Shadowkiller

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Not that he was particularly fond of French food. His taste ran more to burgers and onion rings.

  But most women, he’d discovered, enjoyed being extravagantly wined and dined. He had dated plenty of women, been infatuated with many, though not in love. Now, on the heels of his latest failed relationship, a disillusioned Mack had finally reached the conclusion that when it came to dating, it was a big mistake to go all-out from the very beginning. He was only setting up those women—and himself—for disappointment down the road, when his finances, not to mention his energy and his emotions, would inevitably be depleted.

  He’d met Chelsea Kamm back in December, when he was Christmas shopping at Saks on his lunch hour. She was browsing the silk scarves as an attractive salesgirl helped Mack pick one out for his sister. When she stepped away momentarily, Chelsea leaned in and said, “That’s not really for your sister, is it?”

  Startled by the question, he looked up and found himself looking at one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen.

  “I thought you were an angel, standing there,” he later told her. Bathed in the glow of thousands of white twinkle lights, everything about her—from her white blond hair to her porcelain skin to her ivory cashmere coat—seemed ethereal.

  “Sure it’s for my sister,” he told her. “Why?”

  “I thought you were just saying that because you were trying to hook up with the salesgirl and you didn’t want her to know you were shopping for a girlfriend. Or your wife.”

  “If you knew me, you’d know that I would never do that,” he said. “I’m a lousy liar.”

  “So you really do have a sister?”

  “Yup.”

  “What about a wife?”

  “Nope. Not even a girlfriend.”

  “Kids?”

  “Not unless you count Marcus.” He explained about the eighteen-year-old he’d met a few years ago through his volunteer work with the Big Brother organization. Marcus had graduated from high school in June, enlisted in the army, and just sent a Christmas card saying he’d finished basic training in Kentucky and was about to head overseas.

  “I’m not counting Marcus,” Chelsea said.

  He got her phone number on the spot, and they went out for almost three months—“out” being the operative word. Fancy restaurants, exclusive nightclubs on New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day, a couple of ski weekends in Vermont . . . his idea, all of it. Really, he only had himself to blame.

  The whirlwind got the better of him when a cold snap set in just as the stress level at the office heated up. All Mack wanted to do on February weekends was curl up on the couch with a movie and takeout; Chelsea didn’t see why they couldn’t fly off to the Caribbean.

  “No better R&R than that,” she crooned, resting her red-manicured fingertips on the sleeve of his suit coat.

  “I’m exhausted, Chelsea, and I’m broke.”

  “I’m exhausted, too, and I’m more broke than you are. I really need you to take me away for a few days. Come on.” Her fingers tightened on his arm, and he cringed as if they were bloody talons, finally acknowledging that his first impression of her had been wrong. She was no angel.

  Whatever he said next—later, he didn’t even recall what it was—launched the fight that resulted in her ceremoniously deleting every trace of him from her Palm Pilot and cell phone, thus ending the relationship.

  Looking back and dissecting it, he knew he probably should have realized at the very beginning—when he bought his sister a silk scarf and Chelsea treated herself to a couple of them, same pattern, different shades of blue—that she had expensive taste and a petulant, self-indulgent streak. Those were her fatal flaws.

  His own was that he’d always been a sucker for glamorous, statuesque blondes.

  “What guy isn’t?” his friend Ben asked, when the relationship was on the verge of crashing and burning a few weeks ago.

  “Randi”—she was Ben’s wife—“isn’t a glamorous, statuesque blonde.”

  “I didn’t say you should marry them. Just that I get why you want to date them. Don’t beat yourself up, Mack. You’re only human.”

  “I’m a walking cliché—and I’m dating one.”

  “So what are you going to do about that? Dump her and only go out with mousy, unassuming brunettes from now on?”

  “Maybe.”

  He couldn’t think of a better description for Carrie—or a reason not to give her a chance.

  Of course, it wasn’t just that he was open to a new type of woman when he met her last Tuesday night. Having learned hours earlier that his mother was dying, he was spiraling; she unwittingly wandered into his path, broke his emotional freefall.

  In the days since, he’d found himself forcing his thoughts to go to her when they wanted to wander someplace darker. Forcing himself, too, as the weekend approached, to take out her number and dial it—to make a date, because that was what he usually did on Friday or Saturday nights, and he wanted some semblance of normalcy in the face of tragedy.

  Or maybe he really was just lonely and isolated in his grief, wanting someone to talk to, selfish as that might be. Someone who would listen.

  For the first time in his life, he was at a loss as to where else he might turn to find that human connection.

  Not Ben, close as they were. It was one thing to confide in him about women, or work. But Ben had recently been promoted: he was no longer just Mack’s friend and colleague; he was also his manager.

  You don’t cry on your boss’s shoulder.

  Mack would have to tell Ben about his mother eventually—he would need time off to be with her. But not just yet, when his emotions were so raw that he wasn’t sure he could get through a conversation about his looming tragedy without breaking down.

  There were other friends, too, of course—friends who were always happy to share a couple of beers or watch a ball game. But guys—at least, these guys—didn’t summon each other to pour out their personal problems.

  Nor could he turn to his father or his sister or brother-in-law, or even the dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins back in Jersey. Some were closer to him than others, but they were all facing the same loss and seeking the same solace. He didn’t want to commiserate. He wanted to make sense of what was happening, or forget that it was happening, or maybe he just wanted to purge.

  Sometimes, when you needed someone, only a perfect stranger would do. Rather, a decidedly imperfect stranger.

  Carrie had nice brown hair, pleasant features, and a decent figure that, when you added them all up, fell far short of beautiful, and even somewhat short of pretty.

  But something about her appealed to him. She had struck him, Tuesday night, as—maybe not lonely. More like . . . alone. Isolated. Maybe not by choice. She was new here, probably didn’t have a lot of friends. Even if nothing came of it . . . he decided to see her again.

  “Hi,” he’d said when he called on Friday afternoon, “it’s Mack. From the park. And the walk. The other night.”

  Another woman—a woman for whom flirting was second nature—might have quipped, in return, “Hi, Mack from the park and the walk the other night.”

  Not Carrie. She just said, “Hi.”

  That was fine with him. He wasn’t feeling flirty himself, and not in the mood to make small talk, so he got right to the point. “Do you want to get together tomorrow night? Are you busy?”

  “No. I’m . . . not busy.”

  Her stilted response made him wonder if he was making a mistake, but he forged on. “So do you want to?”

  “That would be nice,” she said. “Where do you want me to meet you?”

  That she didn’t assume he was going to come to her doorstep to escort her, hand on elbow, was so refreshing—and such a relief—that it didn’t strike him as unusual at the time.

  Only now, when he walked into McSorley’s and looked around for her, did it occur to him that she might have wanted to give herself an out. Or that she might not have wanted him to see where she
lived, for whatever reason. Maybe she was destitute, or super-wealthy, or married . . .

  Not immediately spotting her, his mind raced through the possibilities.

  He was right on time. Was she on her way, maybe running a little late?

  Had she stood him up?

  Taken one look around this place and fled?

  With Saint Patrick’s Day looming, the legendary Irish pub was raucous and even more crowded than usual. Nearly all the patrons were male; most of them guzzling dark or light ale from glass mugs, shouting at each other and the bartenders above the music and the other patrons who were shouting at each other and the bartenders. Those who weren’t shouting or sipping were feasting on the bar’s signature dish: wedges of orange cheese and raw onion served with saltines and hot mustard.

  Adding a visual note of chaos to the cacophony, a hodgepodge of paraphernalia—mugs, caps, framed vintage photographs and clippings—cluttered the walls all the way up to the high dark plank ceiling.

  What the hell are you doing, Mack, inviting a girl here on a first date?

  Trying to prove a point—to himself, and to her.

  The point being: Don’t get your hopes up. This is as good as it gets, so take it or leave it.

  Who’d blame her if she’d already left?

  But she hadn’t. Suddenly, he spotted her, sitting alone at a table in the back. No, it was more that he recognized her. He’d seen her and glanced right past her at first, not realizing it was she, because she looked . . . again, not beautiful. She wasn’t beautiful. But now he saw that she was actually pretty.

  Her hair was loose and she was wearing makeup, and a navy blue sweater with jeans—not tight, but her clothes hugged her figure in a flattering way. But she wasn’t trying too hard. No, she was as unpretentious as the place he’d so deliberately chosen for their first date, and for him, tonight, it worked.

  Gazing at the chalkboard menu, she didn’t seem to see him as he made his way across the sawdust floor, enveloped in the familiar scent of beer and the lively chatter, and the familiar opening strains of one of his favorite U2 songs playing in the background.

  He made his way past a group of drunken former frat boys, swaying arm-in-arm. On another night, Mack might have been right there with the likes of them, sing-chanting the familiar lyrics. But I still . . . haven’t found . . . what I’m looking for.

  Not tonight, though.

  Tonight—he had a feeling he might have found it.

  Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody . . .

  The lyrics of the old Cat Stevens cover ran through Allison’s head as she climbed the steps of her Hudson Street apartment building, holding an open umbrella in one hand and in the other, carrying a paper-in-plastic bag of Chinese takeout and a rented Blockbuster video.

  The movies had been pretty picked over at this hour on a Saturday night—to get the new releases, you really had to show up before the start of the weekend. But she’d gone out with friends from work last night, and she was supposed to have a date tonight—a blind date with a biologist named Justin, who was a cousin of a friend of a friend.

  He’d called to cancel last night, saying something had come up and he’d get back to her.

  He hadn’t yet, but she was hoping he would. He’d sounded nice and casual and normal on the phone, as promised by his cousin and her friend’s friend. In general, she wasn’t entirely comfortable with blind dates, but they seemed to be a necessary evil when you worked long hours in an industry that suffered a perpetual shortage of straight, eligible men.

  So here she was, spending yet another rainy March weekend alone, trying to get the old song out of her head because it reminded her of her father, who’d constantly played that ancient Cat Stevens Greatest Hits cassette on the tape deck in his car.

  “ ‘Another Saturday Night’ was Stevens’s remake of an oldie by Sam Cooke. It was released in 1974, the year I met your mother,” he would tell her. “That was a great year for music. Here, listen to another one from that year.”

  Then he’d play Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle,” and they’d sing all the lyrics together.

  And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon . . .

  She loved that song.

  Then, anyway.

  After he was gone, she couldn’t bear to hear it.

  When you comin’ home, Dad? I don’t know when . . .

  Yeah. She’d hated that song for years now.

  At the top of the stoop, Allison shifted the umbrella to feel in her pocket for her keys, and raindrops spilled down her cheeks like tears.

  Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody . . .

  But on a raw, blustery night like this, she’d just as soon stay home. She’d been hoping to rent a good scary movie like The Sixth Sense, but it wasn’t out yet on video, and she’d already seen Stir of Echoes, the only other recent thriller they had in stock. So she’d settled on a romantic comedy, deciding she might as well live vicariously through Julia Roberts. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  And she wouldn’t be the only one, according to Luis, who was a huge Julia fan.

  “What woman wouldn’t want to be Julia? I would if I were a woman.”

  “You mean, you’d want to be the characters she plays,” Allison told him. “Although—that’s probably the same thing.”

  “Not at all. Julia is an amazing actress, Allison. She’s going to win an Oscar one of these days. You mark my words.”

  “Yeah, sure, Luis. I wouldn’t hold my breath for that if I were you.”

  Finding her keys, Allison quickly unlocked the door. As she stepped into the vestibule of her building, she heard someone call her name from the street behind her.

  “Hold the door!” Her upstairs neighbor, Kristina Haines, came hurrying along the shiny wet sidewalk, sans umbrella. Her dark, wet curls were wind-blown and her cheeks were bright red from the chill. Her coat was open, as usual, and she was wearing her waitressing uniform: white blouse, black slacks, and black sneakers.

  “Thanks!” Kristina took the steps two at a time as Allison stood waiting for her. “I forgot my key!”

  It wasn’t the first time for that, either. “Is Ray home?”

  “He’s supposed to be—when I left for work he said he was staying in all night—but I’ve been calling and no one’s picking up.”

  That didn’t surprise Allison. Kristina’s live-in boyfriend didn’t strike her as the most trustworthy guy in the world—not that she’d offer that opinion to Kristina. They were friends, but not the kind that shared deep, dark secrets. Allison had never really had—or wanted—a friend like that. Luis was becoming one, but she even held him at arm’s length most of the time.

  “What are you doing home from work already?”

  “Slow night,” Kristina told her, huffing a little as she reached the top step, “and Maury—he’s the manager—asked if anyone wanted to leave. I volunteered because I figured Ray was home, but who the hell knows where he went? He’s not picking up his cell, either.”

  “You can come hang out with me until he gets back, if you want,” Allison told her. “I’ve got lo mein and a movie.”

  “Sounds fascinating. Which movie?”

  Allison held up the video in its blue and white Blockbuster box.

  “Runaway Bride?” Kristina read off the label. “It was okay. Not great. I saw it in the theater last summer on my first date with Ray. I knew that night he was The One.”

  Yeah, well, you might want to rethink that, Allison wanted to tell her. Hopefully, Kristina would figure that out for herself.

  “But I’ll watch it again,” she went on, “because it beats sitting here on the steps for God knows how long, waiting for Ray to come home and let me into the apartment.”

  “Maybe you should give me a spare set of keys,” Allison suggested. “In case this happens again.”

  “That’s probably a good idea. And you can give me your keys, too, in case it happens to you.”

  “Su
re,” Allison agreed, though she knew it wouldn’t happen to her. Growing up, she’d learned to be responsible at an early age. Her mother was the one who frequently forgot her keys—although there was one night when she was so high that Allison had actually deliberately locked her out.

  That was early on, after her father left, when she still thought that anything she said or did could make a difference in her mother’s behavior. Eventually, she realized that there was no reasoning with an addict, and, ultimately, resigned herself to the fact that her mother wasn’t long for this world.

  Things would have been different if her father hadn’t left. Mom wasn’t straight, by any means, before that—in fact, Allison assumed her drug use was the reason her father had walked away.

  What about me, Daddy? I didn’t do anything wrong. How could you just leave me?

  Because he was obviously a coldhearted SOB. She’d just somehow never grasped that while he was around. Which, even when he lived with them, wasn’t much. He worked as a long-haul trucker and was gone for weeks at a time. Sometimes when he came back, he’d bring little gifts for Allison and her mother: salt water taffy from the East Coast, tiny vials of gold flakes from a river out West . . .

  Allison was torn between longing to see him and dreading his homecomings, because when her parents were together, they often fought. About what, she couldn’t even remember. Everything, probably. Shouting, tears, slaps, slammed doors. A couple of times, one or the other would take off in the car, tires squealing, then come crawling back in the morning to beg forgiveness. Not from Allison—from each other. Nobody ever apologized to her.

  Once her father was gone for good, her mother’s habit spiraled out of control, devouring every shred of normalcy in their lives. Allison was angry at her some of the time—how could she not be?—but mostly, she just felt sorry for her. For both of them, her mother and herself; they were victims.

  It was her father who infuriated her, more and more as time went on. She’d channeled her anger toward him, while every ounce of compassion she possessed went to her mom.

  For her brother, Brett, she had only indifference.

  He was so much older than Allison. Far too old to be a playmate, but not old enough to become, or perhaps just not interested in becoming, a father figure to his little sister. By the time she was in high school, he was married with children of his own, living on his in-laws’ farm way out in Hayes Township. When Mom died, he’d offered to have Allison come live with him and his wife, Cindy-Lou, but she had no interest in doing that. She only wanted to finish high school in Centerfield, then leave Nebraska behind and never look back.