The Changeling

by Victor Lavalle

  “And had she?” the guy with the gray beard asked, leaning forward in his chair.

  “No,” Apollo said. “They swore to it again and again, but it still took me six and a half hours to believe them. At the end I gave the shotgun to Carlotta. Ms. Price. I turned myself over to the police. All three women testified on my behalf. They refused to file any charges against me. That’s one reason I got out as quickly as I did. It was incredibly forgiving of them.”

  The younger woman, who’d first spoken, said, “Do you think your wife is still alive?”

  “I hope not.” He looked at her, then realized how he must sound. “I mean, the FBI and NYPD haven’t found her yet,” Apollo said. “So I don’t know.”

  “But what were you planning to do anyway?” the young woman continued. “If the librarians had information. If you had found your wife.”

  “She killed my son,” Apollo said. “If I’d found her, I would’ve killed her. Then myself.”

  Apollo couldn’t think of what else there was to say, so he said nothing. The Survivors sat in silence.

  “Okay,” Alice finally said. “Thank you all for coming. Time’s up.”

  HE STAYED AT the Yorkville branch until they closed their doors at seven o’clock. He spent those remaining hours on the main floor, in a chair near the checkout desk with a magazine in his lap. It hadn’t been comfortable to tell the Survivors about what he’d done, but right after the group session he felt even worse. At least down in the basement he’d been among others like himself. The guy with the gray beard had been on his phone—texting—when he’d rolled into an intersection, and his car got smashed by a moving truck. His fiancée was dead before their car stopped spinning. But after all of you have shared, shouted, or cried, then what? Then it’s just Wednesday evening, and you’re back on your own. Six months of that? No fucking thanks. But if he didn’t go, he’d be on a bus back to Rikers, and there’d be no quick release date to secure. So he sat in that chair for hours trying to talk himself into tolerance, tenacity, and recovery. Finally he had to face it. He had to go to the apartment.

  Still, as he reached his block, as he approached the building, as he entered the elevator, he kept expecting someone to leap out and stop him. No one did. He reached the front door of his apartment and hesitated. He slid the keys into their locks.

  Apollo opened the front door.

  Had he expected noise when he walked inside? Not really. But then why did he feel so surprised by the silence? Maybe because it had been so loud the last time he’d been in here. Three months ago. Only three months.

  He entered the apartment and shut the door behind him. He stood in the darkness and slowed his breath. Even with the lights out, he could see the wooden floors were clean. Supple and almost wet looking.

  He walked into the living room and stood in the silence. More space, more quiet, no life in here at all. But there was the couch, where it had always been, under the living room windows. The lamp in the corner, the low bookcase, the radiator. Even the radiator didn’t make any noise. It must’ve been shut off. The bedroom he’d once shared with Emma lay to the left, the kitchen to the right.

  He went to the bedroom door and opened it, half expecting to find Emma there, a fugitive hiding in plain sight. But of course he found only their bed, the sheets made, the floor just as clearly swept and mopped. The curtains had been left open, and he looked down to the street below. He watched a man trying to park his car in a space that was obviously too small. When Apollo left the window, the man still hadn’t figured that out.

  He entered the kitchen. When he looked at the floor, he saw the pellets of rat poison. When he looked at the counter, he saw the claw hammer. When he looked at the oven, he saw the kettle, the fire underneath it making the bottom glow, steam spraying from the spout. He saw it there, but he couldn’t hear it. It rattled on the stovetop, but there was no clatter. He brought his hand to the cloud of steam but felt no heat.

  He backed away from the phantom teapot and shuffled his feet to avoid the pellets he thought were still on the floor. But when he moved to the kitchen table, when he looked down at the chair where he’d been chained, he saw no ghostly repetition of the scene. No chains. No blood. He pulled the chair from the corner. The hole in the floor had been repaired. He got down on his knees to check.

  Lillian had done all this. Who else would have bothered?

  It was in this position—still on his knees—that he turned to face the back room. The door had been shut. A neon green sticker was affixed to the door, about a foot above the handle, half on the door and half on the doorframe. He crawled closer; his legs trembled too much for him to stand.

  “These premises have been sealed by the NYC Police Dept. pursuant to Section 435, Administrative Code. All persons are forbidden to enter unless authorized by the police department or public administrator.”

  Even now, in his mind, this remained Brian’s room. He put his hands to the walls to press himself up. He didn’t want Brian to see his father crawling. Eventually this room would have to be opened, too, but not tonight. He thought that being here—in this place, at this door—would cause an instant avalanche of emotions, but instead he felt quite the opposite. He felt nothing. He couldn’t even tell if his heart was beating in his chest.

  Apollo lumbered into the bathroom. He hadn’t taken a shower alone in sixty days. He ran the water and removed his clothes. He spent half an hour under the spray before he even started cleaning himself. When he finished, he made it to the bedroom. He hadn’t slept on a good mattress in ninety days—the one in the hospital had given him an ache in his lower back. But he couldn’t make himself lie down in the bed he’d shared with Emma. He stripped off the comforter and top sheet and went back into the living room. He plugged in his phone, then lay down on the couch. He looked up at the night sky through the windows here. No stars.

  “What now?” he asked.

  He fell asleep long before his phone rattled and lit up. In the dark it shone brighter than a star. Then, after a moment, all went black again.

  PATRICE STOOD IN the doorway of his basement apartment in southeastern Queens. The owner of a two-story home had decided to make a little extra income, something to help cover the mortgage. She’d had the basement converted into an apartment and rented it on the sly for $1,300 a month. Two bedrooms, a kitchen and bathroom, a private entrance at the back of the house. Patrice lived here with Dana, the woman he’d met after he returned from Iraq and his marriage fell apart.

  Patrice leaned out the doorway and sniffed at Apollo. “It’s the Bird Man of Alcatraz. You’re late.”

  “I had to take a train and a bus to get here,” Apollo said. “I forgot that Queens was this far from New York.”

  Patrice waved one big paw. “We started eating without you.”

  “I brought wine,” Apollo said, lifting a brown bag.

  “You brought wine from a place that doesn’t even give out plastic bags?”

  Apollo had to smile. It felt good to see this guy again.

  Behind Patrice a woman, Dana, called out. “Why don’t you let him in rather than standing out there putting all our business on the street?”

  Patrice looked over his shoulder. “Baby, our entrance is on the side of the house. Most we’re doing is letting the neighbors get a look.”

  “Come inside!”

  The ceiling down in the basement felt low to Apollo, and Patrice had to be six inches taller than him. The wood-paneled walls sucked up the ceiling lights and made the whole room darker. The kitchen and the stove both had to be ten years old. Older. The best item in the kitchen was the dining table, beamed in from a Crate & Barrel. Aspirational furniture that took up too much room in the cramped kitchen.

  Dana had set the table elegantly, a red gingham check tablecloth and rattan placemats; blue gingham check napkins and white porcelain plates with silver trim. As Apollo entered the kitchen, Dana was already setting out the exact same arrangement for him. Once Patrice shut the doo
r, a passerby would never know—or probably even imagine—that inside a basement apartment in southeastern Queens there lay such a beautifully appointed dinner table. It was like catching a glimpse of the glittering soul inside a rumpled passenger on a subway train. Apollo lost his breath for a beat.

  Dana took down two wineglasses after Apollo revealed his bottle. They owned only two wineglasses. She gave Patrice a coffee mug for his wine.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” Apollo said.

  Dana poured the wine. “Nobody wants to come this far out into Queens. We’re just glad you made it.”

  Dana hugged Apollo. She had big arms, big legs, and a broad back—a perfect body for hugs. Where Patrice’s hold had been wary, Dana’s offered only warmth. The baby’s funeral had happened while Apollo sat on Rikers Island. Both Patrice and Dana had attended the ceremony. The way she held him now, the long slow warmth of it, conveyed her condolences better than words ever would.

  “You sit,” Patrice said to both of them. “I’ll serve.”

  Dana patted Patrice’s belly before she took her seat. “He acts like he’s being gallant,” she told Apollo. “But he just wants to be sure you know who made the meal.”

  Dana worked for the Port Authority as a senior toll collector at the Bayonne Bridge in Staten Island. It was an hour’s drive from their place in Queens. On the days when Patrice went on book buys in New Jersey, he’d drive her out and pick her up again in the afternoon. They had a good thing together, and both seemed to know it.

  Patrice slipped a ladle from a drawer. “Crockpot chicken,” he began. “Chicken legs and breasts, half a jar of pitted olives, three teaspoons of olive brine, one lemon cut into slices, one teaspoon of Herbes de Provence, a cup of chicken broth, half a teaspoon of salt, an eighth of a teaspoon of pepper.” Patrice dipped the ladle into the white crockpot on the kitchen counter, and the rich smell of brine and lemons made Apollo lean forward as if the food was already in front of him.

  “And one bay leaf,” Patrice added as he filled the first bowl. With the low ceiling and the close walls, he looked like a brown bear doing a cooking show inside a cage.

  “I can’t believe you’re living in a basement,” Apollo said.

  Dana sucked her teeth. “What’s wrong with living in a basement? I found this place for us.”

  Apollo looked at her and smiled. “But Patrice is terrified of—” And caught himself. He looked back at Patrice, who’d stopped moving midserve. Apollo could see Patrice watching him even as he pretended to be playing host. Dana clearly hadn’t been told that basements made Patrice quiver, but—just as much of a surprise—Patrice really thought he’d kept this secret from Apollo, too. Once he would’ve passed this off as the normal way of life. People tell little lies to get by. That goes for marriage and friendships, too. But now Apollo couldn’t brush off these untruths as benign. If our relationships are made of many small lies, they become something larger, a prison of falsehoods.

  “Patrice is terrified of commitment,” Apollo offered. An old chestnut, a truism about men, an idea so blandly conventional that to say it was like casting a kind of sleep spell. They were no longer sinking into the depths of the issue but merely skating across a slick, thick surface. Chatter. Sitcom humor.

  Dana visibly relaxed in her chair. “Maybe before, but then he met me.”

  And just like that, the moment passed. Patrice brought the bowl to Dana and kissed her forehead as he set it down. He looked at Apollo quickly and then went back to the counter for Apollo’s bowl.

  After they finished the food, Dana and Patrice cleared the bowls, the utensils. Apollo pushed back from the table. “I want to show you something,” he said.

  He opened his bag, set down his phone. Lillian had been trying him since yesterday, must’ve been fifteen phone messages from her. She wanted to take him out to Brian’s gravesite. He should see his son’s final resting place. But when Apollo woke up on the couch that morning, after his first night home, he’d also found a text message waiting. Right after he read it, he called Patrice and Dana and asked if he could come over that night.

  Out of his bag, he brought a smaller gift bag, one bought at the Duane Reade on 181st. Dana and Patrice had cleared the table. Dana wiped down the surface with a wet cloth before Apollo laid out the present.

  “Take a look,” Apollo said.

  Patrice opened it while Dana went on her toes to see.

  “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Patrice read. He opened it, scanning through it like a pro. “Book jacket is Fine. Boards, too. Endpapers clean. And…it’s a first. Shit! You found an estate sale on Rikers Island?”

  Dana reached for the book, but Patrice closed the cover and held it tight.

  “Look at the title page,” Apollo said.

  Both read quietly. Dana nudged Patrice. “Who’s Pip?”

  Patrice shook his head, but couldn’t bring himself to say he didn’t know. He tapped the bottom of the page, by the author’s signature. “I do know who this is, though.”

  “I drove up to Connecticut today to pick this up,” Apollo said. “The guy sent me a text to let me know it was ready. He’d been writing me for weeks. I guess he doesn’t watch the news. The appraisal certificate is folded in there.”

  “This is some shit you retire on,” Patrice said. “Or at least go on a damn good vacation. Where’d you find it?”

  Apollo swayed a bit but set his hands on the kitchen table.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I found it, and I want you to have it.” He didn’t let them interrupt. “I planned to sell that thing and have enough money to buy a place for me, Emma, and Brian. But that’s done now. All done. I don’t care about the money. I wouldn’t use it. I’m—”

  He stopped speaking here, his throat clutching. He didn’t want to finish the sentence in front of them. Dana put up one hand and said, “We’ll take it.”

  Apollo and Patrice both gawped at her with surprise. Her eyes were wide, and she seemed just as taken aback. She slipped the book from Patrice’s hands.

  “It’s generous of you,” she said softly. “And we appreciate it.”

  Then she turned and left the kitchen. Escaped to the back room, their bedroom, and shut the door. Patrice watched after Dana as if trying to catch up on an equation she’d already solved, but sighed as he failed.

  “I guess that’s good night?” Apollo said.

  When they were outside, climbing the back stairs, Patrice said, “You know why I always liked you? Why we became friends?”

  “I’m a better bookseller,” Apollo said. “You wanted to learn from the best.”

  Patrice raised his eyebrows. “Even you can’t believe that. First time I met you, I think it was at the West End Bar, back before it closed. Rich Chalfin had a bunch of buyers out for drinks. I told you I was just back from Iraq, just like I’d told everyone at the table at one time or another, and you know what you said?”

  Apollo gently tapped the aluminum siding of the house. “ ‘There’s an estate sale in Pennsylvania. You in?’ ”

  Patrice shook his head at the memory. “You never said any of that thank-you-for-your-service shit. You never asked me if I was against the war. Never asked me who I killed. You basically acted like you didn’t give a fuck. And I liked that. Right then I knew you were a dude I could be normal with. Not some vet. Just Patrice.”

  He slapped Apollo’s leg once so Apollo would look at him. “So I’m going to break protocol and talk straight as I ever have with you.”

  “Okay.”

  “If you go off and kill yourself tonight, I’m going to soak that valuable fucking book you gave me in the toilet. Then I’m going to piss on it. And worse. That will be my revenge against you. I will ruin that book.”

  “What are you even talking about?” Apollo said, not very loudly.

  Patrice put a big mitt on Apollo’s shoulder, then lowered his head so they faced each other square. “I’ve seen that look before.”

  “What look?”

/>   Patrice watched Apollo. “This one. The one staring back at me right now. I have seen that look, and I know.” He squeezed Apollo’s shoulder tightly. “I know.”

  Apollo yelped and pulled free. He hadn’t been planning anything like that. Had he? Now he took two steps backward and turned. Had he?

  He walked around the side of the house and toward the front gate. He heard Patrice behind him.

  “You’re a book man,” Patrice said at the gate. “So tonight I’m going to put that book online, and if you’re not around, you will never find out exactly how much someone would’ve paid for it. You. Will. Never. Know.”

  Patrice stood at the fence, him on one side and Apollo on the other, clearly calculating whether he should tackle his best friend and put him on suicide watch.

  “You’re a motherfucker,” Apollo said. “But I do want to know what it’s worth.”

  Patrice pointed at him. “My man. I’ll be calling you as soon as I hear. You be alive to pick up.”

  APOLLO RETURNED TO the apartment after midnight, and when he opened the front door, he heard someone in the kitchen, the hiss and tick tick tick of an oven burner being lit, and he had to grip the front door’s handle so he wouldn’t fall to the floor. The kitchen light had been turned on, the rest of the apartment stayed dark. He listened to a pot being pulled from a cabinet, water rushing from the tap. He almost turned and ran, but instead he closed the door behind him as quietly as he could. He slipped his shoes off and moved his socked feet across the floor. She was back. Maybe she’d been coming back to the apartment for all the months he’d been on Rikers. Maybe it had really been she who’d cleaned the place up just to clear away evidence. Maybe she felt so guilty, she just couldn’t help herself.