by Peter Gadol
I had no reason to believe he’d emerge from the building at the end of the day because he could have gone out for a meeting or to do who knew what at any time, but I parked halfway down the block from the rear parking garage anyway, hoping to catch him when he emerged. I waited an hour, and voilà. We were on a one-way street, and I was able to scoot in two cars behind him.
Rush-hour traffic I’d learned was perfect for the stranger game; you had the screen of the cars in front of you, and everyone moved along slowly enough to make trailing another car easy. Carey wove his way up to a main boulevard and headed east, veering off two miles later into the parking lot of an organic grocer. I knew if I went inside the store, too, I might expose myself, him coming up the aisle I was sneaking down. But that didn’t happen. I saw him first and was able to take cover behind a pyramid of apples. He was standing in front of a refrigerated case of prepared foods, selecting plastic containers and scrutinizing the ingredients.
I wanted to slide in next to him and give him a start. What I really wanted to do was invite him over and cook him dinner so he didn’t have to eat the oversalted junk he was collecting in his cart. When he turned in my direction, I left the store, and I drove off before he came out.
This happened on a Thursday, and I thought about trying to track him again the next day, maybe all the way back to where he lived, but I didn’t. I’d spent too much time at night imagining what he might be doing, maybe going to bed early like me because it was easier to sleep than to wade through hours of nocturnal solitude. I knew then that I’d see him again, although I didn’t expect it would be so soon.
Saturday late afternoon I decided to go on my usual hike up in the park, leaving my car by the tennis courts and then walking up to the trailhead. When I passed the upper tier of courts, I spotted Carey on the farthest one from the path. There were no players on the three other courts, and Carey was by himself. He’d placed a wire basket of old balls by the baseline and was practicing his serve, the weak part of his game, which didn’t look too weak to me. He tossed the ball high, very high, and he bore down on it hard like a windmill catching a sudden gust. He aced an invisible opponent on the deuce side, and then did the same on the ad.
When I thought he might be looking my way between serves, I waved hello. He let his racket fall to his side. We shouted hi at the same time.
“My buddy canceled on me last minute, but I’d already reserved the court,” he explained.
“You serve incredibly well,” I said from the other side of the fence. I’d walked over to his court but not through the gate. “You were being modest.”
“I really wasn’t,” he said and decided to show me.
He bounced a ball a few times then tossed it toward the sun, arced his back and swung down at the ball. Down the line, perfect.
“It’s a whole lot easier when you don’t have an opponent,” he said.
I liked the way his body looked when he served another ball, not like a machine, not like a windmill at all, but graceful, an upright swimmer in full stroke out of water.
“I have a backup racket,” he said. “Do you want to play?”
“It’s been so long,” I said. “I’ll be terrible.”
“Oh, come on. It will be fun. Please?”
Suddenly I was on the opposite side of the court from him swatting at balls and sending them sailing beyond the baseline, twice over the fence, shrieking my apologies, my I-told-you-so’s.
“Your form is coming back,” Carey insisted.
“What form?” I said.
But he was right. The longer we rallied, the surer my forehand. After a half hour, I was striking the ball cleanly, with force, hitting it deep. We rallied for a long time, and while I fancied myself fit, I found myself breathing hard. We sat on the bench. I had to admit that this was satisfying, finding my old rhythm.
“But it can’t be fun for you,” I said. “You’re hitting soft, I’m sure.”
“I’m not! Honest. Want to hit some more?”
I trotted over to the other side, which had some shade and which meant I didn’t have to stare into the setting sun when I tried to serve. We played points. We would’ve kept going but soon would lose the light; these courts weren’t set up for night play.
“That was really fun,” Carey said.
“It was. Would you like to go on a date with me?” I asked.
I probably looked as surprised as he did.
“A proper date,” I added.
He blinked at me in disbelief and nodded quickly.
“You probably have plans for tonight,” I said.
“Not anymore,” he said.
“Now, wait. Don’t go canceling on some other girl—”
“I was only going to hang out with the same tennis buddy who didn’t show up today, him and his silly friends. Trust me, they won’t miss me.”
“That all sounds very guy-ish,” I said.
“Very guy-ish. Grrr. You were saying?”
“Dinner, dancing, something like that,” I said. “Maybe without the dancing.”
Two hours later he picked me up and we were sitting out under a heat lamp on the back patio of my second-favorite neighborhood restaurant, not the one where we’d met. Carey was wearing a crisp white shirt, a trim blazer.
“I want to hear more about your work,” he said. “How’d you get into it anyway?”
I ended up talking about myself all through dinner, answering Carey’s questions, although my deliberate choice to leave Ezra out of my monologue was noticeable to me. When for instance I described a meaningful formative train trip through Europe looking at neoclassical architecture, I didn’t mention that I’d traveled with Ezra.
“And you? You always wanted to be a developer?” I asked.
Carey laughed and said, “I wanted to be an artist,” and at first I thought he was making fun of me. He wasn’t. “I had no talent.”
“Like you’re no good at tennis?”
“I will admit I’m okay at tennis,” he said. “Anyway, I interned for a real estate agent one summer, a family friend. One thing led to another, and I had my license, and there was a boom, I was off. But it’s not like I chose this career—it happened to me. Business has been pretty rough lately though, so we’ll see what happens next. We should change the subject. You’re much more interesting than I am.”
He seemed down. I tried to pour him another glass of wine—he’d had a glass and a half—but he said the rest of the bottle was mine. It was obvious he was trying to chart a different course for us than the last time.
He pulled up to my house to drop me off and said that the whole day had been unexpected and wonderful. I suggested he come in.
“This is a proper date,” he reminded me.
“I’m having an unexpectedly wonderful time, too,” I said. “I don’t want it to end.”
He hesitated but leaned toward me to offer me a gentle kiss.
We stood out on my terrace and looked at the city. When it became too cold, we went inside. We were moving into the kind of conversation that might make one vulnerable: I spoke openly now about the ups and downs of life with Ezra. He talked about his family, his parents’ alcoholism, the older brother whom he’d revered and lost to addiction. When we were making out, he was the one who pulled back and said he should leave. I didn’t want him to leave. He kept asking me if I was sure. How could I let him know I’d forgiven him and that, yes, I was sure?
I loved running my hand all the way from his freckled clavicle over his freckled chest down to his (less) freckled abdomen. He was shy at first. I suspected this was the real him he’d referred to, not the drunk guy playing me. But finally he began to explore my body with a confident hand. Before we fell asleep he thanked me for giving him a second chance, but in my heart I felt somehow like it was the other way around, that he was the one allowing me back in a second t
ime.
When I woke up in the morning, facing the wall with my back to him, I was certain I was alone and that he’d crept off in the middle of the night. I couldn’t feel his heat, his weight on the bed, and I rolled over quickly. But there he was, at once far away in sleep and close, here with me. What complete joy. I plotted our Sunday.
WE WENT TO THE FARMERS’ MARKET AND RETURNED TO MY kitchen with zucchini and mushrooms and parsnips and thyme. Carey turned out to be a fast chopper. We made a frittata. Later we retreated to the bedroom, slipping beneath blankets when the afternoon became cool and we didn’t want to shut the windows. This had been an epic date and I didn’t want Carey to go, although he did, and I worried all night he’d disappear on me. My anxiety was for naught; he came over the following evening and spent the night again. Same the night after that, and the night after that. The weeks uncoiled rapidly. Carey and I spent all our time in my house on the hill, now huddled in bed, now moving about the garden. Watching Carey take charge of my sorry plants naturally made me think of Ezra and his botanic savvy, and a part of me wished Carey and I were playing house somewhere new, but when I thought about Ezra, I had perspective now, and I could only hope that wherever he was, he had achieved the same contentedness.
During the week we trotted off to our respective offices, and although most people I had known in real estate worked evenings and weekends, Carey made time for me. He was between homes, as he put it, renting a studio somewhere he said was so provisional that he’d be embarrassed to show it to me; I didn’t care one way or another, and so I never saw where he lived.
We didn’t go out into the city much, although we discussed heading to the museum to see the retrospective of a minimalist painter we both liked, and to the new neighborhood sushi counter, and to the rehabilitated riverside park; we talked about going but never did. I did not introduce Carey to my few friends; I did not show him past or current projects. He did not talk about his work, and as far as I could tell, he was as alone in the world as I was. I knew better than to ask him to give up his temporary housing and move in with me, it was too soon, but I did ponder when in the near future I might propose it. Even so, he began to care for my home as if it were his. He rehung a closet door that with settling wasn’t closing completely; he built the shelves I’d been wanting to put in my pantry; together we started in on repainting the exterior stucco.
One April afternoon I left him patching the wall in back while I made a run down to the hardware store. I was in the paint supplies aisle sorting through brushes, rollers, and whatnot when I could have sworn someone was watching me. I turned toward the end of the aisle: no one. But I had such a funny feeling about this that I stepped around to the next aisle, and there was Detective Martinez, out of uniform like the last time I’d seen her, pricing dimmer switches.
“Oh, hi,” she said.
“Did you—? Were you—?”
No blinking.
“Hi,” I said. “Weekend project?”
“Always. It never ends,” the detective said. “How have you been, Rebecca?”
“Wonderful,” I said, and her eyes widened: do tell. I didn’t mention that Carey was the same guy I’d told her about before.
“What’s his name?” Detective Martinez asked, and I revealed that much, and to be polite I asked about her own life, not expecting her to be forthcoming.
But she said, “My ex and I reconciled. And it’s been great, actually.”
“Wow,” I said. “Love all around.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Well,” I said.
“Right,” she said. “I should get home with a light switch.”
I headed back to the paint supplies aisle.
“Rebecca,” the detective said. “I don’t know if I should bring this up...”
My heart thudded.
“I’m assuming you’ve seen the same bank statement we did. Ezra’s account.”
I hadn’t been paying attention to it because there was almost no money in the account, and in order for me to access the information, I had to go to the bank in person—honestly, I’d forgotten about it.
“He closed it out two months ago. We haven’t been tracking it closely. We haven’t been working the case much, but you knew that.”
“He was here? He closed it out in person?”
“No. The money was wired to another account, a different bank—”
“Where?”
The detective shrugged. “We’d need an order to find that out,” she said. “There’s nothing criminal we can investigate. There’s nothing that signals he’s in harm’s way, nothing we can act on. It’s not like his landlord wants to evict him since you moved out his things...”
I had no reason to believe she wasn’t telling me the truth, but I was pretty sure in fact she did know where Ezra was and either wasn’t permitted or didn’t think it prudent to tell me.
“I see. Did you close the case?”
The detective didn’t answer my question, but she said, “This means he’s alive. At least you can rest easy knowing that.”
I could, I would, yes. But he didn’t want me in his life, and that was cruel. I sighed so deeply that both the hardware store employee mixing paints and his customer stared at me. The detective looked at me with concern.
“You know what? It’s okay,” I said. “I’m with someone great, I’m happy. But thank you for telling me.”
I wished she hadn’t. Instead of driving directly home, I went to the storage facility. I borrowed a dolly from the manager and took the elevator to the top floor and found the numbered closet. Light from the hallway lit up the stack of book boxes: not much. I could probably get them all downstairs to the Dumpster in two or three trips.
I slumped down in the hallway and sat on the floor. I was not going to get rid of anything. I couldn’t, not yet. Two thoughts at once: how much I hated Ezra, that selfish betrayer, and how much I missed him.
When I got home, Carey said, “You were gone a long time. I got worried.”
I buried my face against his chest.
“You’ve been crying,” he said.
I lied to him for the first time. It was such an unnecessarily elaborate story, too. Driving to the hardware store, I’d had to swerve to avoid these stupid boys on their skateboards, but one teenage girl driving behind me also swerved and hit an easement tree, causing the sapling myrtle to snap and fall on the hood of her car and shatter her windshield. The safety glass stayed in place; her airbags deployed. She was fine, shaken up but fine, and I’d helped her call the police (the boys ran off) and contact her mother, and I’d waited for her to get there.
Carey held me tightly and told me everyone was safe. I’d helped; I’d been a good person. We would return to our weekend now. Everyone was safe, he said again, and because I wanted to, I believed him. But the lie I told had cracked my new life open just enough for skepticism to seep in—doubt, suspicion, the old familiar dread.
FRIDAY NIGHTS WE TURNED OFF MOST OF THE LIGHTS IN THE house and sat close to each other in the dark, the two of us facing the city, the vista like a long film we were never done watching. Our conversations were never linear: we would digress and then have trouble winding our way back to whatever we’d initially been talking about. Sometimes we gave up. So I don’t remember how we arrived here.
I asked, “How did you start playing the stranger game anyway?”
I found it peculiar that this never came up. We never discussed the way we’d met and what happened that first night. Carey had been contrite, I had forgiven him.
He took a moment to respond. “I’m never going to be able to make that up to you—”
“No, no, no,” I said. “I’m not looking for any more apologies. I’m only curious how you got—”
“Hooked? A guy in my office was missing a lot of meetings with contractors. Someone told me what was going o
n, and at first I didn’t know what this game was.”
“It’s ironic it brought us together,” I said. “Do you think there are other stranger game couples out there?”
“Oh, I hope not. I mean...”
I chuckled. “I know what you mean.”
And I thought that was that, except it wasn’t.
I said, “The last time I myself was playing—”
“What? Hold on. The last time you were what?”
Carey pulled away from me. He switched on a lamp. He was frowning.
“You never said you played, too,” he said.
He knew about what I believed Ezra had been up to, but not about my own forays.
“Wow,” he said. “It’s weird you never mentioned it.”
“I know. I should have told you. Are you mad?”
He shook his head no. “How often did you play?”
And here again another lie. “Once or twice,” I said. “A few times.”
“To understand what Ezra might be experiencing?”
“Exactly. Do you want to hear about it? It’s not that interesting.”
“No, I don’t need to know,” he said. “You weren’t in as deep as I was.”
“I always followed the original rules. For the most part,” I said.
“It starts with for the most part.”
I described the driver who had picked me up at the airport thinking I was a tourist player, and then I told him about the scene I’d witnessed at the abandoned house and what I’d overheard by the men’s room.
“Wow,” Carey said again. “I heard about this but never saw it myself.”
“Heard about what? This is a thing?”
“It’s apparently become a thing. There’s a whole network now of followers and stagers—”
“Stagers?”
“That’s what they’re called. You can hire them to do whatever you want within reason, and then you can entertain your fellow followers, who don’t know it’s all a show.”
