The Shadow Man Page 8

  “What’s that, honey?” This time he was driving, his long legs folded in the small space between the driver’s seat and the foot pedals of my little car.

  “How many women are you sleeping with?”

  He paused. His eyes stayed on the road. “Four.”

  I counted how many times I blinked in the next few seconds. “I thought,” I began slowly, “that you said you had to love anyone you decided to sleep with. I mean really love them.”

  “That’s right. I really love them. All four.”

  Slap, slap. I like coffee, I like tea, I’d like to know if Larry likes—It was a song from my childhood, carolled repetitiously in the flat voices of young girls, excited as the rope whirled and kicked up the dust on the ground, the dresses of the two who held the ends hitching up their overlong legs as their arms swung in wide circles and their faces watched the entering jumper. Slap, slap. Come on, Leslie! Slap, slap. I’d like to know if—yes, no, maybe so! Yes, no, maybe so! Yes, no—

  “Are you okay, sugar?” Larry was asking.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I remembered the number well. With my fingers on the roundness of a quarter, I locked the car door.

  The phone rang four times. She got it just before the machine came on.

  “Cornelia,” I said. “My name is Leslie. I’m the person Geoff found in your absence.”

  I could feel her fumble, her brain fuzzy from the wool he had pulled over it. “I just want you to know that whatever he tells you—whatever—and I have no idea what it is—I am not in this triangle any more. Remember what I’m saying. I am out. You and Geoff may still be in, which is great, and I wish you all the luck in figuring your future out. But I am not in the picture. Remember that. You have it from me.”

  She gave a little aspirated sound, something between a “ya” and a “yup.”

  “Okay?” I asked, to make it all firm.

  “Ya. Thank you for this call.” Her voice, clearly German, was not much louder than a whisper. I took the next step.

  “Listen,” I said. “If you ever want to talk to me, about anything, this is my number. Do you have a pencil?”

  She took the number down. “Thank you,” she rasped again, whispery and faint. “I will give you a call.”

  There. I stood on the sidewalk by the stationery store and blinked in the sunlight. It was done.

  My car ad in the paper had produced a couple of calls. I had a look-see scheduled for Saturday at noon. He called at eleven to cancel, and asked if we could do it tomorrow at the same time. I said fine. He sounded pretty earnest and polite. His name was Raul.

  I headed out the door for a long walk on the beach. The mist that had whitened the morning air was still thinning, hanging in a fine veil over the sand and in a thicker shroud upon the water, perhaps not dense enough to call a fog, but enough to call something that was trying to burn off. When I was little, my mother used to say: “Look, Leslie, the sky is clearing, the sun is trying to come out.” Trying, she would say. The sun is trying to come out. Why would the sun try anything? The sun didn’t give a damn if it stayed in or out. And where the sun was, there was no in or out. There was only space. It was we, the little humans, under our blanket of clouds, fog, blizzards and rainstorms, that saw the scene in terms of in or out.

  So this mist was trying to burn off and I was watching it as I walked, thinking about how it obscured the horizon, blanking out the line that separated sky from sea. I glanced to the east to compare the difference and then I saw him. He was sitting in a beat-up director’s chair along the line of boulders beneath the highway, blowing smoke from a cigarette as he studied the sky. I walked a little more slowly. He was definitely odd-looking, unkempt, but kind of free, and from where I stood I could see the stubble on his face and the wisps of his fine brown hair blowing in the wind. He dropped his gaze and caught my eye.

  “How’s it going?” he called out.

  I smiled.

  “Taking a walk?”

  I nodded.

  “Nice day for a walk.” He rocked backward in the chair and drew a dose of nicotine from his cigarette.

  I turned toward the ocean and squinted at the line of mist. The sun was now very bright overhead.

  He watched me, rocking, as I faced the water. I turned, startling a seagull parked on the wet sand nearby, and walked slowly up to him. He leaned down and ground his cigarette into the sand.

  “I won’t smoke in front of you. You look like someone who doesn’t smoke.”

  I smiled and put my hands in my pockets.

  “How’s it going?” he said again.

  “Pretty good,” I said cautiously.

  “Everything all right? You having a good day?”

  “So far,” I replied. “So far it’s all right.”

  “Sounds incomplete to me,” he said.

  I looked him over. He had on black Levi’s faded by the sun, and a very worn gray T-shirt. His feet were sunk into a pair of brand-new Reebok high-tops, blindingly white and untied at the mouths. The seam along one side of his director’s chair was ripped, the canvas sagging dangerously as he sat. His nose, sort of flattened, lay more on the right side of his face than the left. His eyes were light brown and very, very clear.

  “My car was stolen,” I said.

  “Good. I would say that’s freedom.”

  “But I got it back.”

  “Too bad.”

  “But I also bought another one.”

  “Nothing like a fleet of cars.”

  “I’m selling the first one.”

  He cocked his eyebrow and nodded. “Well, sounds like you got your work cut out for you.”

  “You want to buy a car?”

  He rocked backward in the chair. “Oh, no, señorita. I have plenty of vehicles.”

  I watched him.

  “You don’t believe me,” he said.

  I said nothing.

  “You’re having a hard time with men right now, aren’t you?”

  I frowned.

  “Hah!” He slapped his knee. “Gotcha.”

  I took a deep breath in.

  “Man shall be man. That programme of the antique Satan …”

  I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  He grinned. “Nothing. It’s only a poem.”

  “What poem?”

  He rocked the chair a little and glanced away at the road above. “Oh, something I once came across.”

  “Is this a poem you wrote?” I asked sternly.

  He drummed the arm of the director’s chair. “Oh, no, not at all.”

  “Where is it from?” I demanded. He was not going to get away with games.

  “Boy, you’re a fighter,” he said. “You sure this is your proper incarnation?”

  I snorted. “What are you talking about?”

  He laughed. “Actually, I’ve seen you before. Not in a past life, necessarily. But right here, walking. You’re quite consumed, chiquita. It’s plainer than day.”

  “Consumed by what?” I demanded, infuriated. “And don’t call me chiquita.”

  He leaned his shoulders way back against the upper part of the chair, regarding me, one eye in a squint and the other clear and penetrating. “I see a lot of women walking this beach,” he began slowly. “And they’re all consumed by the same thing.” He stroked the wood of the chair, as though it were the head of a kitten. “There was one very smart person—he just happened to be a man—who gave this thing a place, an anchor, a roost at the top of the tree. Creation’s final law, he said.”

  I watched this strange being, his clear golden eye drawing me deep into a well of what became space—wide, deep space—walls and ceilings washing away.

  “And all you damsels, pounding sand on the beach, are thinking about this one thing. This one and final law.”

  I leaned toward him, annoyed, spoiling the feeling of the space. “What law?”

  He grinned and rocked the chair. “It’s a four-letter word,” he said warningly.


  I stepped back.

  “Don’t worry.” He laughed. “It doesn’t begin with F. The term—” he leaned forward and the canvas seat of the chair squeaked, “is much nicer. It’s L-O-V-E, love.”

  I considered that with suspicion. “In what way is that creation’s final law?”

  “Every way, señorita, every way. You’ll get the picture soon enough. As much as it hurts. Tennyson was a smart guy.”

  “Tennyson who? The poet?”

  “That’s our man.” The canvas of the chair squeaked again.

  “Your chair’s going to rip,” I said.

  “I know that, my lady.” He leaned forward and held my eye. “For nothing can be sole or whole—that has not been rent.” He settled back in the chair.

  “Is that meant to be some huge poetic metaphor?”

  He nodded. “The best. You’ll see it all in no time. Just like he says.” He pointed at the ocean. “This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon. Best place to come,” he said, gazing at the water. “That’s why you’re here, that’s why I’m here. This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.”

  “Is that also Tennyson?”

  He brought his eyes back to me and held out his hand. “The Lotos-Eaters.”

  “How do you know so much about poetry?” I asked, shaking the hand he had stuck at me.

  He smirked. “My business. Actually, the four-letter word is my business. Here.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a card. It was dog-eared and soft and bent. I took it. UNICORN, said the large black type, THE LOVE DOCTOR.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “My card.”

  “Is this your name—Unicorn?”

  “That’s me.”

  “What’s The Love Doctor?”

  “My business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Oh, well, it’s hard to define. Let’s say—I hold counsel.”

  “For who?”

  “Anyone who comes.”

  “Comes where?”

  “Here, there, wherever I am.”

  “Do you have an office?”

  He gestured at the sand. “You’re looking at it.”

  I stared at the card again and then at him. “I don’t get it.”

  “That’s the point. People who don’t get it come to me.”

  “For what?”

  “That’s the part that’s not easily answered at first.”

  I shook my head. “Do you get paid for this?”

  He rocked back in his director’s chair and shrugged. “Yes and no. I guess you might say I get paid.”

  “In money?”

  “Sometimes. Or food, clothes, a truck or two.”

  “What do you mean—a truck or two?”

  “Just what I said. I have two trucks. Actually, one’s a van.”

  “Oh. Where do you live?”

  “Live? Wherever it strikes me. Here. Malibu. Baja. Up north.”

  “Oh.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “A mile away.”

  He nodded. “Your mind is clicking like crazy, damselita. What’s going on in there?”

  “Is this really your name—Unicorn?”

  “It’s my name.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “That’s my real name.”

  “Did your parents name you Unicorn?”

  “Doubt it.”

  “Then what’s your real name?”

  “I’ll have to think about that one.” He grinned. “You really want to know, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “You tell me your name first.”

  “Leslie.”

  “Leslie.” He rocked for a moment, testing it out. “Leslie.”

  “So what’s your real name?”

  The chair tilted forward on its two front legs. “You’re very persistent. This is not something I tell everyone. But I think I’ll have to tell you. My real name—” he fixed the light brown eyes on mine, “is—was, rather—Ken. There.” He settled back. “You know it. Ken. It’s not a very exciting name.”

  “What’s your last name?”

  He laughed. “Don’t have one.”

  “You did once.”

  “When the world was prehistoric.”

  “What was it?”

  He drummed the arms of the chair. “Can’t remember.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I’m telling you the truth. I can’t remember.”

  “What does it say on your license?”

  “That’s a good point. Can’t say I’ve looked at it recently.”

  “Where is it?”

  He shrugged and laughed. “No idea.”

  I gave up. “Okay,” I said. “So you’re the Love Doctor. What do you know exactly?”

  “I know what you’ve just been through.”

  “What have I been through?”

  “This is the mad moon, and shall I surrender all? If he but ask it I shall.”

  “Is that more poetry?”

  He nodded. “John Crowe Ransom. You, my dear damsel, are Miriam Tazewell. To Miriam Tazewell the whole world was villain, the principle of the beast was low and masculine.”

  I stood in front of him silently. “I can’t argue,” I said finally.

  He thumped his hand on his knee. “Man, I could have a field day with you.”

  I left him a little while later, folding the dog-eared card in my hand as I headed up the beach. He was a strange bird, all right, wise and somehow disconnected, like driftwood floating on the sea. He had laughed at me. I didn’t know what I should think. Was he only driftwood? I looked at the card, soft from weeks of sitting in his pocket. Unicorn. The Love Doctor. I folded the card in half again and pressed it unthinkingly as I walked.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  High Dive

  Raul showed up on time the next day to look at the car. He wore glasses and was blond. I was very surprised. I had expected someone with dark hair, Mediterranean skin. He walked around the car as though it were a hippopotamus in the zoo, bending a little here and there to observe it better. He had on bright pink shorts and large black sandals with rubber soles and velcro straps. He said “hmmm” to himself many times.

  I waited for him to complete his circles. “Do you want to ask me any questions?”

  “No, no,” he said. “It looks real good.” He pressed the paint on the hood the way a baker might test a ball of rising dough. “How many miles did you say?”

  “I didn’t. But it has thirty-nine thousand.”

  “Hmmm.” Raul circled the front bumper. “And how old is it?”

  “Three years.”

  Raul circled the bumper the other way.

  “Do you want to drive it?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, no. Not right this minute.” He pressed the paint again. “Well, maybe.”

  “Fine.” I went into the house for the keys. I had Raul hold the gate while I gunned the hatchback up the steep driveway into the alley. “Don’t worry,” I called to him, hopping out, “It doesn’t really sound like that. I just have this impossible driveway.”

  Raul smiled and helped me fasten the latch on the gate. “Would you like to get in?” I asked, gesturing to the driver’s seat.

  “Sure.” He crossed to the passenger’s side and held open the door.

  “Wow,” I said, “For me? That’s very nice of you.”

  We took the car around the neighborhood and then onto the coast highway. Raul fooled with the mirror a little bit and for some inexplicable reason, once he got it into place, a spring of some kind let go. He began a stream of chatter that didn’t end until we pulled up again in front of the house.

  He was very articulate and intelligent. He told me about Pittsburgh, where he was an only child, with a father who worked at a newspaper and a mother who was a nurse. He had loved to fly kites as a boy. “I would take these very fancy kites—you wouldn’t believe that some of these things were kites. You know how your average kite looks—” and h
ere he took his hands off the wheel to show me a big diamond shape. He grinned and flung his hands back on the wheel. “Don’t worry, I won’t crash your car. My car. No, it’s still your car. Well, anyway, these kites were real fancy, some of them boats, dragons, skyscraper kites, and I would get them real full and high, pounding with the wind way up in the air, and I would look at the kites against the Pittsburgh sky—” he turned to me, “you know Pittsburgh—it’s all chimneys and industry, and then I would look at the kite way up there like a work of art against the chimneys, and that to me was freedom.” He sighed, rounding a corner, shaking his head with a big smile at the memory.

  “Well, you have a nice car,” he said as he yanked the parking brake. “Or, I should say, I have a nice car. Or, I will have a nice car.”

  “Are you going to buy it?”

  “I believe so. But—I have to check with the devil who sits on my shoulder.” He turned his face and addressed his left shoulder. “Well, whaddayathink?” he said sternly. Then he turned back to me and grinned. “He says no. Which means yes. I always go against his advice.”

  I shook my head disbelievingly.

  “I know,” Raul stepped out of the car and came around to my side. I had already put a foot on the curb. “You’ve never met anyone with blond hair called Raul who consults the devil, have you?”

  I had to laugh. He shut my door for me. “What are you asking?”

  “Asking? I’m not questioning anything.”

  “For the car.”

  “Oh. Well, I had seven thousand in the paper.”

  “Hmm.” He walked with me up the steps to the house. “How about three thousand?”

  I stopped. He stopped with me. “You must be kidding.”

  “Of course. It’s only a bargaining tactic.”

  “Oh.” I continued up the steps and put my key in the door. “So what’s your next offer?” I asked.