by R. J. Jacobs
“I’m sorry?”
“Girl, stop.” His head rolled to the side. I tried not to stare at the horrifying burn pattern down his neck. He was in too much pain.
Coming had been a mistake.
“Maybe I’ll come back another time. I’m sorry, Mr. Mandel.” I started to stand.
He reached and grabbed my hand, rough surgical tape scratching at my dry skin. I fought against yanking back. His eyes, black from iris to pupil, seemed to shiver. Vibrate. I sank back into the wheelchair.
“I mean, don’t. Don’t look for him.”
I touched the top of his hand, reassuringly. “I have to, Mr. Mandel. And there’s just not much time.”
“Honey,” he said quietly, “you don’t go looking for the devil.”
The hair on my neck stood up. I looked around me, behind me, as though someone was coming. The air seemed to siphon out of the room—the space dead still suddenly. The clock’s ticking was the only noise. I wanted to not be as afraid as I was; I don’t like needing protection.
He squeezed my fingers. “Just don’t. You seem like a nice girl. Good life in front of you …”
He was trying to help, but I shook my head. “I’m so sorry. Please, Mr. Mandel. What do you remember?”
His voice neared anger. “I’m telling you—”
Warning me.
“—you should stop.”
“Mr. Mandel—James. I don’t stop. It’s actually a problem. If you can tell me about what you remember, I want to try to help. Did he tell you his name?”
“You’re not a cop?”
“No.”
The side of his mouth tightened with disappointment. “Said his name was Matthew.”
I straightened, drawing a shallow breath into the top third of my lungs—as far in as air would go. My cheeks became hot. “You’re sure?”
“Said it a few times. Almost made a point of it.”
“Did he say his last name?”
His head rolled slightly back and forth.
“How did Matt—Matthew—approach you?”
His eyes went off of me, back toward the ceiling.
“Thought he was a cop when I first seen him, real neat. Come to break up our tents on the river. Then I saw the white coat. I was halfway up the bank, near the road, away from the others. It’s why he talked to me first. He asked if I’d like to make forty dollars. Fifteen minutes’ work.” Emotion flooded his voice—the sadness of not being able to return to that particular moment and make a different choice. “I didn’t always live outdoors. Just a lot of things happened all at once. My back. I had a metal job, but couldn’t do it no more. I don’t do shelters—too many crazies. Rather camp, just be outside. You know?”
I understood.
“This was two weeks ago?”
“Yeah. But hot. Seventies even at night. He wore a coat like doctors wear, asked me if he could give me a vitamin shot. Forty dollars. But I hadn’t worked since May; everything was gone.”
I swallowed, guilty to be so impossibly privileged. The idea that five months of unemployment could take away everything stung. Suddenly, I missed DHS.
He wiped at a tiny trail of mucus that ran onto his top lip and blended into moisturizer. “The guy said, ‘It’s just vitamins and being monitored for a little while. To see the effects.’ I didn’t know. Stupid.” He shrugged beneath the blanket.
“White—is all I remember. Seemed strange, I guess. But plenty of strange shit happens living like this. He seemed nice. Didn’t want sex. I asked him if it was okay I’d been drinking that day, and he said it was. Didn’t talk much, but didn’t sound like he was from the South.
“That was it, the first time. Simple. He gave me the shot, just one, here in the arm.” He reached across his torso and tapped his left bicep, where the mossy wings of an aged tattoo peaked beneath the sleeve of his gown. “He said he’d be back the next week, that he’d pay eighty dollars then, and told me he only needed one volunteer so keep the arrangement to myself.”
I thought I heard a fragment of hope in his voice as he told that part of the story, as though the money promised to him might still appear somehow, despite everything.
He cleared his throat. “Next week, at nightfall, I followed him to the van again. His hand shook so bad the needle almost slipped off my skin. He wouldn’t look at me, just at my arm. I remember asking him if everything was all right.”
Tears brimmed in his eyes, then. Mine, too. His head thrashed back and forth against his pillow.
“He started asking, like real caring, how I’d been. How was I feeling. Was I okay? Any congestion. He asked me that.”
I nodded.
He stopped. He looked reluctant to continue, like he’d come to the entrance of a dark cave.
My hand gripped the grooved plastic handle along the side of his bed.
“I guess I fell asleep. I don’t remember that part. Woke up sweating. In the fucking woods somewhere. Sun had gone down, only light was from the dome in the van. Sliding door slamming woke me up. I was in a chair like from a school, my hands behind my back, tight with little zip ties. Against metal. I don’t know how he got me upright; I was out of it, dead weight. My arm was bleeding at the elbow, and he wore a medical mask over his face, a gown like they do here. Told me to relax, tied a cloth over my face when I started to yell. I couldn’t hear traffic, anything. Guess I passed out. Must’ve drugged me.” James coughed a little, and spit hung from the edge of his lip. “Was fuckin’ recording me when I came to again.”
“How could you tell?”
“Things he said. He wasn’t talking to me; he was talking into the camera. Said the date, time, a few other things I didn’t get. Light from the phone or whatever was bright. I could hardly look into it.”
“Did you feel sick?”
A look came over his face. The edge of tears. “A little; I don’t know. Not really. He wore a mask and glasses, then. Wanted no part of whatever he gave me. I tried to spit on him. Just made the rag on my face wet. Whatever injection he gave me didn’t work either or should have worked faster or something. When he turned the recorder off, he went behind me. I could see he wasn’t all there. He started mumbling some kind of prayer, then he told me he was sorry for what he was about to do. I said, ‘Man, just stop. You don’t have to do this.’ He said something about the whole world owing me a debt, something crazy like that. I thought I could run and I tried to stand, but he’d zipped my legs to the chair. I felt a hard blow crack the back of my head.”
I nodded, like I understood. Like any of it was comprehensible. I guess I’d had some practice at hearing things that were unspeakable. After working with abused kids, very little shocked me anymore, but my hands were still sweaty; my breathing stayed short and sharp.
He jutted his chin toward the foot of the bed, voice cracking. “Then he did it.”
I knew what it was.
“Sprayed something on me from a distance. Fumes—gas.” James looked down at his body. “Guess he thought I was unconscious. Then … fire. The wind picked up, or he didn’t have enough of the gas. He was wrong about being far enough out that no one could hear, though. They said two duck hunters found me, called an ambulance.”
My heart hammered. “What did he look like?” I asked.
Mouth downturned, his eyebrows gathered inward. “It was night. Only light was from the van. Dark hair, thinner guy. Medium everything. I don’t know.”
He was describing everyone. I stopped myself from frowning. “How old was he?”
“How old?”
I nodded.
The TV program shifted, lights changing from pale blue to white.
His bandaged hand touched his chin. “Can’t say.”
“You said you thought he might be a doctor. A young doctor?” I pictured Matt’s hair flopping over his right eye.
“Maybe forty.”
It couldn’t be right, I thought. My body seemed heavier. This had to be Matt. But forty?
“Did he say he was
with a hospital or medical center?”
“No. Don’t remember—”
“But you’d recognize his picture?”
“’Course.”
Before I could look for my phone, I realized I’d left it—somewhere. In Cal’s car? With my cane?
Then, a knock at the door. Two swift raps, then the door opening. The nurse from the station, arms folded.
“Goddammit,” I said.
TWENTY-THREE
“Hang on.” I yanked the armorlike Volvo door shut. “Hang on, I’m thinking.”
“Okay.” Cal folded his hands in his lap. He hadn’t asked anything yet.
Inside the car was warm. A thin white fog coated the windows, dotted with smudges I assumed were Olivia’s fingerprints.
A police car pulled into the lot and parked beside the entrance. Another followed.
Allie had been right—Mr. Mandel was going to have a busy few hours. I’d walked out just in time.
I wasn’t sure how much of the story to retell. I figured Cal could do without the details of the fire.
“Everything he said sounds right, but he’s confused about Matt’s age,” I said. “I need a picture of Matt.”
“How far off?”
“Ten, fifteen years.”
Cal sank back into his seat. “Oh, Emily …”
“I know, I know.”
I had tunnel vision. I was neglecting the obvious. This had always been a long shot, and a weird one at that. But still. Something was there. It simply could not be a coincidence. Even if they were impossible to articulate, I knew the connections were real. I knew it. And I could live with tunnel vision to see this through.
Thinking, thinking …
We started back onto the nearly empty highway, both of us quiet. I was half exhausted, half wide awake. If you’ve never been manic, it’s impossible to describe.
Cal was muttering something.
“What?” I asked.
“I asked if you’re okay.”
“I’m fine.”
I was not fine. I didn’t trust my understanding of time. Even if it wasn’t late, so much had happened that the day felt both impossibly long and like it had not yet begun. My hands shook in my pockets.
Cal drove.
At Mom’s, I climbed out. Cal followed me.
“Tell me you’re going to get some sleep,” he said.
I looked up at the window of my old bedroom, dark and vacant. Actual rest seemed an unimaginable triviality. “I’d be lying.”
I climbed the porch stairs. He did the same. If my head wasn’t spinning, I might have asked what he was thinking. As it was, I pushed open the door.
In the living room, Andy paced vehemently, agitated. His fur seemed to stand on end. Had someone been here? I told myself I was imagining things. Yet nothing would have surprised me by then.
Cal pointed at a space in the middle of the living room beside the couch. “This floor okay for me for a few hours? I need to power down.”
“Um, sure. But there’s a guest room, Cal. You’re more than welcome to it.”
He began unlacing his boots, pulling them off. “It’s better out here. I’m way off schedule; lying in an actual bed would be weird. Don’t ask. What about you? You really should rest.”
From the way Cal was talking, I had the feeling that he’d be in full REM sleep within minutes. He took off his coat, rolled it and set it under his head.
“There are pillows, too.”
“Fine, really.”
I needed to think. “I may make some tea,” I said.
He closed his eyes. “You should lay down.”
It’d been, what, thirty-six hours? Yet sleep seemed like a place that I could never get to. So inconceivably far away.
“I’m going to take Andy out.”
I clicked a leash onto his collar and tapped down the sidewalk as best I could. My ankle throbbed, which was no surprise considering the amount of walking I’d done that day, but it seemed an example of the body’s unfair limitations. With each stab, part of me wished I was younger, playing college soccer again—before the aggregate of minor injuries had begun to nag. Before the accident. I longed for a time when I could simply will my body to do things and they would happen. Now my high school friends were pushing babies in strollers, sipping coffee—or even more preciously—chai tea. And married, for God’s sake.
I felt old.
More than that I felt alone.
I think I let myself contemplate life for a moment just to suppress the experience of meeting James Mandel. Who had endured pain I couldn’t imagine. Part of me felt guilty for even trying. When he’d described the man who’d burned him, I’d pictured Matt’s face, but was Cal right to doubt it? Even I had to admit that the connection seemed unbelievable.
I shuddered as I pictured him spitting—or trying to spit—at his attacker through his gag. It reminded me of an article I’d read, maybe a decade earlier, about primitive biological warfare. Tuberculosis patients being forced to spit in the mouths of captured enemy soldiers. What a world, I thought. What a fucking world. I told myself that after Matt was in handcuffs and I slept, I was going to get back to working with kids. Just kids.
Back inside, Andy curled beside Cal. I took off my boot and paced for a while, my socks slipping along the floor. There was the breathy, oceanic sound of cars on the street.
I switched off the light, lay back on the couch. It was like a sleepover, or something, with Cal on the floor beside me. Beams of yellow light lined the floor through the slats of the window shades.
I shut my eyes.
Just for a second, I thought.
* * *
I see a woman from behind, the sky around her a light, heathered blue, like a baby blanket. High, cotton clouds. She’s walking in front of me and I follow her. No smell, no texture, just the hallucinatory, slow pace of her footsteps and the faraway, indifferent chatter of birds. She whispers something I can’t hear. I try to follow closer, but in the maddening passivity of dreams, I can’t.
She’s in the woods, then stepping into water that’s a river and a lake at the same time. Wading in—shins, knees. She’s up to her waist. Just imagining the cold turns all my skin to gooseflesh. I think for a second when she turns that she’s my grandmother, but I know she only looks like my grandmother. She’s actually me.
And I understand it’s not her whispering; it’s a voice from the shore. We both turn to find the voice. There’s someone calling my name and we both open our mouths to respond.
I feel a strange sense of acceptance and awe, like a glimpse into the vastness of a galaxy. I feel like a part of something larger.
* * *
It was dark and I was sweating despite the cold. I looked down to where Cal lay fast asleep, his breathing rolling, automated, unconscious.
I took a shower. Left Cal asleep on the floor. I slid my arms into a jacket and drove toward Matt’s apartment. Since I knew he hadn’t brought a computer in with him, my basic plan—which was stupid—was to snap a photo of him with my iPhone, then run the image over, or somehow get it to Mr. Mandel to ID. Some part of me expected to do this without Matt’s knowledge.
Of course, nothing remotely like that actually happened. Crouching between two bushes, I froze with the knees of my jeans in the dirt until I snapped a few blurry images of a person who was likely Matt but honestly could have been anyone.
I drove home with the fully risen sun in my eyes.
Cal was awake; Andy paced by the front door.
I explained where I’d been.
“Not a great idea.”
“Thanks,” I said, smiling a little.
He sounded military-calm but incredulous, hair sticking up at an angle created by the curve of his shoulder as he’d slept. “Even if it was, you’d need a legit camera with a lens for distance.”
“What did you say?”
“I said forget about getting a picture of Matt with your phone.”
“No, about the lens.”
“That the zoom on your phone isn’t powerful enough. More than a hundred feet, you’d need an external lens—telescoping. We need to think of something else. Public records search …”
Cal kept talking, but I stopped hearing him for a moment.
My medication was upstairs. I’d gone three days without it. It would put me to sleep, and I knew it.
There was no time for stability.
“I actually may have just the thing we need,” I said. “How fast can you get ready?”
Cal leaned forward and picked up his boots.
TWENTY-FOUR
Cal met me at the office after he stopped at home. His boots creaked heavily on the wood floor. “Your office. I like it; it’s … soothing.”
I glanced over my shoulder as he looked around, my voice fast and muttering. “Thanks … I need some patients soon. Otherwise, it’s just an expensive place to hang out during the day.”
I pulled Paolo’s camera down from where I’d set it earlier in the week, then dropped back onto the soft fabric of my patient couch, the camera’s pleasant weight resting in my lap. The juxtaposition of the familiar and foreign struck me, like the nearly wrong feeling of enjoying housesitting.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen that.” Cal smiled. “It’s kinda nice, actually—almost like he’s here with us.”
The thought took me aback, but Cal was right. I liked that, too. Like a friendly ghost, like electricity in the room. I wondered what Paolo would think about what we were doing. About Cal and me.
Stop. Focus.
I found the tripod he hiked with and the case that held all his gear and set it down gently, bracing it between my feet. Blood rushed to my face as I leaned over it, an insistent pressure behind my eyes. Inside, the lenses were encased in thick cylinders like artifacts—like I’d discovered something and had only begun to understand its power.
Canisters, glass. I chose the telescopic lens, unlocked the hard plastic casing and felt its weight in my hand, then carefully snapped it onto the front of the camera.
Cal was asking something.
I couldn’t hear. I felt like I was waking up.
“Emily?”
I pressed the power button, and unbelievably, the camera’s screen illuminated, offering a hundred instructions. In my mind, I could hear Paolo’s voice in echo, giving directions.
