The Shadow Man Read online

  She was pretty wiped out from the call. I asked her no questions. It was late, and we went to bed. We unrolled my futon in the empty bedroom, the walls bouncing back the little late-night sounds we made like billiard balls clacking from a strike.

  The next few nights were the same. He would call for her toward the late part of the evening and even though I answered, he ignored me coldly, asking instead for Cornelia. “It’s a pity you have to go through me first,” I once said nastily. He would keep her for hours while she clutched the receiver and answered him in dying, two-word sentences or painful, wracking sobs. I left them alone. I went to work in the morning and she did her housecleaning and we ate dinners in the evening—baked potatoes, tortillas, and endless mugs of tea—reviewing Geoff, muddling through the madness, and I thought, how funny, first I was cooking for him and now I’m cooking for her.

  The time had come for Raul to pay up on his debt. Quite frankly, I hadn’t even thought about it that much. A couple of times Paul had worried me about Raul, the way a mother animal nips at its young, warding it away from danger. “I’m not going to stress out now,” I said to Paul. “Let him not come through, and then I’ll figure out what to do.”

  Luckily, Raul was as good as his word. Airy and polite, too, of course, in the nature of the way he talked. He phoned me at work when three weeks were just about up and requested a few more days. I wasn’t thrilled, but something told me it would all work out. He said some customers were late in paying on a tile job, but a tiny bit more time would do the trick. I said fine. Paul was furious.

  “Leslie, that’s a real bad sign. Do you realize—this guy is driving your car, under your insurance, and you don’t even know him!”

  “He paid me half already,” I pointed out.

  “Well, he got a bargain, if you ask me. And I think that’s all you’re gonna get.”

  But before the week was out, Raul had his cashier’s check ready. He came by in the evening to drop it off. Cornelia was sitting on the floor in her favorite spot by the lamp, knitting.

  “Wow,” said Raul. “My grandmother used to knit.”

  “Ya,” replied Cornelia, wasting no more than a brief glance his way, “everybody’s grandmother is knitting.”

  Raul squatted next to her. “What is it?”

  Cornelia put down her unengaged needle and stretched the back of the sweater in front of him.

  “Very nice,” said Raul.

  “Thanks,” said Cornelia.

  “Can you tell me what it is?”

  Cornelia inserted the point of a needle in the first stitch of a new row and frowned. “Pullover.”

  “Pullover?” repeated Raul.

  “She means a sweater,” I said.

  “In Germany when we learn English we are not learning this word ‘sweater.’ We are learning pullover or cardigan.”

  “Aha!” Raul nodded as though he had heard a fascinating truth.

  “And who are you?” asked Cornelia.

  “Well, I’m Raul,” said Raul. He offered her a hand to shake.

  Cornelia transferred her needle to her left hand and reached up with her right.

  Raul accepted a cup of herbal tea. He sat at the table and chatted with me, often turning to watch Cornelia knit. Cornelia remained unmoved by his presence. She pricked up her ears when he mentioned that he had just signed up with a flying club.

  “Ya, and are you flying these planes?”

  “Well,” said Raul, “of course.”

  “Do you think you can take me in one of these planes?”

  “If you’d like,” said Raul. He was clearly glad to have her full attention.

  “I am afraid of airplanes,” explained Cornelia, putting down her needles. “And this Geoff—I don’t know if Leslie has told you about him—he was taking me in a plane so that I could stop being afraid. It is important for me to do this a couple more times.”

  “Well,” said Raul, “I know nothing about your friend Geoff, but I’d be more than happy to take you flying. You might want to let me know a couple of days in advance, though.”

  “Ya, sure,” said Cornelia, and picked up her knitting.

  “I think he likes you,” I said to Cornelia when Raul had left.

  “He is gay,” said Cornelia.

  “What?”

  “I am telling you. He is gay.”

  I frowned. “Do you really think so?”

  “Ya.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what? Why he is gay or why I think so?”

  “Why you think so.”

  “He is too clean. Something. I don’t know how you say it in English. But I know this, he is gay.”

  “Huh.” I thought of the dunes of grout on Raul the day he had come to the office. Clean? But then he was very exact and precise. That was a kind of clean. Oh, well. I had my check and the deal was closed.

  Cornelia was clearly getting better. She had “on” days and “off” days in the cycle of healing from Geoff. The on days she spent gadding around, buying bright leggings and hair ornaments at the fly-by-night shops that dotted the coast, budgeting her housecleaning money with care. Her major strategy was to save for the phone bill, which she warned me would be very high. She stuffed sixty dollars in twenties into a ceramic jug that sat on the coffee table. “I pay this much now,” she explained. “Then the rest will not be so bad.” Her off days she spent in bed, clothed in black, blinds drawn and the knitting bag rustling as she clicked her needles and pulled at the wool in the silent shadows of the room. Paul came to take me swimming on one such Saturday.

  “Hush.” I put my finger to my lips as I opened the door.

  “What’s the matter?” Paul whispered, peering into the living room.

  “Cornelia’s asleep. She’s bummed out.”

  “Why?” whispered Paul.

  I picked up my swimming bag and towel. “Sometimes she gets depressed.”

  “Oh.” Paul waited while I locked the front door. He led the way down the steps to his car. “Is it the guy?”

  “Maybe,” I replied. “Partly.”

  “Leslie, Leslie,” scolded Paul. “You girls should dump this guy entirely. Believe me, I’m telling you. Right this minute—I’ll bet you anything—he’s out there getting another girl.” He got in on the driver’s side and popped the power locks.

  “Maybe,” I agreed doubtfully.

  “What do you mean maybe?” exclaimed Paul. “Of course he is!” He shook his head as the Buick rolled away from the curb. “I’m telling you—he’s out there getting someone else. Some poor pretty girl he can do this to again. Boy, I tell you—these hang gliders!”

  “It has nothing to do with hang gliders. It has to do with men. He’s just like a lot of men.”

  “Not me,” said Paul.

  “Okay,” I said. “Not you.”

  He parked in the small square lot outside the pool. “Can you believe,” he marvelled, “here it is December, and the sun is shining and we’re swimming outside! I could have never done this in Wisconsin.”

  “Are there hang gliders in Wisconsin?” I joked. “Nah—why stay there? It’s got to be too cold for them to fool around.”

  “There are,” Paul said. “There were a couple I knew about. They both had mustaches, come to think of it.” He unpacked his clock and swimming books, setting them at the edge of the pool. “So, you’re going to teach me a flip turn.”

  I nodded. “There are two ways you can do them. Here’s the first way.” I made designs with my hands in the air. “You swim up to the wall and forward roll in the water, and if you do a proper forward roll you’ll be facing the wall again, right? Well, as you come up to the surface of the water, three-quarters of the way through the roll, you push your feet against the wall and swivel your body onto your stomach. Then you keep swimming. Get it?”

  He was thinking, his face up to the sky, eyes squinting as he strained to picture what I was saying.

  “Okay, here’s the second way. It’s a little harder. You
swim up to the wall and you tuck your head under to roll over, but as you roll, you flip on your shoulder—I use my right shoulder—you kind of roll again on your shoulder in the middle of the turn so that your stomach is facing the bottom of the pool and not the top. Get it?”

  “No,” said Paul.

  “Well, you’ll just have to get in the water and try. You’ll see what I mean.”

  Paul climbed into the pool. He did a couple of laps to loosen up and then zoomed at the wall of the pool and rotated wildly. He wound up clawing the edge, in the same position in which he had started.

  “Hold it, hold it. I’m gonna try again.”

  Again he beelined to the wall and again he flailed in front of it. He sputtered as he came up. “My gosh, I can’t do it.”

  I was laughing. “It’s not easy. I spent three hours my first day, and I finally got it, and then the next day I forgot! I was so embarrassed! I totally forgot.”

  “You had a relapse,” said Paul, shaking the water out of his nose and ears.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” I said. “You have to breathe out when you turn upside down. Like a whale. Breathe air out of your nose and mouth and then water won’t go in.”

  “Thanks,” said Paul. “I’ll practice more tomorrow. What can I teach you?”

  “About swimming? Well, the butterfly.”

  “I don’t know it. But you’re welcome to look at my books.”

  He dropped me off at home with three swimming books from the trunk of his car tucked under my arm. I gave him a wave as he pulled away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Blue Spruce

  Muriel asked us over for a tree-trimming. Far from thrilled about the fact that Cornelia had moved in with me, she had decided, to be game, to give Cornelia a chance. She had argued with me at length about Cornelia being my guest. “Don’t you see, Leslie, you’re going too far! You don’t need to house her! Let her sponge off someone else!”

  I would not accept that. “We’re linked, Muriel,” I pointed out. “Because of Geoff. I know how she feels. She knows how I feel. We’re together for a reason.”

  Muriel groaned. “I can’t believe you.”

  It was hard to figure out why she was so stirred up. Besides working through Geoff, Cornelia and I were mapping out a friendship. Was that what Muriel minded? I was sure it wasn’t. She was like a molded metal radiator, hissing and spitting through the day and night. Was Cornelia like somebody Muriel had known? She would have told me about it. Was it somehow Geoff? It made no sense. I decided to ignore her.

  Geoff himself was fading into history. Cornelia and I spent less and less time worrying about him. We had compared notes in detail for a few days, agreeing that he was an insincere fool, differing somewhat on the question of his looks, and disagreeing heartily on his lovemaking. Cornelia was astonished that I had found him a great lover.

  “How can you think this?” she had screamed in horror. We were in the kitchen, as usual, making tea.

  I shook my head, confused. “But he was,” I insisted. “He went on for hours, he asked questions, he cared about me.”

  “Ya, this hours. We did that, too. And talking—he also did that with me. But it was very stupid, he asked a lot of stupid questions. When we make sex, I was always very bored. He really didn’t know anything.”

  I was mystified.

  “And this very small penis,” she went on. “How could you stand this small penis?”

  “Small penis? I didn’t think it was small.”

  “My God,” she groaned. “Okay, it was not small, maybe not the smallest in the world, but it was really not very big. And he was always tying his condoms in a knot afterwards.”

  I didn’t remember that either. I remembered the strip of packaged condoms he had placed beside the bed, but I couldn’t remember him tying the used ones in knots.

  “And this kissing that he did? This very fast stuff?”

  The insect-wing technique. I nodded. “He did it the first night.”

  “What was this fast stuff?” said Cornelia in disgust. “It was terrible. I told him to stop immediately.”

  I laughed.

  “He is the worst lover I have ever had,” she concluded roundly.

  Yet he still sent her reeling on “off” days. The tree trimming fell on an off day, and it surprised me that she decided to come. She knitted madly all morning and afternoon, and got up to take a shower when the sun went down. There was no need to dress up, I had told her; it would just be Muriel, her mother and the two of us. I dug into my closet for a clean turtleneck, listening to her blow dryer whining intermittently in the bathroom.

  We stopped at a roadside flower stand to pick out a bouquet for Muriel’s mother. Cornelia pointed to white snapdragons and tiger lilies. For deeper tones, I added some iris.

  “Why is Muriel living with her mother?” Cornelia asked as we drove.

  I shrugged. “I don’t really know. She was meant to move out a few weeks ago, but it fell through.”

  “What is fell through?” asked Cornelia.

  “Didn’t happen. Didn’t work out,” I said.

  “Aha,” said Cornelia. “And why was it felling through?”

  “Falling,” I said. “It fell through because the guy she was renting from turned out to be a pervert.”

  “Aha,” said Cornelia, after a pause. “So she cannot move somewhere else?”

  Again I shrugged. “Apparently she doesn’t want to. She’s waiting for the right thing.”

  “Aha.” Cornelia turned her head to look through her window at the road.

  Muriel’s basement set-up was hardly any kind of subterranean hole. Her mother’s house was built on a hill, and the basement opened onto the garden. There, amid gardenia, roses and lemon trees, Muriel’s tabby cat sunned himself. Her bedroom, roomy and cool, stretched behind the doors of a private office, and she was the lucky tenant of the most enormous shower I had ever seen. Muriel’s mother, a decorator, could do wonderful things with space.

  Cornelia had brought her knitting. She settled down with it in the farthest corner of the house, in the den in the west wing, next to the TV. On the end table by her armchair, she planted her glass of wine.

  Muriel had been watching Cornelia with skepticism. “She doesn’t look too happy,” she commented as she and I poured more wine in the kitchen.

  “She’s been through a lot,” I replied.

  “I think her living with you is a big mistake.” Muriel stirred tomato sauce on the stove.

  Her mother came into the kitchen. “Where’s your friend, Leslie?” she asked.

  “In the den,” I said.

  “Should we leave her there all by herself?”

  “Maybe. She’s had sort of a bad day.”

  “Oh,” said Muriel’s mother.

  “Do you know who she is?” I ventured.

  “No. Should I?” Muriel’s mother rubbed warmth into her bony hands. The kitchen was chilly.

  I looked at Muriel. “Didn’t you tell her?”

  Muriel shrugged, stirring the sauce. “I guess not.”

  I turned to Muriel’s mother. “I had a boyfriend. For a couple of weeks. Then I found out he lived with her. She was on vacation. Then she came back and found out. And so she moved in with me.”

  “Oh, my,” said Muriel’s mother.

  Muriel snorted.

  “I don’t think Muriel likes her,” I said daringly. Muriel glared at me.

  “Oh, honey,” said Muriel’s mother.

  “Men are bums,” said Muriel, scraping the pan.

  “Oh, come now,” chided her mother, “that’s not fair.”

  “I would say it again,” said Muriel.

  Her mother turned to me with a slightly nervous smile.

  “Muriel just had a rough time,” I pointed out.

  “She did?” said Muriel’s mother.

  “Of course,” I returned. “The whole doctor thing. It was terrible.”

  “The doctor thing?” repeated Muriel
’s mother.

  I put down my wine glass. “The Brazilian doctor.” Muriel was still rubbing at things that were sticking in the pan. “What he did to her.”

  “Did to her?”

  I caught myself. “Didn’t you tell your mom?” I asked Muriel.

  Muriel turned from the stove. “Sure! I said he put the moves on me.”

  Her mother gasped. “Dr. Batalha? Why, honey! I had no idea!”

  “Mother,” said Muriel. “I told you. That was why I didn’t move in.”

  Muriel’s mother was shaking her head. “For heaven’s sake. I had absolutely no idea.” She looked hurt and dazed. “When did you tell me, honey?”

  Muriel chewed her bottom lip. “The day you came back from the airport.”

  “Oh, my,” said her mother. “I guess I never understood. I heard something about moving. I thought you meant he would move. Just as you were getting there.” She sighed. “Who knows. Who knows what I thought you meant.” She turned to me. “His house has been on and off the market.”

  “Well,” said Muriel, clapping the cover on the pan and throwing the spatula in the sink, “I did tell you. I thought you knew what happened.”

  “Honey,” her mother implored, “if you had sat me down and explained to me, I would have understood. But you say something and then you fly out the door, and sometimes I don’t even see you for days!”

  “I know,” said Muriel. “I’m a bulldozer. I’ve heard this all before. But you know, Mom, the guy’s your client. So I just said the minimum and then I blew it off.”

  “Oh, Muriel,” said her mother. “I’m shocked. I had absolutely no idea.”

  We did the tree a little later, a blue spruce on a cloth-draped table, round and fat and expensive. It scented the living room, throwing coolness from its furry fingers. I put my face close to the needles and took in a deep breath. “Mmm,” I said. “This is beautiful.”

  Muriel took the cushions off the window seat and knelt to wrap a pile of presents. I was sent up the stepladder next to the tree. Muriel’s mother stood at its foot, feeding me ornaments, sometimes holding one aside to tell me its family history and make sure I gave it a significant place. She left all the artistry to me. I was surprised and thought it very nice that she, a decorator, would let a layperson do her tree. I watched her from the stepladder as she piled the empty boxes and unwound strings of lights, her hair sprayed into position and her shoulders moving purposefully under the pads of her sweater. She made me feel sad and strangely brave. I took a tangle of lights from her outstretched hands.