The Shadow Man Read online

“Hmm. Forty-six hundred.”

  I shook my head. “That’s much too little.”

  “Of course. We’re still busy bargaining.”

  I had to laugh again. “Okay, next?” I set the car keys on the kitchen table and moved a couple of magazines aside.

  “Forty-seven hundred.”

  “Forget it.”

  Raul sat down. “Boy, this is an exhausting game.”

  “You could stop taking baby steps.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Raul. “How about—I give you three thousand now and four thousand in a couple of weeks?”

  I frowned. “That means—you’re going to take it for seven thousand, but not right away.”

  “That’s right. Sound good to you?”

  I frowned again. “I’m not sure. How do I know you’re good for the rest?”

  “Well, you don’t exactly, but I think you could give it a whirl.”

  It was my turn to say “hmmm.” I squirmed on my chair. “I have to think about this.”

  “Here.” Raul reached in his shorts pocket and opened his checkbook. I thought of Geoff’s checkbook that I had flung across the bank. “Two hundred dollars. Non-refundable. Or would you like cash?”

  “What’s that for?”

  “My down payment. While you make up your mind. And if you decide you don’t like the deal, you can keep it.”

  “What? Are you for real? You’re giving me two hundred dollars.”

  “I know. I’ve asked you to trust me, so this shows my trust in you.”

  “No it doesn’t. You’re bribing me. You’re bribing me, for two hundred dollars, to go through with this deal. And then you’ll walk off with my car and all I’ll have is two hundred dollars.”

  “Three thousand two hundred dollars.”

  “Which was just about your original offer.”

  Raul grinned. “A little more.”

  I put my forehead in my hands. “This is too weird.”

  He patted my shoulder. “Please don’t worry so much.” He waited a minute, watching me agonize. “I was a Boy Scout, you know. I can put out fires, tie knots, sharpen bowie knives—and I pay my debts.”

  “I thought they made fires.”

  “Well, yes,” said Raul. “They’re very versatile.”

  “Okay.” I reached for his check. “Give me the two hundred.”

  “Well, I’ll have to fill it in first.” He picked up a pen from the table. “May I use this?”

  I slumped against the back of the chair. “Go ahead.” He would have to hurry or I would lose my nerve.

  “Your name?” said Raul brightly.

  “Kovalsky. Leslie.”

  “How rude of me. I don’t think I ever asked you.”

  I had to spell it for him. I waited while he finished writing the check. He signed his name with even, measured care. “So why are you called Raul?” I ventured dully.

  “Good question,” said Raul. “You want the truth or fiction?”

  I didn’t think I needed to respond. Raul watched me alertly. “I take it you want the truth. But, I warn you, you’ll find it hard to believe.” He paused.

  “What is it?” I said grudgingly.

  “Ha! I knew you’d be interested. My mother was great pals with her obstetrician. His name—his last name, rather—was Raul.”

  “Huh,” I grunted. “That is weird.”

  “You know, a lot of people think my name is Rawl. Like Paul.”

  “They do? What’s your last name?” I peered at the check. “Oh, my God. Smith.”

  “Isn’t it too bad?” agreed Raul. “I wish it were Rahmani or Schnittenhausen or Gonzales. But it’s only Smith.”

  “Well,” I folded the check in half. “What do we do from here?”

  “Well,” Raul echoed, “Tomorrow I find you somewhere and give you a cashier’s check or money order for the first part of our deal. Actually, twenty-eight hundred, if you don’t mind. Then, in a couple of weeks—maybe three—I find you again somewhere and give you the rest. Four thousand.”

  “And then I’ll give you the pink slip.”

  “Deal,” said Raul, offering me a handshake.

  Deep into the night, I had a strange dream. I don’t often dream, or, at least, I don’t often remember my dreams. I once read that the best way to keep a dream record is to set your alarm clock for sixty-minute intervals and force yourself to write your dreams down. With a buzzer going every hour, I was sure they would be nightmares. Anyway, I dreamed that I was in this swimming-pool-size jacuzzi on a very bright day and I met a man in it called Winged Eagle Foot. He was an Indian, of course; he said he was forty-three but he looked barely thirty. His body was golden and he had on a blue bathing suit. His bow and arrows lay by the water, and we were the only ones there. We sat on the concrete, our feet dangling in the whirling foam. Winged Eagle Foot leaned very close to me, his near-set eyes peering blackly out from beneath his furrowed brow and fine, stringy black hair. His hands gripped the edge of the pool; I could feel the slightly greasy warmth of his body as he held his face right in front of mine. “Are you a philosopher?” he demanded.

  I shook my head. Winged Eagle Foot got into the water and raised his leg in a ballet stretch. He pointed his toe. The nail was broken and very white. He frowned as the foam whirled at his waist. “You,” he said commandingly, “are a philosopher. I promise you you will soon be attacked.”

  “Attacked?” I said fearfully. “By what?”

  Winged Eagle Foot nodded. He was standing on both legs in the swirling water now. He placed an arrow in my hands, laying it horizontally across my palms, his fingers pressing the smooth hardness into my skin. My arms gave a little as he pushed the arrow down on me, and then bobbed as his pressure let up.

  “Attacked by what?” I asked again.

  “You know,” Winged Eagle Foot said, conspiratorially and consolingly, his frown easing slightly and his lower lip jutting out as though we had discussed this before.

  “Men.” We said the word together.

  Winged Eagle Foot nodded. “Follow the arrow, philosopher.”

  Raul was good for the money, it turned out. At least the first part. He stopped in at work and the front desk buzzed me. He was waiting in the lobby in a pair of very dusty jeans. White dust covered his arms and he had a painter’s paper cap on his head. There were flecks of dust on his glasses.

  “Sorry I look such a mess,” he said, both to me and the receptionist, “but I came straight from a job.”

  “Oh.” I took a second look at the dust. “What do you do?”

  “Right now I’m a tilesetter.” He spoke with the same vigor and artificial exactness of the day before. He was as precise as Geoff, but earnest instead of calculating. “Tile Inspiration. That’s the name of my business.”

  “Oh.” I was surprised. Somehow, I didn’t expect him to have a business.

  “We’re in the Yellow Pages,” he offered, as if to substantiate what I might think to be a hot-air boast.

  “That’s great,” I said.

  “Well, I think so,” agreed Raul, “although sometimes I get a little sneezy.” He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “Anyway,” he continued, “If you don’t mind, I’ll drop by tonight to pick up the car. Would that be good for you?”

  I nodded.

  A few hours later, I watched him shoot out the driveway in my faithful little VW. It had been a good friend. It had even come back to me after the theft. 2EGR391. Too Eager. I hoped I would have no regrets about the deal.

  “What are you going to do, Leslie?” the Reiters asked me over Thanksgiving turkey. Paul had very kindly invited me to dinner. I met Lorraine for the first time, and Rob and Alicia, the two Reiter kids. The Reiters poured me glasses of cold duck to go with the steaming turkey. The Reiter children gobbled chocolates, crumpling the fluted wrappers in their fingers as they listened to the latest on the Geoff story and sale of my car. Paul, throwing glances at the kids from the corner of his eye, conducted a selective style of in
terview. Robbie and Alicia stared at me unabashedly, reaching for the candy plate, the light over the table reflecting off their unused silverware. I let Paul dictate the pace. He was shaping some kind of learning platform for his offspring—almost as though they were attending the slow-motion screening of a high dive. Yet the video was not complete: The diver rose off the board like a swan, curved in the air, swooping down like a bird, twisting, folding, bending, flipping, stretching out—and—

  That was it. The tape was cut off. I had called Cornelia because Geoff was playing games with us. I was going to hope that the guy who was buying my car was good for the rest of his debt. The Reiter children could have a replay, as many times as they liked, of the beginning of the dive, but that was all there was. I repeated the first curl for Paul as many times as he quizzed me.

  “Hear that, kids?” he said. “Those are the kinds of people out there today.”

  They had finished the chocolates. Two wrappers, empty little paper cups, sat fatly at the center of the table, as though awaiting a second chance. Lorraine rinsed the plates and filled the dishwasher in the kitchen.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Eye of the Tornado

  Winter, if you could use the word in a place where palms cupped the sunrays in seventy-degree ardor and sea lions baked their hides on gently heating rocks, was swallowing the daylight earlier each week. My first move on coming to a dark house after work was to turn on the lamp and twirl the rod on the mini-blinds. Except for running in the violet cloak of dusk, life was uneventful until the light blinked one evening on my answering machine. I hit the play switch.

  “Ya, Leslie,” a voice said. “This is Cornelia.”

  There was a pause. Her tone was low, laced with hesitation. “I decide to give you a call.” She stopped. The tape squeaked faintly as it wound along. Then her voice started up again. “I think … er …” Rumble, rumble, went the tape.

  I frowned. I pressed the rewind button.

  “I think … er …” said Cornelia; the tape gargled, and cut itself off.

  Well. Her voice had dropped too low. My machine cut people off if they spoke too low. The clock on the wall said ten to six. I wondered if I should call.

  Ten to six. Geoff would be driving home from work. I reached for the phone.

  Geoff answered.

  My mind raced. I hung up.

  Why was he home so soon?

  It was no good. I wasn’t going to try again.

  I gave it a shot the next morning, early, after I knew Geoff had gone. Once again, he picked up. I dropped the receiver. I was disgusted. For God’s sake, I thought, why do I have to be afraid of him?

  I dialed the number later, from work, and this time I got the machine.

  Well, Cornelia was just going to have to call me again.

  It took a couple of days. I was lying in bed, watching dots of morning sunlight floating on the wall as the shadows of leaves moved them lower and higher. The phone rang just as the sun dots crossed into the depths of my closet. I reached an arm out to pick up the receiver.

  “Leslie.” She sounded clearer today. “This is Cornelia. I hope I am not calling too early.”

  “No, I’m awake,” I said.

  “Ya, I just want to talk a little to you. I have been thinking what I am doing here. This is crazy.” She paused, gathering her breath. “Why am I with this guy? He is not real.” I heard another intake of breath. I wasn’t sure if she was searching for the right words in English or if she was upset. Maybe both. “He is just telling me all the time that he loves me, that he wants to stay the rest of his life with me. But I know this is not real. I know he is just saying this.”

  “Yup,” I said. “He’s playing some kind of weird game.”

  “He tells me it was a big mistake with you. He thought we were not having a good relationship, but now he wants to try this again. He is saying he will not see you anymore. You know, he was calling me every morning in Germany—it was afternoon for me, but morning for you—to tell me that he loves me and that he hopes I am having a good time with my family. Every day, he called me. And this whole time he was staying with you.”

  “Oh my God!” I exclaimed, recognition hitting me like a snowball aimed at the gut. “That explains why he left so early in the morning. He didn’t have to be at work till eight, but he always left at six fifteen.”

  “Ya,” she said simply. “He had to be home to call me. And you know what he would say? He said, ‘Oh, I miss you so much—I hate that I cannot wake up with you. Have you sold your stereo? Have you sold your furniture?’”

  “What?” I didn’t get it. “Your stereo and furniture?”

  “You don’t know the whole reason I go back to Germany?”

  “I thought it was a vacation.”

  “Ya, that too, but it was to sell all my things so that I could have money to live on for a while in America and then we could get married and I could get this—what are you calling it?—green card.”

  “You’re kidding! You were going to get married?”

  “Ya.” The word was her trademark, a “yup” with the last letter aspirated. It was brief, on an intake of breath: quick and to the point, like the dropping of a camera shutter.

  “Oh my God,” I said again, adding in a weak echo, “I thought the two of you weren’t getting along.”

  “Ya, I was not getting along with him. I was hating this relationship these last days. But he was always the same—loving me very much, bringing me cookies, roses, little presents.”

  “Wow. I can’t understand how a person can say one thing and do another thing. This guy was lying the whole time! And he was telling me for those three weeks how he would like to spend the winter getting to know me, that I was the person he had been waiting for!”

  “Ya.” She did her “yup” thing again. She had a tendency to skip consonants. I guessed she did it in German, as well. “‘You are incredible,’ he was telling me. Did he say this word to you also, incredible?”

  “All the time,” I said.

  She let out a short, sardonic laugh. Each of us dipped into reverie for a moment, which she broke with another laugh.

  “What was he wearing when he was with you?”

  “Jeans, mostly. Shirts. What do you mean?”

  “Ya, shirts. What shirts? Did he wear this blue shirt, with short sleeves?”

  “A bright blue shirt? He wore it a lot.”

  “And a white one—with bicycles?”

  “Yes.”

  “These are all shirts that I was giving him over the summer.”

  I heard the hiss of the fire coals. Every time a fact slid into its proper slot, the coals hissed louder and the jump rope turned. Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap! I like coffee, I like tea, I’d like to know if …

  The list was endless. The amaranth cookies he fed both of us, the piano music we fell asleep to, the single roses we got when he came home from work. We ran out of time; Cornelia had to go to a housecleaning job. “I can meet you after work,” she offered. “Four o’clock? Five?”

  The receiver clattered as I put it back. The sunlight had moved out of the closet, throwing a wide band of yellow on the open closet door. I watched the pine branches playing with the shape for a while, and then got up to brush my teeth.

  I waited for her to knock at the door, standing by the stove and hugging a mug of tea. The wind blew gustily outside. It had whipped the car all the way home from the Y like a manic stagecoach driver perched above his horses. Unsatisfied with the ride, it beat against my cellophane bag and me, flattening us sideways as I struggled with my key in the front door. And now, against the stove, I could feel the drafts snake about my legs, cold eels’ tongues icing my creeping nervousness.

  Boy oh boy, I thought. I am really in for something. Cornelia was showing up—on the sly—and we were tumbling, like inflatable dolls, toward the next step. Whatever that was. Leslie, honey, I heard Larry’s voice scolding, you could be one hell of a fool.

  Well. I was either sane or
I was insane. I stared into the rose-brown circle of my tea. I was both. Because “sane” sat smack at the end of “insane,” I was sure that whatever I was doing was all right. Subject closed. I had no time to change my mind.

  She knocked on my door at five-thirty. She was taller than I was, bigger, with straight dark-blond hair pulled back in a pony tail. She wore a loose denim jacket—the baggy, popular kind sold in those vast, nameless stores in all the malls. She had little feet and clean white canvas sneakers, the laces tied in small, tidy bows. Her face was elfin and at the same time grim, a combination which struck me as odd.

  “Hi, Cornelia!” I announced. It was too loud. I shut the door behind her. She stared around my living room, her feet planted like a dancer’s in an unconscious third position. Then she shuddered.

  “Are you cold? Would you like some tea?”

  “That would be great.” She followed me to the kitchen and watched me put the kettle on. I could tell she was taking me in. What are we doing here, I thought as I lit the gas burner and let her watch the side of my face. I looked up at her and smiled. Her eyes were wide, glittery bright, and worried. She could not smile back. She was uneasily electric—an intermittent spark—like the heat lightning I remembered from summers in the east, white-blue static flashing above the trees.

  We took the tea to the couch and sat down, me on the chair and her on the couch, and she stretched her long legs in front of her, under the glass of the coffee table, and we both were silent for a while. We sipped the hot steam from the mouths of our mugs. I asked her about housecleaning. Having no green card, she was apparently stuck doing house-cleaning and babysitting, both of which she said she hated. Then the conversation turned to money and Geoff—the skinflint made her pay half the rent even though he was making out like a bandit on the airplane job. I shook my head in sympathy. The guy was a creep, any way you looked at him. Her eyes wandered over the room as she talked, and we watched each other in turns, me first, as she stared at her white sneakers, and then she watching me, and then me again. We were mirrors, sort of, the two of us—both trapped under the same scaffold of questions. Uncertainty—a huge, hairy spider, pale and bug-eyed—squatted over us. And, as we traded notes, we pushed one hairy leg at a time from the hole it was boring in our shoulders until the whole beast toppled and rolled in a lump into the corner.