“That’s a legal issue. The attorney I work for—he’s not really much on intellectual property, but he could find someone—”
“I don’t think someone is actually going to come after me for money.”
“Then I’m sorry, Mr. Andersen, I don’t understand. What do you think is happening?”
“Someone is harassing me. Someone wants to upset me. But I don’t know why. I thought, maybe, my second wife—she waived all her rights to my writing income, which proved not to be the smart thing to do. Technically, Dream Girl was marital property.”
“And where is your second wife?”
“In New York, as far as I know.”
“So for her to call from the local radio station or to mail a letter with a Baltimore postmark—” The private eye was smiling, sympathetic, but he still feels foolish.
“There’s another woman.”
“Well, there were two more wives, based on your Wikipedia page.”
He doesn’t like this, although he supposes it’s pro forma for an investigator to investigate. “No, we parted on good terms.” Close enough to the truth. “But I had a girlfriend”—ugh, the word sounds so horribly teenage. “We were living together in New York until about a year ago, but it wasn’t really a formal arrangement. She sort of showed up and never left. Then I sold my apartment and bought this place. My mother was ill and I assumed I would be here caring for her for a while. She died.”
“I’m so sorry.”
There is a refreshing frankness to everything she says, but maybe it’s because he’s been spending so much time with Victoria, whose voice is always sliding up into uncertainty, and Aileen, whose responses are always a little off, as if she’s in a slightly different conversation.
“Thank you. Anyway, my ex—Margot—showed up here recently.”
“And?”
“And she went back to New York on the train. With a ticket I bought. But Margot’s very sticky.”
“Sticky.”
She repeats the word without judgment and yet he feels judged. He is judging himself. He sounds silly and paranoid. He sounds not unlike Margot, who was always convinced that people were speaking about her, plotting against her. “What was that woman saying to you?” she would demand when they got home from a party. Or: “I happen to know for a fact that someone on the committee changed my table assignment at the luncheon.” Manufactured drama in a life where the only drama was who was going to pick up the tab for Margot’s lifestyle. Which, it now occurs to Gerry, is a pretty big dramatic conflict, Maslow’s hierarchy.
“Margot is an unusual woman. She’s sort of like a virus, a cold, that moves from host to host. The only way to get rid of her, usually, is to introduce her to her next—” He doesn’t want to say victim, because he hates thinking of himself that way. Besides, Margot isn’t a conscious schemer. She is helpless, in her own way. One can’t blame her for how she is. It’s like faulting a flower for trying to get water.
“Do you know the Cheever story?” he asks abruptly.
“I know quite a few. I majored in English.”
“Where?”
“No place as fancy as Princeton.” Another reminder that she looked into him. “Washington College in Chestertown.”
Why hadn’t he found a woman like this, Gerry thinks. Someone who reads, but is capable and down to earth. Such broad shoulders—she’s probably very strong. She should be his nurse.
“I’m thinking of ‘Torch Song.’ The woman who shows up when men are dying. I think that’s why Margot is always being … jettisoned by her men. She’s quite beautiful. She can be good company. But she always seems to be waiting—”
He did not want to finish his own thought.
“For men to die? Is she a black widow? Does she have a string of dead men in her past? Does she inveigle her way into people’s wills?”
“No, no, of course not. She’s harmless. Relatively.”
The PI sighs, although not in a mean way. “Look, I could take your money. I like money. I always need money and you seem well fixed. But, alas, I’m too ethical to take on a job where I don’t think I’m going to get any real results.”
“There must be something you can do—”
“I could generate some reports on your second wife, or this Margot—get their financials, check around to see what they’ve been up to recently—it would be more than you’d get from a Google search, but not that much more. Or I could sign you up for the big ticket, surveillance. Maybe twenty-four/seven security, which is costlier still. But—this building is pretty secure. I don’t know what kind of security system you have in here, but there’s a front desk and the elevator has a camera. No one’s coming and going here without being seen.”
“Do you believe me? About the calls, the letter?”
“Sure,” she says. “Why wouldn’t I believe you?”
Because my mother had hallucinations before she died of dementia and I could be headed down the same path. But Gerry, having presented such a physically depleted self to this woman who radiates health and competence, does not want to reveal that his mind could be going, too.
“The missing letter, the lack of proof that the first two calls happened at all.”
“Technology is imperfect. Still, I’m going to give you a technological solution: You order this piece of equipment, a very basic recorder that works on any phone. Attach it to the landline here next to your bed. Technically, it’s illegal to tape people in Maryland without their consent, but it won’t matter as long as you don’t try to use the tape. Right now, it’s my sense that you want the peace of mind that these calls are actually happening. Right?”
“Right.” It’s a relief to feel understood.
She takes out her phone, shows him a website called the Spy Store, points to the model that she recommends. A solution, but it feels like a letdown. He likes her company. He would be happy to be under her warm, watchful eyes. He wants to hear her laugh.
“Even if you think I don’t need it—what if I did want to hire you for surveillance?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“No?”
“It’s not that I don’t like you”—his heart soars a little—“I’ve worked for lots of men I don’t like. Comes with the territory.” And now his heart thuds down, down, down; he could be sixteen again, listening to Mary Ellen King’s earnest assurances that she liked him as a friend. “And it’s not that I think you’re paranoid or delusional. It’s just that—you’re sixty-one years old. You’ve been married three times. Dated quite a bit. I mean, the most basic Newspapers.com search unearths lots of information on your, um, social life. Yet you look back over the last twenty or so years and you can think of only two women who might want to upset you. I’m sorry, but if you think you’ve gotten to the age you are, lived the life you’ve lived, without having more potential enemies than that—you’re not delusional, but you’re not very self-aware. Obviously, the relationship between a PI and a client never works if the client lies to the investigator. But over the years, I’ve learned it also doesn’t work if the client is lying to himself.”
“I can make a more complete list, if that’s what you want.” He says this stiffly, wanting her to know his feelings are hurt, but even as he does, his mind expands and he reconsiders the various candidates. Lucy became convinced he had cheated on her, she was that paranoid. He had cheated on Sarah, but only once, a one-night stand that barely mattered. There were the assistants who worked for him between Gretchen and Sarah, who always ended up in bed with him, but they had pretty much demanded his sexual attention. If anyone was the victim there, it was him. Tara? Their last conversation, so many years ago, had been a little fraught. Yes, maybe the list was longer than he knew.
“That’s admirable,” Tess said. “Most people can’t take such bluntness.”
“So you’ll investigate if I give you a full list?”
“No, no. I didn’t want to say this, it sounds so woo-woo, but I’ve learned to respect m
y intuition about such things. I couldn’t—I couldn’t spend a lot of time in this apartment. It gives me the creeps. Don’t get me wrong. It’s beautiful, absolutely gorgeous. I could stare out these windows all day. But—there’s something wrong here. I felt it when I crossed the threshold. I don’t know, maybe it’s like the Spielberg movie where it turns out a grave has been desecrated. Only the thing that’s buried beneath your beautiful apartment is jobs.”
“Jobs?”
“There were silos here. Grain silos. There were jobs all over this peninsula. Baltimore’s citizens made things, put them on ships and trains. I know I should be happy, seeing these big apartment buildings going up. It’s property taxes; my kid goes to public school. But this place gives me the creeps, big time. I could never do surveillance here. My partner would probably be cool with it—”
“No, that’s okay.”
He doesn’t want a man’s company. He doesn’t need a private detective. He understands that now. He needs a friend, someone bright and lively, a woman who has read Cheever and knows the origin of gaslighting and makes casual references to the film Poltergeist. And even then—does he really want such a woman or is he simply enamored with this woman because of the plain gold band on her left hand, the casual reference to her “kid”—and her utter indifference to him? There comes a moment in life when everything is the road not taken, when it’s just fork after fork after fork.
*
VICTORIA ORDERS the tape recorder for him and it is, indeed, quite easy to set up. He can’t wait for the next call. Only there are no calls. He finds himself waking in the middle of the night, thinking—hoping—if only for a moment, that the phone has rung. But the phone is quiet and his mind is still. He should be happy—and yet.
Finally, eight days after Ms. Monaghan’s visit, he awakens at 2:08 A.M. He knows that something has brought him out of his dreamless sleep, but it’s not a ringing phone. Was someone whispering his name? Yes, he heard his name, but how is that possible? Gerry, Gerry, Gerry. Aileen calls him Mr. Andersen, when she bothers to address him at all.
It takes a moment for him to realize that there is a slender silhouette by the window.
“Oh, Gerry,” the form says, “your view is so beautiful.”
“Margot?”
“Margot? Who’s Margot? It’s—well, you called me Aubrey in the book. But you and I know I have a different name.”
He is frozen. He must be back in the dream from which he thought he woke, one of those nightmares where you can’t move, can’t make a sound. It takes him a moment to realize that he can turn on the light, all he has to do is turn on the light, and he will see who is torturing him, although the woman’s back is still to him.
Instead, he watches in wonder as the woman turns from the window and heads into the kitchen area. It turns out she is wearing a veil, sort of a black beekeeper effect, so he can’t make out her face. She could be anyone. It could be anything. He hears the click of the back door, which leads to the stairwell.
Then, and only then, he begins screaming his head off.
2012
Syllabus for Advanced Creative Writing
Suggested Reading
The Speed Queen, Stewart O’Nan
Zuckerman Unbound, Philip Roth
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
Bury Me Deep, Megan Abbott
Red Baker, Robert Ward
Ghost Story, Peter Straub
The Getaway, Jim Thompson
The Godfather, Mario Puzo
Suggested Viewing
Misery (1990)
The King of Comedy (1982)
A Place in the Sun (1951)
I Want to Live! (1958)
The Wire, season 2
Ghost Story (1981)
The Getaway (1972)
The Godfather (1972)
GERRY DISTRIBUTED his syllabus among a baker’s dozen of students. Although Goucher had been coed for three decades, the school was still overwhelmingly female, as were those admitted to this class. There were three boys and ten girls, two of whom were distractingly beautiful. He had not chosen the students himself, not wanting the chore of reading dozens of submissions. He had trusted the English department to vet the candidates carefully and send him the best, and they had pressured him to take thirteen instead of the twelve he had requested. So this should be the cream of the crop. Should be. He wasn’t so convinced after he read the work that had gained them entrance.
“Although we will be working on short stories in this class—anyone who wants to attempt a novel must have prior approval, please see me during office hours before this week is out—the reading and viewing list is key. I will schedule viewings during a to-be-agreed-upon time that works for the majority of students. You may, of course, watch the films on your own.”
A thin girl, not one of the knockouts, raised a nervous hand. “What do you mean by ‘suggested’?”
“Suggested,” Gerry repeated. “Encouraged. Recommended. Not compulsory, but something that will enhance your experience.” Blank stares. “Not part of your grade.” Happy smiles.
“Here’s what will affect your grade. Turning your work in on time. Providing comprehensive critiques on others’ work. Finally, it is important that you show up. Attendance is literally thirty percent of the grade in this class. You can’t be successful in a fiction workshop if you don’t show up. You can’t be successful at anything if you don’t show up.”
He had not taught for almost fifteen years, but it was like muscle memory. The words rolled out, familiar and yet new. He was energized in a way he had not been for a long time. Goucher might not have Hopkins’s rep, but what it did have was an alum who had donated a ridiculously wonderful amount of money for a visiting professorship. He would receive $150,000 and a living stipend as the first Eileen Harriman Creative Writing Fellow. It would have been foolish to say no, even if it meant returning to Baltimore, tricky because his mother assumed he would move back into his boyhood bedroom. He did not. He took a sterile short-term lease behind the Towson mall, telling his mother he had to be within walking distance of campus. She accepted this lie readily, which made him feel guilty. Hadn’t his mother endured enough lies from men? But the house on Berwick was like something out of a ghost story—only not Peter Straub, more Shirley Jackson. He worried that if he went back in, he would never get out.
Besides, he was a newlywed of sorts, married less than a year to Sarah, and he would be boarding the train to New York every Friday to return to her.
He had taught this class before, more or less. The Abbott book was new; he recognized that he needed some women in his syllabus. He expected the students to assume he would be Team Novel all the way, and he generally was, but there was some subtlety to his method. Obviously, The Godfather (film) trumped The Godfather (book). Ghost Story (book) defeated Ghost Story (film) handily. The Getaway was the best one-on-one matchup because novel and film both had their merits, but the book was an existential nightmare whereas the film was a straight-up love story.
The Red Baker–Wire bracket, as he thought of it, was interesting because the novel was working on a human level, whereas The Wire had bigger fish to fry. Gerry preferred the former, but he understood why others argued for the latter. The idea was to shake the students up, to get them to form their own ideas. The novel had been changed forever by film and television; there was no going back. The question was how to go forward.
Their own short stories, the ones they had submitted—they were more scenarios than stories, but so it goes, that’s why they needed a class—were clearly shaped by cinema. The nonlinear ones owed much to Pulp Fiction and maybe the TV show Lost, not that he had ever watched the latter. Then there were the zombies. So. Many. Zombies. What was the appeal of zombies? He really didn’t get it. They weren’t even a good horror device; he had hoped Shaun of the Dead would kill the zombie motif forever. But zombies, being zombies, kept coming back.
“Given that this is our first meeting, let’s start wi
th an exercise—I want you to take the line, ‘He was vacuuming the rug when the phone rang’ and proceed from there.” They looked disappointed by the prosaic line, or maybe they just didn’t understand a world where phones sat on tables and rang. He would tell them when they were done that the line was Raymond Carver’s and Carver had written a short story once with nothing more than that opening line in mind. Not that Gerry was a big Carver fan, but it was a good exercise.
Or was it? When he asked who wanted to share their work, he was amazed at how their imaginations defaulted to mundane or hyperbolic. One girl had a SWAT team enter in the second paragraph. Another simply described vacuuming. The best were two of the three boys; they were clearly the most talented, and that was going to be tricky in this environment, but what can one do? Luckily, the third boy was a moron, so that balanced the scales a bit.
One of the gorgeous girls was also surprisingly good—there was real wit in what she wrote and her comments on others’ contributions were compassionate but incisive. When the class left at the end of the three hours, Gerry noticed the moron had his hand on the small of the gorgeous girl’s back, piloting her, the way some men do with women. It always made Gerry think of a wind-up toy with a key in its back. Well, this girl was quite a toy. Slinky, Asian—
“Mr. Andersen?”
Another student had planted herself in front of him, blocking his view. A large girl with cat-eye glasses and blue hair.
“Yes?”
“I want to work on a novel.”
“As I said, we should talk about that during office hours.”
“Which are—?”
“It’s on the syllabus.” “See you then.”
God help him, it was the girl with the SWAT team.
March 6
“THERE’S NOBODY HERE,” Aileen says.
“Are you sure?”
“Where would she be?” With a sweep of a thick arm, she indicates the lack of hiding spaces on Gerry’s top floor. Really, the only place for an adult human to hide would be under his bed, and isn’t that something to contemplate.
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