The Finder: A Novel

by Colin Harrison

  So she moved from her cozy, so-totally-hip apartment on Twelfth Street in Greenwich Village, where everyone white under the age of fifty was addicted to the Internet, to a three-bedroom house in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, one of the many little tribal neighborhoods that fed the city each day. Still largely Italian but now everybody was living there—Brazilians, Chinese, Russians, Indians, Mexicans, Vietnamese, Africans, even Iraqis. All working crazy hours trying to squeeze onto the jammed, hot-breathed dance floor called American turbocapitalism. Rang your doorbell, asked if you had work. Painting, roofing, cut grass, you need car washed, lady? Bay Ridge was also the same neighborhood where her parents lived, so she could keep an eye on them. She bought the house using the money the old partner had funneled to her, and this pleased her. She could walk to the subway and always get a seat going into work. Easy, a little shopping on the way home. But her life became quieter and even lonelier. She paid her bills, she planted marigolds and peas and lettuce in the spring, she drank a glass of wine with the news and another before going to bed. The months flew by. She perused the newspaper but forgot what she read, she never remembered her dreams, she bought sensible shoes, she didn't bother to masturbate. Nothing was happening. She considered actually going to church, for the social interaction. How terrible was that?

  Certainly she never expected to meet anyone. But one warm Saturday afternoon she opened her door and saw a man in a baseball cap and green T-shirt standing in the yard next door. He was shielding his eyes and inspecting the roof, a short yellow pencil and clipboard in one hand. Meanwhile, she inspected him. "Hi!" she suddenly called, surprising herself. He turned toward her and slipped his pencil into his breast pocket. They got to talking. His father owned the house, he said, and he was just taking care of it, for now. His old red pickup truck sat in the driveway and she realized she'd seen it there a few times before. His name was Ray Grant, he told her. She liked Ray, liked him in the way women will sometimes like a certain man. He seemed unaware of how his shoulders and arms looked in the T-shirt, the way his jeans hung on his hips. She didn't see a wedding ring. His fingernails were clean. His eyes were the bluest blue, which she always loved, and she saw both confidence and aloofness in him. He wasn't going to tell her anything, or not much, even.

  Okay—she threw herself at him! Invited him in for coffee, and she heard his heavy boots behind her as they went up the stairs into her kitchen. Coffee became a late lunch. He wasn't in a hurry, didn't check his watch. Didn't say much, either. She just talked and talked, got herself more excited.

  "So your dad owns the place next door?" she repeated, when the conversation paused. "Maybe I've seen him a few times, come to think of it, but not in a while."

  Ray nodded. "He's sick, so I came back to be with him."

  "Sick?"

  "Very sick."

  "I'm sorry—is he, will he get better, I mean?"

  At this Ray cut his eyes to the floor in quiet sorrow. Lifted his baseball cap and put it on again. Full head of hair, she noticed. She could see the pain in him, how he tried to keep it inside. I kinda love this guy, she told herself, what's wrong with me?

  "No," Ray finally said. "He's not going to get better."

  She just looked into those blues eyes. "I'm so sorry."

  "It's a rare blood-vessel cancer. Angiosarcoma. They went in looking, thinking it was something in his kidneys. But it was all through him. He's got, I don't know, a few weeks maybe. Hard to judge."

  She'd just met this man. Don't pry, she told herself.

  "Came back?" she said anyway. "I mean you. You came back from where?"

  He looked at her in a way that meant he wasn't going to tell her. "I was away," he said. "I've been back about three months."

  "Oh."

  "I've been mostly overseas the last five years or so," he added. "Don't need to say much more than that."

  "Even if I'm dying to know?"

  "Even then," he said, but gently.

  She played with the edge of the tablecloth, folding it back, smoothing it, folding it again. "Sounds sort of glamorous."

  "It's in no way glamorous."

  Time to change the topic, she thought, time to stop acting like a schoolgirl. "What did your dad do before he got sick?"

  "He's been retired a long time. Before that, a cop."

  "Are you a cop?"

  "Nope."

  But there was something in the way he said this, a pause that meant something. "You just look after your father's house?"

  "Yes."

  "He has just one rental?"

  "Six."

  "All kind of like the one next door?"

  "He kept buying them, back in the eighties when they were cheap."

  She did the math. The houses probably weren't fancy, but with the staggering rise in real estate prices in New York City, the sick father was a wealthy man by everyday standards.

  "Six rentals?"

  "Yes."

  "So you're here in the city," she ventured. "Are you trying to find gainful employment, are you dating five girls at once, are you reading any good books lately?"

  Ray smiled. "You want those answers?"

  "Girl doesn't mind knowing a few things."

  He nodded playfully. Game on. "Okay, sure. I'm not looking for work. I'm taking care of my father, nothing more than that. I'm not dating five girls at once. I was seeing someone but she told me we were over a few weeks ago—"

  "Was your heart totally broken?"

  He studied the question. "It presented an opportunity to think."

  "That sounds like a lot of you know what."

  "It might be. But I try not to be too attached to anybody or anything. I fail but I try."

  "Are you Buddhist?"

  "No, but they have interesting ideas."

  She just studied him, this Ray Grant. He was earnest. No spin, no attitude. She liked this.

  "And as for the books, yes, I'm reading a couple of good books right now. Does that answer your questions?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  He nodded. "So," he said matter-of-factly, "what are we doing here?"

  "What are we doing here?" she repeated, knowing exactly what he meant.

  Ray looked at her, into her. She saw his intensity, the thing she had sensed the first moment she saw him. Now it was focused on her. She wanted this but it scared her.

  "What do you want to do?" he said.

  "What—do what?"

  He just gazed into her. She couldn't lie to him.

  "You seem like you want to do something now," he went on, more softly. "I could be wrong, though."

  "Yes," she whispered, then nodded. "I do. Yes."

  There was a silence in the kitchen, a silence through which many messages traveled. Outside the afternoon had become cloudy and the kitchen was shadowed. She felt nervy and excited now.

  "Go take your clothes off and get in your bed," Ray told her.

  She couldn't even manage a little ironic smile, like who do you think you are? He was being truthful. He knew who he was and he knew who she was—and in her case that was somehow already naked. "What are you going to do?" she began, breathing a little too quickly. "I mean, what are you going to do while I'm removing all my clothes and becoming even more vulnerable?"

  "I'm going to make a phone call and then I'm going to walk straight into your bedroom and we will get to know each other, is my guess."

  "Then what?"

  He smiled. "Then—what do you think?"

  "Are you going to kill me?"

  Maybe she was joking, maybe not. Actually she wasn't.

  "No," he said.

  "You promise?"

  "I promise."

  "Okay then." She tried to sound breezily confident. "I'm trusting you, Ray Grant."

  She stood up slowly, then turned into the hallway. I must be crazy, she told herself. This is the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life. She pretended to walk down the hall but stopped. She heard the little musical chime of his cell phone bein
g turned on.

  "Hi," came Ray's voice, echoing from the kitchen. "I'm going to be late . . . no, no, the house is fine. The roof has a few years to go. I'll be there before nine . . . Did she clean you? . . . Good. How's the pain? . . . Remember, the doctor said you could—I'll come home now, Dad, if it hurts too— . . . well, okay, but I want you to please please take it if—there's no reason to—okay? . . . I think they're playing Baltimore again, just turn it on . . . Yeah, okay, I'll see you then."

  She heard him snap the phone shut and she hurried to her bedroom. She kicked off her shoes, pulled back the covers.

  "Hey there," Ray said in the doorway.

  "Hi." She turned around. It had been years since she'd been undressed in front of a man. She didn't look as good as she used to, no getting around it. "You promised, remember?"

  He flicked off the light. They kissed in the darkness, then she pulled away and sat on the bed to finish undressing. "Honestly, I never do this," she protested aloud. "It's not like me at all."

  He didn't say anything.

  "Is your silence judgmental?"

  "Nope."

  "What is it?"

  "Confessional," Ray said.

  "That's a funny word. What are you confessing to?"

  "My own weaknesses."

  "You don't look weak to me."

  He had undressed and came now and stood before her. She put her hands on his chest first and felt the warm firmness of the muscles there. He was relaxed, which relaxed her.

  "You surprised me," came his voice. "Didn't see it coming."

  "You might be lying," she whispered. "But I appreciate the attempt." She leaned into him and kissed his belly and drew her hands down the rippled flank of his stomach and felt a long section of puckered, knotty flesh.

  "Oh," she said. "What?"

  "Scar," he answered in the dark, voice soft. "Old scar."

  "What did it?"

  "Something very hot."

  But she barely heard this. She drew her hands around the hard arc of his buttocks, felt the muscle there. Now her eyes were closed. She felt a little dizzy. Someday I will be an old woman and will need things to remember, she told herself. This makes me happy. She moved her hands again.

  "That's good," he said.

  Later, after he had not killed her, she rolled in the damp sheets. Rolled ecstatically, as if at the edge of a far dream. I had forgotten, she thought, I'd actually forgotten.

  "You hungry?" she murmured. "We never had dinner."

  "Absolutely."

  They stood languidly, in no hurry. In the half-light she saw the scar on Ray's stomach. Patchy skin grafts, maybe a couple of operations. What did it feel like to have the front of your stomach burned off ? Don't ask him, she told herself, he doesn't want to talk about it.

  She pulled on a robe as he slipped into his pants. In the kitchen he sat in a wooden chair while she made pasta and a quick salad. He also knotted his shoes, slipped his cell phone into his pocket, and put his baseball cap back on. For a moment she worried that he was eager to leave, that she had disappointed him somehow. But then he leaned back in the chair and her anxiety passed. She lit a candle and opened a bottle of wine. I'm going to make a little toast to the pleasures of sexual intercourse, she thought. She took out two glasses, poured wine in them, and set the table, feeling better than she had felt in—oh, God, in years. Maybe we'll do it again tonight, she hoped. I'm going to keep this guy here to the last minute. She glanced at the clock, knowing her mother would call before too long, exactly what she didn't want. This reminded her of Ray's father.

  "Do you need to call your dad?" she asked.

  "He's probably watching the Yankees game. I'll need to check in, though."

  By phone? Or did he have to go back to his father's house? She was about to ask when she noticed car lights slide up her driveway.

  "Weird."

  "What?" asked Ray.

  Holding the steaming pot of pasta, she glanced out her kitchen door.

  "It's a limousine in the driveway. A man is getting out. More men."

  She took a step backward.

  "You're not expecting anyone?"

  "No." She looked again. "They're checking out your truck."

  "I forgot to lock it."

  "They're not opening the—they're coming here, I think!"

  The large figure knocked on the glass of the door. Ray stood up. Now a hand pounded the glass.

  "Hello?" she called anxiously. "Who is it?"

  The pane of glass above the door handle shattered. She screamed and jumped back behind the kitchen table.

  A gloved hand reached in past the broken glass and unlocked the door. The hand disappeared. In stepped a big Chinese man in a black suit. He moved to one side and three more Chinese men came in.

  "Ray," said the first man, pointing. "You go with us."

  Ray moved between her and the men, protecting her. "Who are you guys?"

  They didn't answer. The first Chinese man pulled back his coat to show his gun. Two of the others slipped behind Ray.

  "Miss lady," said the Chinese man. "Do not call the police. Or we will come back here and"—he saw the pot of pasta in her hand—"and we will eat up your bad noodles."

  The two men put their hands on Ray's shoulders. A tremor ran through him, she sensed, a desire to respond violently that he repressed right away. He looked at her. "It's all right," he said. "Don't call the police. I mean it."

  But she knew it wasn't all right. She stood at the kitchen door as they dragged Ray down the steps and into the limo.

  Was this really happening?

  She wanted to scream, she needed to scream. They were taking him away! The doors shut, and the long car reversed smoothly out of the driveway, then disappeared.

  What to do? Shouldn't she do something? She gazed down at the broken glass on her kitchen floor. Her hands shook. They could have hurt her. What were they going to do to Ray? He didn't know the men, but—but what? He accepted their presence, she realized, as if he had quickly figured out who they were. She picked up the phone. Ray said don't call, so I won't, she thought. No, actually I will. She started to dial the police. But stopped . . . maybe it would make things worse for Ray, and she couldn't take that chance.

  Instead she slipped the phone in her robe pocket and went out the kitchen door. Ray's red truck sat in the same place in the driveway parallel to hers, and she tried the passenger door. It opened. She stepped up high and climbed inside, aware that the cab light inside illuminated her to anyone driving by or looking out a window. She was expecting to find fast-food wrappers, coffee cups, all the usual guy-in-a-truck junk. Instead she found a clipboard with Ray's father's name and address on it and notes Ray had taken on the house. She inspected his tight, careful handwriting. Under the clipboard lay three books, one on the effect China was having on the global economy, another a philosophical treatise on death and consciousness, and the last a thick history of Afghanistan published in London in 1936. I have absolutely no idea who this guy is, she told herself. She popped open the glove compartment. Engine repair records, clipped carefully together. Beneath them lay a ten-inch bowie knife, the handle worn and taped over. She slipped the knife out of the sheath an inch or two. The blade gleamed. It scared her and she slipped it back.

  From there she looked under the seats. Beneath the driver's side was a standard roadside emergency kit, with flares, flashlight, and jumper cables. Under the passenger's seat she pulled out a girl's yellow canvas tennis shoe. Everything about it suggested flirty sexiness. She set it next to her own foot. Too small for her. A fine dainty foot. A thin sexy foot attached to thin sexy ankles. Not worn at all, new. She felt a little jealous now, a little mad. Ray had definitely had sex with the woman who'd lost this shoe. You just knew these things. That was what he meant when he said the word "confessional." Maybe this woman was the one who'd broken it off. But why? Who would dump a guy like Ray? she thought. She suddenly remembered the gasping noises she'd been making in bed, her hands cl
utching the sheets.

  Frantic to know something, to do something, she swept her hand all the way under the truck seat. Her fingers found a Tupperware container. She popped open the top. Inside was what—a dead animal? No, it was hair, thick and curly and black. How disgusting! A note was tucked inside. She pinched it up, careful not to touch the hair. The note said:

  Hey Ray-Gun, I told you I'd send you my beard. What did you do with yours? I'm riding the surf here in Melbourne. Come visit me if you want. I'm with you—given up e-mail. It's too fast. I need to slow down, a lot. I'm just waiting for the next assignment. Also I got some weird head pains from those pills they made us take. I am having my usual postmission meltdown. It's the little bodies that do it to me most. You understand, I know you do. Sorry to hear about your dad. I know you love him so much. Not sure if I can keep doing this. Will drink and whore my way to higher consciousness. Maybe you survive it better than me. Maybe not. I don't have many ideas anymore, not sure if I'm actually a genuine American. Might not be. Can't see myself going home, just too weird. You get any good ideas, send them to me. Let me know if you get a new assignment. All right, surf's up in like an hour.

  Z

  Beneath the scruffy hair was a photograph of two muscular men with long beards. Ray and another man, presumably Z, the one who'd written the letter. Deeply tanned, in dirty T-shirts, mountains behind them. Soldiers? she wondered. She didn't see any weapons. Her eyes lingered on Ray's arms and shoulders, their obvious strength. She knew what they felt like against her fingers.