa nodded, corrected the error.
“It’s, uh—it’s Doctor, actually,” she said to Riggs, and Riggs said, “Pardon me, of course. Doctor.”
Shenk began to sweat. He had worn a black turtleneck under his blazer, covering the gauze at his throat, covering the shallow knife cuts that ringed his neck. An unorthodox outfit, but he was an unorthodox lawyer, and he would be goddamned if he was going to let a little scratch keep him out of court. Not today.
“Now, this brings up an important point, Dr. Pileggi,” said Riggs. “You are not a medical doctor, is that correct?”
“Yeah. Right. I’m just a…I do some research. I teach.”
No, thought Shenk. No, no, no. You don’t “do some research”; you are an expert in neurobiology. You hold degrees from Caltech and Duke University. You’re fucking preeminent in your field.
His expert witness said none of that. The sweat crept down Shenk’s back. Theresa was ready. She had been prepared. Shenk had prepared her.
Except this morning, she didn’t look prepared. Her hair was combed, neatly pinned up with barrettes, and she had worn just a little makeup, as Shenk had humbly, apologetically requested, but her eyes flitted, disconnected. She looked tired. Confused. She sat slightly hunched, as if ready to collapse in upon herself. Shenk had never seen her this way—not even close.
What was going on?
The elevator creaked and groaned. Dr. Pileggi heard its protesting noises through the thin walls of her hotel room. He was coming. He was almost here.
She sat up straight.
Who? Who was coming?
A mechanical sigh and then a muted ding as the elevator settled at the third floor. She heard the doors wheeze open.
He’s in the hallway.
Who?
Shallow footfalls on the carpet of the hallway of the Courtyard by Marriott. He was coming to see her. It was obscure to her how she knew that, but she did know. Whoever was coming was coming for her.
She set down her papers on the coffee table. Jay had told her not to spend the evening prepping for Riggs’s cross-examination. He said just relax; get some rest; watch whatever’s on cable; get a drink downstairs. But she had been preparing, describing Syndrome K to herself over and over in careful layman’s language. Now at the sound of the man in the hallway, coming closer, she put down the file and waited, holding her breath.
The door of the room was so thin that when the man knocked, it shivered on its hinges.
Theresa stood up.
“So you are not a medical doctor,” said Riggs, enunciating carefully, finding his own bulky rhythm, “and have never performed a surgery, let alone one to relieve a subdural hematoma.”
He paused, letting the statement become a question.
“Yes,” said Pileggi softly.
“Ever worked in a hospital?”
“No.”
“Have any medical experience of any kind?”
“No.”
“With all due respect, then, Ms. Pileggi…” Riggs sighed, as if the question pained him. “What are you doing here?”
Theresa blinked. “I don’t know.”
Shenk’s mouth dropped open. Riggs, who had been slowly pacing, stopped and turned back. He glanced at Shenk, suspicious of some trick, then back to the witness.
“You don’t know?”
“Yeah. No. I mean—” she said. “I really don’t know.”
Shenk was stunned. She didn’t know? Yes, she did. Of course she did. He sent a desperate telepathic message to his witness: Clean it up. Walk it back. What are you doing?
But it was too late. Riggs, astonished by his good fortune, was moving on. “OK,” he said. �
��You don’t know.”
Panic rose in Shenk. He thought about calling a recess. Jumping to his feet. Pulling a fire alarm.
He looked at Beth, seated in the gallery, and she looked back at him. He was the one who was supposed to know what was going on.
Theresa Pileggi stood at the door with her palm on the handle and waited. There had been two knocks, and then no more. Maybe he was gone.
He knocked again.
There was no room service. She was expecting no visitors.
“Jay?” she said softly. “Is that you?”
“No,” said a voice from the other side. “It’s not Jay.” And then, very quietly, “Open the door.”
She hesitated, and the voice said, simply, “Theresa? Theresa, I’m coming in anyway.”
There was a cheap lock at eye level. Softly, slowly, she drew back the chain. Stepped back from the door and pulled it open. It shushed on the thin carpet. Her visitor was in a tank top and jean shorts, tan and handsome and young. His skin was golden. He had wavy blond hair. When he smiled his teeth were bright white, with a slight gap between the front two. He was bleeding out of his face. A thick, curving gouge in the center of his cheek, bandaged haphazardly and oozing at the edges.
Pileggi had never seen him before, but he smiled like they were old friends. There was something electric in the smile, in the way he stood. In the shape of him in the doorway. “You’re here,” he said with fondness. “I found you.”
He didn’t ask if he could come in. He just sort of wandered past her into the little hotel room, looked around approvingly at the sofa, the TV, the kitchenette.
“These Marriotts,” he said, nodding approvingly. “They’re actually pretty nice.”
To Theresa Pileggi’s hotel room the night man brought no knives. He didn’t even bring his comrades. Katy and Samir were waiting in the car, maybe, or maybe they were in the lobby, trembling, fearful, trying to be cool. The night man came alone.
“Who are you?” asked Pileggi, curt and stern, although already the flinty voice was an effort, something she had to summon up. “What do you want?”
The Quiet Boy Page 34