The news is implying that her boyfriend is sketchy. They always imply that the boyfriend, or husband, is sketchy. I'm angry on his behalf. I am also angry because this basic, default assumption usually turns out to be right. Part of the logic behind it is that someone has to care about you very deeply if they are going to bother beating you to death with “multiple instruments."
The only fact which does not change between newspaper editions is the fact that she is dead. That part is accurate. I know because she isn't answering messages, and because she hasn't finished the painting that's supposed to be in a show next week. I know because I'm looking after her dog, and she would never leave her dog alone for this long if she could possibly help it.
The dog is small and bug-eyed. She loved it. I made fun of her for it. It never barks, it just whines when it needs to excrete.
The newspapers are retelling a familiar story, visible in the details they choose to print, the ones they ignore, and the ones they completely and utterly misrepresent. They are not doing this by choice. They have no choice. The pattern is hardwired.
They are telling a story about a girl who goes walking alone. She meets a wolf. The end. It is all very sad, but with clucking of tongues and with shaking of heads we must admit that, in some small way, she had it coming.
I am not at all sure that I want to know the other story, the one under the latex gloves of a medical examination, but I do know that it is not about a girl who went walking alone in dark woods and died there. She was smart, and she was careful, and she died at home. She did not have it coming.
* * * *
"They're just trying to shrug it off,” says Arnold. He prints out another strip of “50% OFF” stickers and puts them on books. I stand by the register. There are no actual customers, so nothing more than standing is required of me. “That's what you get for being one of those bohemian artist types. It couldn't ever happen to one of us, the ordinary folk who qualify as persons."
"They're not shrugging it off,” I say. “They're fascinated. But whatever, I still think you should talk to your mom. Talk about editorial slant. Talk about fact-checking, for chrissake. They could at least get her name right.” Arnold's mother edits our largest local rag. I am not sure how much power she actually wields, given that the whole paper is owned by a company in Utah, but she is the editor.
Arnold shrugs and scratches his beard. His hair and beard are two different colors; one red, the other brown. “What I don't understand,” he says, “is how there could be multiple causes of death. How can there ever be multiple causes? Rasputin drowned. That's it. He drowned. He had various and diverse injuries, but when it comes right down to it, there is only ever one cause of death, and his was drowning."
"There's never just one cause of anything,” I say. Arnold, whose ears are purely decorative, gives a smug snort and goes on about Rasputin for awhile.
The bell on the door finally dings. A kid pushes his own stroller inside. A woman follows, taking kid-size steps to avoid stepping on the toddler.
"Can I help you find anything?” I ask. This is not a selfless question. Please let me help you find something. Please give me something to do. Ask me a question I can answer.
She smiles and shakes her head. I point in the direction of the kids’ books, but the kid is already headed that way.
"What a great stroller,” I say, interrupting Arnold. “Looks like an escape pod with bicycle tires. Why didn't we get strollers like that? Mine had tiny plastic wheels."
"I have no idea what my stroller was like,” Arnold said. “But listen—thirteen inches. Seriously. Rasputin took it out for the palace guard when they demanded identification."
"You don't remember your stroller?"
"No. I don't. Kids creep me out. They creep me out under normal circumstances, and last night I got attacked by several little bastards on my ride home."
"Really?"
"Yeah,” he says. “Really. Kids threw bottles at me from the overpass bridges. Happened at Ninth Street, and then again at Fifteenth.” Arnold and I both commute to the bookstore by bicycle, but from opposite directions. He takes the bike path that used to be a railroad track: a long east-west ravine cutting through the city and underneath the north-south roads.
"Did you get hit?” I ask.
"No,” he says, “but the broken glass blew out one of my tubes. I had to replace it this morning."
"Shit,” I say.
"Yeah,” he says. “That whole trail is set up just like a mountain pass in a Western. You know, the one you're guaranteed to be ambushed in. I always get that feeling. It's like when you walk into a bar and you know exactly how the kung fu fight would go down, if it ever went down. You can see it happen. So I wasn't surprised when the bottles started dropping on my head."
"Shit,” I say again.
"Yeah,” he says.
I ask how kung fu fighting would likely go down in the bookstore, and Arnold launches into a fully choreographed description. He has clearly thought about this before.
I wonder if Verona fought back. She probably did. I try not to imagine this happening.
* * * *
The stages of grief are not linear. They cycle rapidly and at random. My own version of Bargaining has more to do with time travel than making deals with some kind of deity; I think about the one thing in the past that, if changed, would fix the present and make the whole story work out the way it should. It would be helpful if I could repeat the day in question in an endless loop, broken only by my discovery of the right thing to do. This does not seem to be happening.
Instead I keep dreaming that I am a detective. Every night I figure it out. I go to her apartment, look around, and understand what happened, Sherlock style. He could always read a place, and all the little things that make a place, as though the dining rooms and street corners of London were built out of language to be read.
In the morning I can't remember, or else I do remember my imaginary understanding and it no longer makes sense.
* * * *
The next day I check up on Verona's boyfriend, just to check up on him. He's glad I called, but neither one of us has much to say. He asks about the dog. I tell him about the dog, leaving out the most annoying and smelly details. He would be the one looking after the dog if he wasn't allergic. He tells me that his allergies are the primary reason why he and Verona never moved in together.
There is a pause. One of us is going to ask. It turns out to be him.
"Heard anything?"
"No,” I say. “You?"
"No. The police just remind me that forensic tests take longer than a commercial break."
"Yeah,” I say.
He sounds broken. He sounds like he is not actually there. This might just be a bad cell phone connection.
The dog skitters across the kitchen tiles, pauses to lick my toe, and moves on. Its name is Parsifal, but I still think of it as “the dog."
* * * *
"Hey,” says Albert when I get to the store. “I found the best book cover in Alternative Health. It's a photograph close-up of someone sticking a long, purple gemstone in their ear. I kid you not. The ear takes up most of the cover, and it's like the rock is a magic Q-tip from the seventies. I put it on display. Go take a look."
I go take a look. Crystal Healing is propped up on an eye-level shelf beside Herbert RavenMonkey's Athenian Vampires. Next to that is Confessions of a Pet Psychic.
I pick up Confessions of a Pet Psychic and page through it. There is a chapter on communicating with dearly departed pets, and chapters about understanding the past lives of pets (all domestic cats remember Egypt, apparently), but there is nothing about communication with pets who witness a murder in a small apartment. I put the book back on the shelf.
"It happened again last night,” Arnold tells me when I get back to the register.
I stand perfectly still and wait for him to tell me who else has been murdered.
"What happened?” I finally ask.
"Hoo
ligans ambushed me on the bike trail,” he says, and I start breathing again.
"Did they throw bottles?” I try to sound concerned rather than relieved.
"No,” he says. “They were hiding under one of the bridges, behind the big concrete columns. As I got closer they all came out, six or seven of them. They stretched across the trail and held hands like paper dolls, just to block my way."
"What did you do?"
He grins, impressed with himself. “First I shouted. Then I took the chain and padlock off my shoulder and started swinging it around like a lasso."
"Really."
"Oh, yes. They wouldn't budge, and I wouldn't slow down. So I swung the chain out in front of me and hit a pair of clasped hands. They let go, and I rode through the gap. No cries of pain. Nothing. Not a word. I'm pretty sure I broke some fingers back there, and I didn't even get a reaction."
"You could have killed one of them,” I say.
He shrugs. His casual attitude toward violence makes me want to kill him.
"No,” he says. “I don't think I could have."
"A heavy padlock to the head wouldn't have done it?"
He looks at the ceiling. “I got a pretty good look at them, and I really don't think I could have done much harm. Do you know how many places overlap with the land of the dead?"
"No,” I say.
"Me neither,” he says, “but I am pretty sure that the bike trail between ninth and fifteenth is one of them."
* * * *
Other places of overlap include reflective surfaces, shadows, and dreams. This is because these are the three traditional methods of seeing someone without actually looking at their physical body. Be careful around people who don't have shadows. Don't trust anyone who doesn't show up on film. They have obviously misplaced their souls, or else never had them to begin with.
I know this because of a thick blue book in the folktale section, second shelf down from the top.
I am also fairly sure that the freight elevator in the back of the bookstore overlaps with the land of the dead—not because of shadows and reflections, though it is fairly dark in there, but because of the noises that the cables make.
Today the cables make a noise that sounds very much like Parsifal the dog. I'm bringing a huge pallet of books down to the basement, which is where we unpack pallets of books. I don't know what the dog-cables are saying. I don't know if there is any such thing as an elevator psychic.
This particular elevator does not stop automatically. You have to hold down the button, watch the wall of the shaft go by through the rusty fence-door, and let go of the button at precisely the right time to line up floor and elevator. You have to take inertia into account. It's tricky. I'm usually good at it, but today I'm listening to dogs in the cables and trying to understand them. Today I hold down the button until the elevator clangs against the bottom of the shaft and gets stuck.
I let go of the button, which does nothing because I am already as far down as the elevator goes. I push up, and this also does nothing. I do some shouting. Then I use my cell to call the front desk of the bookstore, and leave a message for Arnold when he doesn't pick up.
There is a manual crank upstairs, all the way upstairs on the fourth floor of the building. It should be possible to unstick the elevator with the crank. I tell this to voicemail, and hang up, and wait for it to happen. Then I start pacing. There is plenty of room for pacing. You could set up a Ping-Pong table in here. You could fit an entire car in the elevator, which used to be convenient because our storefront used to be a car dealership.
Verona loved knowing the history of a room, a building, or a broken piece of furniture. She figured that places have memories, and she tried to read the language of those memories. She painted moldy ventilation ducts and claimed that the mold was just the next stage of vent-evolution. It's lovely stuff, her art of urban decay, but it is also unsettling. It gives the papers another reason to imply that she flirted with dark and dangerous things, and therefore had it coming.
I'm still pacing, and I notice that I'm angry, and I wonder if I have any right to be, if the stages of grief are reserved for family members rather than friends and classmates and other peripheral mourners. I feel like a poser, monopolizing someone else's tragedy for an emotional thrill. Then I feel like a bastard for ever not-grieving, for letting Arnold's inane, ironic obsession with bad new-age books distract me. Then I feel nothing much. Then I'm angry again. Then I laugh because Verona would knock her knuckles against my forehead and tell me I'm a dink. I could always count on her to tell me I'm a dink. She would love this elevator, with its old wooden floor and its rusty fence-doors at either end.
I stop pacing to open one of the doors, behind which is the concrete wall of the elevator shaft. I can hear a faint cable-squeak. I can also hear the sound of countless people standing perfectly still.
"What happened?” I ask her. She doesn't say. She isn't there.
Cables whine, and the floor shudders.
"Shut the door!” Arnold shouts from very far above me. “I can't turn the crank with it open."
* * * *
That night I dream that Parsifal has been mummified and left in Verona's apartment. The eyeballs, each one already larger than the dog's little brain in its little cranium, have been replaced by stones that are even larger. It blinks, dry skin scraping over stone eyes.
"He isn't allergic,” says the mummy dog in a deep baritone.
I wake up.
I remember how Verona's boyfriend cried on my shoulder at the wake. He left a small snot trail on my suit. I wonder if the police know that he isn't allergic to dogs.
Arnold misses his shift the next day. He doesn't pick up his phone. This is not necessarily cause for alarm. Arnold never picks up his phone.
His mother stops by in midafternoon. She wears a commanding pinstripe suit and looks at me as though she wishes that she didn't have to.
"My son will not be coming in today,” she says. “He is getting stitches."
"What happened?” I ask.
"Someone threw a bottle at his head,” she says.
"I'm sorry,” I say.
"So am I,” she says. She looks around to make sure that there are no customers nearby. “I'm also sorry about your friend.” She does sound genuinely sorry. I reluctantly abandon the speech I've prepared about fact-checking.
"Thank you."
"Are they making any progress?” she asks.
I shrug. “You would know before I do."
"Not necessarily. Do you have any theories of your own?"
I am very much aware that this might be on the record. “Beats me. She knew some pretty strange and intense people."
Arnold's mom shakes her head and waves one hand in the air. “Don't worry about strange and intense,” she says. “Worry about the ones who aren't really there, the ones who give shitty hugs."
She gives me a hug, and it's a pretty good hug. I can't remember the quality of Verona's boyfriend's hugs. I try to remember if I've ever seen his shadow.
That night I close the store, count the cash, and turn the key. I ride to the bike path. I take the opposite direction from home.
No one throws bottles or shoots arrows down from the sides of the ravine. I pause underneath every bridge, waiting. Sometimes I can see hands and faces in the bridge support pillars, revealed by crumbling cement.
Verona would have loved these pillars. She would have mixed pigment with the pulverized cement dust and made wonders with it. She would have known what the cement remembered, and she would have encouraged a stretched piece of canvas to know it, too.
I pause underneath the Ninth Street bridge and wait.
They come out from behind the pillars, and from within the pillars. They are all children. They are all male. This bothers me. They are not holding hands. They don't touch each other, and they do not touch me, but they have me surrounded. Two sodium lights are whining above us. None of the children have shadows.
This bridge overlap
s with the land of the dead, but dead is a very big place. It is probably absurd to assume that they all know each other. When I meet someone from Australia, I always ask whether they know the only other person I've met from Australia. They never do. I still have to ask.
The dead who live under bridges and throw bottles might know what happened to her. They might be able to tell me what story she is actually in.
Maybe Verona's boyfriend will be arrested by a Violent Criminal Apprehension Unit when forensic tests are finally concluded. Maybe he will confess to every brutal detail and give a tearful and truthful confession that explains absolutely everything.
It won't happen. I'm sure of that. They may track down who, but never a satisfactory why. He won't say, whoever he turns out to be, because he doesn't have a shadow. The dog won't say, not even in dreams, because the dog doesn't know.
This is a story about not-knowing. It is frustrating, and I am sorry about that, but I don't get to know why this happened to her, and neither do you. Just please remember that she is not Red Riding Hood. She is not in that story, not unless you can accept woods and wolf as extremely large variables. She did not have it coming.
I am surrounded by children without shadows. I should ask why she died, because it is possible that they know.
"Is she okay?” I ask instead, even though I know better, even though there were multiple instruments, even though the casket was closed at the wake.
They turn around, almost in unison but not quite. Each one of them leaves, walking back between concrete pillars and across overlapping borders. This might be my answer, but I don't understand it. I can't read it. Verona might have known. She might have found this place legible, with its crumbling pillars and sodium light, but she is not here. No one is under this bridge but me, and I'm leaving.
I ride back the way I came.
* * * *
It has occurred to me a couple of times, at a couple of different funerals, that eulogies are interstitial sorts of stories. They contradict, acknowledging loss while trying to put it off awhile longer. They take memories and make them more memorable for having been shaped and shared, and therefore just a tiny bit more permanent. They are stories told at thresholds, in the borderland places where the rules change, and a ghost story is a eulogy with a flashlight held under the chin.
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