by Lisa Unger
On a console table in the elevator lobby, a towering vase of white calla lilies offered a funereal odor, filling the space, tickling my sinuses. The elevator opened, and a willowy blonde dressed in a draping, expensive white fabric brushed past me without seeing, staring at the enormous smartphone in her hand.
“Have a good day, Miss Dykstra,” I heard the doorman say, his voice bright and obsequious. I bet his eyes lingered on her—the spun gold of her hair, the elegant sway of her body.
He rushed to open the door for her. From where I stood, I didn’t even see her acknowledge him with an upward glance from her phone. He was invisible to most people, as well. He just didn’t realize it. Maybe somewhere, to someone, he mattered. But not here.
Inside the elevator, it was quiet and mercifully dim, no mirrors. I hated elevator mirrors, standing in a box, staring at myself. I avoided mirrors as a general rule, turned away from my reflection. I stepped into the private hallway that the owner had kept spare and undecorated and walked down to the door at the end.
Tiger greeted me as I stepped inside. He was more like a dog-cat, curious, always getting into trouble by tipping plants and tearing up throw pillows, sloppily affectionate, a big eater. At night, he slept on the pillow beside me in the gigantic king bed in the gigantic white room—white walls, white dresser, white down comforter, white sheets, white Eames chair in the corner—with views of downtown.
As usual, Tiger had scattered food all over the floor in the kitchen.
“Bad kitty,” I said mildly, petting him as he wound himself in furry figure eights around my ankles.
I swept up the mess from the gray slate floor and refilled the bowl with the stupidly expensive cat food I had to pick up from the organic pet supply store in the West Village. Tiger purred madly, then set to eating as though he hadn’t eaten in days though I’d filled his bowl that morning and had only been gone a few hours. He was lonely. I felt bad for him.
I had never met the artist that owned the apartment. He contacted me via the website where I list my services, checked my references, and then hired me without ever meeting me. He paid me via PayPal. It was possible we’d never meet, as had been the case with many of my previous employers. I preferred that. No connections. No personal contact.
But something about Tiger’s loneliness niggled at me. After sitting with him awhile on the couch, petting him, thinking about Paul, about John Didion, I got up, grabbed my laptop, and wrote Nate Shelby an email:
Tiger’s lonely. Maybe you should consider another cat.
He wrote back promptly.
[email protected].
I’ll think about it. Thanks.
Okay, great. The encounter led me to look up his website. It was spare and beautiful like his apartment, all neutrals, the only bright colors in the large-format oils, some of which I recognized from around the apartment. Big bold strokes of color, spheres, spirals, angry splashes, thick black jags that looked like tears in the canvas. His bio had no picture: Nate Shelby, a graduate of The Cooper Union, is a renowned artist who works primarily in oil on canvas. His work has appeared in galleries and museums around the world. He divides his time between New York and Paris.
In a world where people were promoting themselves from every possible platform, Nate Shelby didn’t seem to feel the need. I searched around online for some pictures of him and only found a couple. One when he was still at The Cooper Union. He stood in a room of other artists surrounding a nude woman who reclined on a chaise. He was thin and pale with a thick mop of black hair, his face a mask of concentration. There was another one of him, grainy, black and white, walking on the Brooklyn Bridge, hands in his pockets, head down. There were no shots of him at glamorous art parties in SoHo or Paris, no publicity images, no profiles in art magazines.
It wasn’t my habit to search out my clients. Usually, I could tell almost everything about someone by his home—what photos were displayed, and weren’t, objects collected, cluttered or tidy, what was in their medicine cabinet (that was a big one), the pantry, the state of the master closet, the home office. I got a sense after living in someone’s space for a while, an energy that settled on me. I knew the person even if we never met. I remembered the apartment and how it felt and smelled, like a relationship that ended amicably but forever.
The maid had been here. I could tell because the whole space smelled of astringent lemon, a tingling clean smell that was still unpleasant. Tiger settled on the windowsill, finding a lovely patch of light close to me. And I abandoned my laptop and sat in front of Nate Shelby’s gigantic Mac and opened the browser and entered the name that had been hovering on the edge of my consciousness all day, a tickle, a tune I couldn’t get out of my head.
three
It was the one thing he could always do, the thing that always made sense. He could build; he could fix. He could understand how a broken thing worked and make it work again. In school, he’d struggled. Words swam on the board, a muddle. He needed glasses, but no one figured it out until fourth grade, so he had trouble learning to read. Math? The only things less understandable than letters were numbers. But in the shop with his father, with the hum of the saw, and the sound of the hammer, and sandpaper on wood, the smell of varnish and sawdust—that’s where it all worked, where the pieces fit together. There was never any question, no abstraction. In the shop, if you had the right tools, you could fix anything. Not so in the world outside.
He wiped down the surface of the work area. His dad was long gone, but Joshua Beckham still followed the rules of the shop. A place for everything and everything in its place. Keep the work area uncluttered. Clean up at night before you go home.
He’d fixed Mr. Smyth’s vacuum. He wasn’t going to charge the old man because it was just that the roller was full of hair; that’s why it had stopped moving. It had only taken him a few minutes to clean it and there was nothing to it. His dad wouldn’t have charged for a thing like that, and neither would Josh. Mr. Smyth, he knew, didn’t have much money—otherwise he’d have just replaced the old vacuum like anyone else would have.
After that, Josh had just finished sanding down and refinishing an old table for Jennifer Warbler; she’d found it at a garage sale and asked if he could “work some magic.” He could.
The table came to him gouged and wobbly, scratches and dull places on the surface, a chip out of the leg. He loved stripping a thing down, sanding away the old, patching up the wounds, watching it come back to life with a brand-new coat of stain.
He wasn’t sure what he’d charge Jennifer. She had three boys who ran her ragged, and she was a good customer, had Joshua out at her place six or seven times a year at least, most recently to fix a hole the oldest boy Brendan put in the drywall—with his brother’s head. (Jennifer: Thank goodness he was wearing his skateboarding helmet!) The loose dowel in the banister, a closet door off its hinges, clogged plumbing, some electrical (though he mainly needed to call in Todd for that—you didn’t mess with wires if you didn’t know what you were doing). Jennifer was married to Wayne Warbler, who commuted into the city to work. You know Wayne is a smart man, but he is not handy. I love my hubby, but I’m not sure he would even know what to do if I handed him a hammer.
Josh wanted to take the table over to the Warblers after he’d finished work, but the varnish wasn’t dry. It was better to do it anyway during the day when Wayne and the boys weren’t there. Jennifer was different when she was alone, when her husband was at work and the boys were at school. She was more exuberant, less distracted. Joshua wanted her to enjoy the table, to see how beautiful he’d made it, not be pulled in a million different directions. Fabulous, Josh! What do I owe you? Like it was just another thing she had to cross off her list. He knew if she had a minute, that she’d see and appreciate how an old thing, one she’d found and recognized as beautiful, had been made new again. She was a person who recognized good work and beauty. Few others did.
He pulled the door to the workshop shut behind him and locked it. He had
a lot of expensive power tools inside, and there had been a rash of thefts and burglaries in the area. The property he shared with his elderly mother was isolated, a total of ten acres now though it had been bigger once. He’d sold off a parcel of twenty acres after his father passed to pay off the old man’s debts and help to take care of his mother. But the house was still far from the road and surrounded by trees; it was just him and his mom now. Nurses came in during the day and some evenings to help with her meals, bath, and medicine. Her best friend from childhood helped out sometimes, too.
The night was cool as he moved up the path between the shop and the house, a path his father had walked every day just before supper. Josh hadn’t imagined that it would have been his path as well. When he was young, he’d dreamed of being all kinds of things—a firefighter, a cop, an acrobat, an astronaut, an ice cream man. No little boy dreams of being a handyman, the guy you call to clean out your gutters because your very successful hedge fund manager husband just doesn’t have the time for that kind of work. But, all things considered, it wasn’t that bad. When his father had passed, and his clients just started calling Josh instead, he fell into it easily. It was right, familiar. And he didn’t have anything else going on after a string of failures: he didn’t past the psych evaluation on the police exam (which he still didn’t understand). He’d abandoned the real estate course he was taking online. The lead singer for the band in which he played bass guitar got a DUI and was in rehab. They hadn’t been getting many gigs anyway—mainly because they weren’t that good.
As he approached the house, Josh saw that Mom’s light was still on upstairs but that the nurse’s car was gone. The nurse had probably left around nine, and his mother was most likely propped up in bed, watching reruns of Criminal Minds, her favorite show, when she really should be sleeping.
Inside, he went to the kitchen (it was exactly the same as it had always been except that some of the appliances had been upgraded ten years ago and needed upgrading again), grabbed a beer from the fridge, and headed upstairs.
“Ma,” he said, pushing the door open a little. “You should be asleep.”
She was, as predicted, propped up in bed, her white hair a little wild, her flannel nightgown too big.
“Hmm,” she said, squinting at the screen. “That’s what I used to say to you. Did you listen?”
He sat in the chair by her bed, took a swig of his beer. On the dresser by the television were his parents’ framed wedding picture and another one of his ma holding him in front of the hospital, a yellow tinge to both photos, she looking impossibly young and pretty like a girl he wouldn’t mind meeting. Even now she still had that sparkle in her hazel eyes—mischief.
“Guess not,” he said, kicking off his boots and propping his feet up next to her on the bed.
“Always with that Game Boy under the sheets,” she said. “Your brother with his books.”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling.
“No one who is told to go to bed ever wants to, young or old,” she said. “The end of another day.”
He watched the rest of the show with her, not really paying attention, just being with her. When the credits rolled, she turned it off, and he told her about his day—about the table and the woman he went to see about her renovation. Fact was, he hadn’t stopped thinking about Claudia Bishop since he’d been out to her place.
“That would be a good thing,” she said. “To have the regular big job and fit the other small jobs in.”
“Instead of just the small jobs,” he said. There was always a need for a handyman; he always had work. But the bigger jobs usually went to a crew. Sometimes he worked for a contractor in town and that was good; he might get a regular thing that went on for a couple of months—doing floors or painting in a larger renovation. But when the market was slow and people had stopped building, there was less work to go around. He’d had a couple of lean years, though things were picking up again.
“Someone’s been calling,” she said, after he thought she’d drifted off.
“The home phone?” he said. “Just telemarketers probably.”
He lifted his cell phone from his pocket, noticing that he had varnish underneath his nails. No messages—no texts or voicemails—except one from his buddy earlier today asking if he was going up to Lucky’s where they usually played pool on Thursday nights. If he brought his bass, he might get to play with the band for a few songs.
“More than usual,” she said. She reached out a small, papery soft hand to him, and he took it in his. He touched his thumb to her wedding ring, which he’d had adjusted earlier that year to fit better.
“I’ll check the voicemail,” he said.
He tried to press it back, a tickle of unease that had been hovering. It was always there, a kind of odd buzz, a tune you couldn’t get out of your head. As long as he was working, busy, he could ignore it, a joker shuffled among the other cards of his thoughts. But once the day was done and there was nothing left to do but watch television and go to bed, it found its way to the top of the deck. So many years had passed. And still.
“You look tired,” she said.
“I’m okay.”
“Sleeping?”
“Well enough.”
“Your father was a bad sleeper, always wandering around in the night.”
“I remember.”
That’s because he was drowning in debt, Ma. We almost lost everything when he died. But she didn’t know. They had an old-school marriage. Dad worked, paid the bills, handled the finances. Mom cooked and cleaned and raised the kids. She had no idea the mess he was in. Not before he died and not after. Take care of her, Josh. Your brother is useless. You’re the one who has to stay on.
Josh turned out the light and kissed his mom on the head, pulling the covers up around her shoulders, a mirror of how she used to tuck him and Rhett in at night. It wasn’t cold in the house, but she got cold. Sometimes he got up in the night to make sure she was still covered.
He walked down the creaking staircase and back to the kitchen where he picked up the cordless phone and dialed the voicemail. Auditory junk mail—a campaign ad, a survey call, the bank offering another credit card. And then, there it was, the voice he wished to never hear again.
“Hey, buddy.” Josh listened to the whispering sound in the background—wind through the trees, tires on asphalt? The long, slow sound of a distant horn. A deep drag and a sharp release of air. Smoking still. “Long time, no see, right? So, look. We have a problem. Let’s—uh—get together. You still in the same place?”
Josh listened to five more messages, all of them hang ups. He put the phone down and rested his head against the cabinet, one that his father had made. It was solid, the smell of wood and stain a comfort. His heart thumped and his throat had gone dry.
We never outrun our sins, his dad had warned him. Someday they come back on you, one way or another.
Josh still thought he knew a few things back then—was it ten years ago now? Did time really pass that fast? Did you blink your eyes and find yourself on the cusp of middle age having accomplished next to nothing? Living in the house where you grew up? Taking care of your mother? Josh had loved his dad, but he’d thought the old man was terribly naïve. The old man was hardworking but not worldly, had never been anywhere, done anything. Not like Josh, who knew and had seen it all back then, or so he thought, who had the whole world before him and a catalog of grand plans.
Dad’s simple ideas: Measure twice, cut once. Don’t use the table saw when you’re tired. Slow and steady wins the race. But philosophies like that were for another time, Josh had thought back then, another universe where things moved more slowly and people still played by the rules.
Things don’t change as much as you think they do.
Josh turned off the lights in the kitchen and made sure the doors were locked. In the cupboard beneath the stairs, he checked the revolver he’d stowed on the high shelf toward the back. It was clean and oiled, fully loaded just as his father
had always kept it, and now Josh did the same.
Josh pushed the gun back far and locked the cupboard door. He was the only one with the key. He was about to climb the stairs when the light in the dark hallway changed. He walked to the window where in the black outside he saw the twin yellow eyes of an approaching car. He went back for the gun.
four
Claudia often dreamed of Ayers. And these dreams—they were so real, so pleasant. They were just lying on the white couch they’d had in that East Village apartment. She had her feet in his lap, and he was massaging them the way he used to, while she drank a cup of tea. Outside, it was windy and the room was filled with that Indian flute music he loved. She felt light, free, the way she used to on Saturday afternoons when they were first married—before.
“Will it always be just like this?” she asked.
“I hope so, darling,” he said, with that peaceful smile he wore so often. “Or even better.”
A crash and the world went dark. Ayers was gone, and the pleasant day outside had turned black, wind howling. And then Claudia was awake, the echo of that bang still hovering on the edge of her consciousness. What was it? Was it real?
“Mom! Mom?” Distant, down the hall. Was she still dreaming?
It was pouring, rain sheeting against her window.
“MOM!”
Claudia was running then, her heart a hammer against the cage of her chest. She and Raven met in the hallway reaching for each other.
“Mom!” said Raven, looking so, so much like the little girl she recently was. “What was that?”
