by Sara Davis
Was it at all plausible that “Daniel Shriver” had lost a bag and yet had no idea when, and had just now set about retrieving it, and in such a lackadaisical fashion? Surely people who left their luggage behind did not wait six months to inquire about it. The premise of luggage was that it contained items of vital importance—the bare necessities needed to sustain oneself while traveling. It was not like leaving a superfluous item, like a scarf or an umbrella.
But what ridiculous thoughts were these? A disquisition on the nature of luggage? What’s more, I admonished myself, it behooved me to remember that there was no bag. There was nothing to suggest that my father had left a bag behind; this was only a stratagem, inspired by Gerry Van Gelder and his missing bag, that I had invented in order to find out whether or not my father had in fact been a guest at the Old Mission Hotel.
And yet, doubt overcame me at every turn—was it truly the most advisable way to proceed? Suddenly the whole enterprise seemed riddled with holes. It was better to wait, I thought, until a new scheme presented itself.
* * *
I had leftover spaghetti for dinner and drank a glass of water at the sink. The sun had already set, and a thick, damp darkness had settled on the land.
There was one small thing I could do, I thought, and I walked to the counter where the telephone sat and extracted the aged phone book from the cabinet below. I saw at once that it was several years out of date. Odd, I thought, because I had the impression that they delivered the new ones relentlessly, but where those had disappeared to was anyone’s guess. I opened it up and thumbed through its thin pages until I came to the Ps—Amanda Payard was the name the guest lecturer had “given” me, whatever that meant, and once she said it I remembered seeing it printed on a name tag among her things, P-A-Y-A-R-D. But here in the listings—Pawson; Paxton; Pay-N-Save Market; and Paye, Harold—there was no such person. Well, I thought, perhaps she really did live in Colorado, with her husband and however many children she’d claimed to have. Although if that was the case, what was she still doing here, proposing assignations in the Arboretum?
I turned to S. Here at first it appeared I would have more luck: between Lloyd A. Shreves, of Burlingame, and George Shrom of San Mateo, there were two Shrivers, but neither was the one I wanted. They were Kenneth C. and Robert G., and not Daniel. Briefly I thought of turning to the Cs, but I remembered that the guest lecturer, a.k.a. Amanda Payard, had said that MC was not a person but a place.
Well, I thought, closing the phone book and returning it to its shelf, I had not expected to learn anything anyway. Surely real investigators did not do their work through the phone book.
* * *
Moodily, and more out of restlessness than hunger, I opened the cupboard and took out an opened bag of gingersnaps. I put a handful on a plate, poured myself a glass of milk, and removed the whole arrangement to the bedroom, where I propped myself up on pillows, balanced the plate of cookies on my chest, and began to read my book.
I could feel, distinctly, as I tried to orient myself within the pages, a whole host of competing thoughts pressing in, but I held firm. A man must rest, despite the greater project.
A storm had moved in overnight in our detective’s personal corner of Sweden. A press conference had gone poorly, and someone in the police department had leaked sensitive information about the nature of the crime to the local TV news. Things on the personal front were no more promising; the young and attractive new public prosecutor had turned out to be married, and there had been no word from the ex-wife in the wake of their dinner.
It was easily recognizable to me as one of those little interludes in books like these where there was no discernible advancement in the investigation, but instead we sidle up to the detective in a quiet moment. It was a melancholic evening for him, alone in his apartment, the winter wind buffeting the windows, his only companions a bottle of whiskey and a recording of Aida.
The gingersnaps were stale, there was no denying it, but dipping them in milk made them softer and more palatable. When I’d finished them, and the milk, I read a few pages more, until the words began to swim before my eyes, and I turned the light off and went to sleep.
16
I did not allow myself to think of the investigation again until I was in the break room the next morning, a cup of coffee steaming in front of me. I had risen early and felt rested, and not even the sight of the red-and-yellow box of candy, haphazardly stuffed into a trash can otherwise full of empty beer bottles and a pizza box, could dampen my spirits. There would have been some kind of happy hour the night before, I deduced.
The last few days, I thought—and then I caught myself. Better to focus on the specific. To that end, something had occurred to me. I had made an error, I realized. It concerned the looking up of the names in the phone book. But before I could identify what exactly I had missed, the door to the break room swung open, and Alex Foss burst in, trailing behind him a tall, slender young man with a straw-blond mustache.
I’d heard Alex Foss, a junior faculty member, called a “rising star” in the department. Be that as it may, I found him unbearable, a big, boorish golden retriever of a man, and I felt an automatic sympathy for his companion, whom he introduced in his overloud voice as a Mr. Reinecke, visiting from Germany.
“Well, well, well,” said Foss, gesturing at the trash can. “Big night last night?”
I smiled weakly.
“Didn’t think you were the type.”
It was just the kind of joke one could expect from Alex Foss. I ignored him, and stood to shake the younger man’s hand, noting his firm grip, clear blue eyes, and friendly mien. A second ago I had been full of my own schemes, and now I was momentarily arrested—who was this?
“Just a quick tour of the medical school,” Alex Foss was saying. With a swift movement of his head he indicated his companion. “He’s interviewing for a fellowship. That a fresh pot?”
Mr. Reinecke was dressed far too formally for the occasion, I saw, in well-cut gray slacks, a pressed shirt, and leather shoes. He would get a shock, as I once had, when he met the senior faculty, in their blue jeans, athletic shoes, and ridiculous puffed vests. In fact, it was true that I saw something of myself in Mr. Reinecke, myself as a younger man.
“Yes,” I said. “Please, have a cup.”
I directed my remark at Mr. Reinecke, hoping somehow to communicate that I was sensitive to his plight, saddled as he was with such an unpleasant tour guide.
“This stuff is practically gasoline,” Alex Foss was saying, as he flung open the cupboard and took out two mugs, each embossed with our institution’s evergreen emblem.
“But the lounge in the hospital isn’t open yet,” he continued, pouring them each a cup. “That’s where they keep the good stuff, the espresso machine.” I would not have been surprised if he had winked.
He took a big gulp of coffee and made a show of grimacing. He knew as well as I did that the lounge to which he was referring, on the third floor of the hospital, was frequented exclusively by physicians, by custom if not by rule. Was Mr. Reinecke a physician? I wondered. He looked barely old enough to have a driver’s license, but one never knew.
“Where in Germany are you from?” I asked.
Reinecke smiled, revealing a row of white, even teeth. No doubt he was grateful for someone to show a little interest, and for a break from Alex Foss’s unrelenting chatter. There was something else about this Mr. Reinecke, I realized. All it took was a little animation of the features and it was obvious—the man was clearly a homosexual.
“From Tübingen.”
His accent was cool and pleasant to the ear.
“Ah,” I said. “Tübingen.”
A little silence descended on the room just then. Alex Foss had been occupied with something in the refrigerator, but now I felt the beam of his attention wander across the room to settle, unwelcome, on me. Both men seemed to be waiting for me to respond. As for me, I desperately would have liked to make some remark, but T�
�bingen … Tübingen … the truth was that I had never heard of it.
“Well,” I said at last. “Welcome.”
Reinecke smiled, perhaps a little more perfunctorily than before. An uncategorizable noise escaped from Alex Foss, halfway between a cough and a hoot. You could always count on him for social delicacy.
I did my best to disregard him, and smiled back at Reinecke. Life is full of moments like this, I would have liked to say, moments of uncertainty, of false steps. Where there isn’t time to say what one really means. It would have been preferable, infinitely preferable, if I could have said something, anything, about the city in question. But there you are, such is life, often we lack the information we need.
“Well,” said Alex Foss, putting his half-full cup in the sink. “Should we hit the road?”
“Nice to meet you,” said Reinecke.
And they were gone.
* * *
“I think I’d better be on my way, too,” I said softly to myself, when I could hear their footsteps retreating down the hall. I washed my mug, set it to dry, and made my way out into the hallway, where sunlight streamed through the window and onto the floor in fat lemon-colored slabs. Despite the early hour, I thought, it was shaping up to be a pleasant morning.
Then I came around the corner, and my thoughts came abruptly to a halt. There, only several yards away, were Alex Foss and young Mr. Reinecke, stopped in the middle of the hallway with their backs to me. They had not noticed my arrival, I was sure, and without knowing why exactly, I retreated several steps backward, so that I was hidden from sight behind the corner.
And why, I thought, did you do that? Are you a dog, cringing to avoid a blow? Go ahead, I told myself, go on! But in spite of myself I remained firmly rooted to the spot.
Reinecke spoke first. His voice was too quiet for me to distinguish his exact words, but I could tell by his rising inflection that he had asked a question.
Had his interlocutor been anyone but Alex Foss, his voice would not have carried; I would never have heard the answer, and no one would have been the wiser. But, as it was Alex Foss, I heard every word as clearly as if he had been standing next to me, speaking into my ear.
“Who?” he asked.
Reinecke answered, still inaudibly.
“That’s a good question,” said Foss. “I’ve never really been sure myself. But my impression is that he’s some kind of glorified secretary.”
17
To hear such bald words about yourself so early in the morning—it’s discouraging, to say the least.
When I could be sure that the two men had gone, I continued on my way down the hallway, let myself into my office, and sat down at my desk. For some time I could do nothing but sit and stare into space. Might it be possible, I wondered, to simply pack up and leave for the day, to admit defeat, though the clock on my shelf showed it was not yet even eight o’clock in the morning? That was not a solution, I knew, although I would be lying if I said the thought was not tempting. Eventually I settled down and tried to do some work. I made a few half-hearted attempts at different projects, accomplishing nothing in particular. At around eleven-thirty I gave up for good, and took myself back to the break room to microwave the leftover spaghetti I had brought with me for lunch.
At the door I tensed a little, but it was mercifully quiet. I decanted my spaghetti into a bowl and covered it with a plate, put it in the battered microwave and pressed start. I stayed there, leaning against the counter, watching through the little frosted window as my spaghetti made its lazy revolutions, and as I did, an uncanny feeling crept over me, a peculiar set of conditions settled like a fog into every corner of my mind, and I felt as though I were having a strange, waking dream.
Only it was not a dream. It was a memory, a particularly clear one, of a visit my father had paid me when I was a young man living in Ottawa.
* * *
It was late spring, if I’m remembering correctly, but that means next to nothing in that region, and the weather was sulky and cold. In the days leading up to my father’s visit it had rained relentlessly, and judging by the view from the small studio apartment I rented near campus, the day I planned to meet him would be no different. I was then a student at the Royal College of Surgeons, an impressive-sounding name for what was, in fact, a third-rate medical school. I was a student there still, at the time of my father’s visit, at least technically, but several weeks earlier I had been caught cheating on an exam, and it was almost certain that I would be expelled.
I had suggested we meet for tea in a shop close to my apartment, which was on the second floor above a bakery. It was a small, careworn little place, but I liked it, and had spent many an afternoon there on my own with a book. I suppose it reminded me of home. It was not until I saw my father in the shop itself that I realized what a poor choice it had been; that he did not approve of it was plain. He was already sitting down, at a table in the corner, in his gray coat and self-consciously knotted scarf, his elbows hovering carefully an inch above the tablecloth, radiating discomfort. We were the shop’s only customers, except for a lone East Asian woman seated by the window, who was holding her teacup in both hands and staring out at the drizzle of rain.
Well, I thought. So much for this.
I had been surprised—stunned, really—to hear from my father that he was en route. He was now, I’d learned, a senior-level dean, and it was this new position, I supposed, that had made him uniquely suited to involve himself in my little problem—or, as was more likely, had made him subject to a rare request from my mother.
And relations between the two of them were not traditional, either. I was my mother’s only child, but not my father’s. I was, as they say, “illegitimate,” a kind of side project he’d embarked upon while he and my mother worked together briefly at the University of Leeds, when all the while he had been married to someone else. By the time I was in medical school I had met him only a handful of times, and only when I was a child. And yet, I thought, as we greeted each other awkwardly, in this stranger’s face, undeniably, were echoes of my own. Would that, I wondered idly, be the fate of my hairline? Would my eyes acquire that hooded, turtle-y look in old age?
But here I should correct myself. My father could not reasonably have been described as “old-aged.” When we met that day, he could not have been more than fifty.
We sat down across the little table, each of us doing his best not to look too closely at the other. We exchanged a few pleasantries then, about what exactly I can’t remember, but the whole thing was fits and false starts until he said, with ill-concealed relief, “So, the disciplinary committee meets when?”
“This week,” I said, a little stung. “Thursday.”
“Okay,” he said. “And what do you think will happen?”
It was surreal to discuss these things with him, he who was, by every measure save a genetic one, a stranger. I found myself affronted by his blunt questioning. It was remarkably easy to dislike your own parent, I thought, as I watched him staring at me with a comically serious expression on his face; it was just as easy as it was with other people.
“Well,” I said. “It seems likely that they will vote to expel me.”
And that was true. The committee—made up of three students and three faculty—would have no choice, really. It was not really, I am sad to say, an ambiguous case.
“Okay,” said my father again, nodding. Americans, I thought unkindly, always okay. “What then?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What will you do,” said my father, “after that?”
I nodded to show I’d understood the question, then, showily, so he could not mistake it, let my eyes roam lazily about the room, as if I were only just considering all the things I might do. You couldn’t just bludgeon someone into intimacy, I thought peevishly; we hadn’t even ordered yet.
“I haven’t really thought about it, to tell you the truth.”
I saw it hit the mark. My father’s mouth twitched slightl
y at the corner—and I had a little flare of memory, then, of having seen that twitch before, many years ago, as a child.
But I was not telling the truth. I had thought about what would happen next, of course, like anyone whose life is about to change completely. The truth was that I had an attachment in that dreary town. It was, I would be the first to admit, not without its flaws: it was furtive, it was marred by the presence of my love-object’s spouse, but in spite of its shortcomings, it had given me no small happiness. There was no universe in which I could communicate any of this to my father, but there it was nevertheless. When I thought of life after the demise of my medical career, it was of this connection that I thought.
“Let me ask you this,” said my father. By now he had recovered himself. He was determined to be patient at all costs. He said, clearly and slowly, “Do you want to practice medicine?”
I pretended to give this serious question some serious thought. “No,” I said. “Not particularly.”
I hoped, childishly, that this would hurt him, but he seemed not to care, and then he gave me a look I couldn’t quite read, a long, evaluative look.
We must have ordered at some point, because the tea had come: two pots, one for each of us, each in its quilted, patterned cozy, and a plate of toasted, buttered crumpets, which my father eyed suspiciously. With the air of someone who has waited far too long for something, he poured his tea into his cup, eschewing the strainer and adding too much milk, so that the liquid in his cup was practically white, with dark, unappetizing bits of tea leaf floating at the top. He took a sip, a look of distaste crossing his face, and then carefully replaced his cup on his saucer. It was remarkable, really, how wrong that had gone, and for a moment I forgot what we had been talking about.