The Stranger Game

by Peter Gadol

  The next morning Ezra said he found himself at a long dining table with ten groggy artists and writers, one composer, and one choreographer. Also two colony managers who treated him as if he were one of the fellows. It was the beginning of the residency and no one knew anyone else. Ezra explained he was merely Lois’s chauffeur, that he’d get out of everyone’s way shortly, but a poet told him he should at least take a hike on the grounds. She’d been a resident before, and she said that while the place was dressed in fog at the moment, in an hour the most dramatic vistas would be revealed.

  The colony sat on a thousand acres, half redwood, half lush folding meadow, all of it sloping toward the ocean. I could picture it; I could see how this landscape would appeal to Ezra. When he returned to Lois’s cabin to say goodbye, she was setting up easels and arranging her paints and brushes on tables, and she told Ezra the colony was hiring, and he was out of money and needed a job, right? Ezra didn’t remember telling her any of that the night before. Then Lois said, You can’t keep playing that silly game forever, and Ezra released a single ha. How did she know? Lois shrugged and said she was no psychic, just old. Not that old, Ezra said, and Lois said, Old enough.

  It turned out that the on-site groundskeeper and occasional handyman had unexpectedly quit. What did Ezra know about clearing trails? Nothing. What did he know about fixing cabinets and replacing tractor tires? Again nothing, even less. Did he have a problem with rattlesnakes? Yes, actually. Did he enjoy being outside all day long? Maybe, as long as it wasn’t too cold or rainy. Terrific, the colony manager said, you’re hired. Ezra would receive a modest salary, a small cabin to himself, and meals.

  So this was where the stranger game had led him. (It reminded me of the way A. Craig ended up at the desert inn.) His days, his weeks became about donning work gloves and mud boots and taking a chain saw to brush to keep the trails clear for the fellows to wander when they emerged from their studios. Other crew came and went, and he learned to do things like change the tire of a riding mower and replace a broken window pane. He loved this; he absolutely loved working with his hands, and the best part was when occasionally he got to help a sculptor collect branches and stones and other natural detritus for her assemblages. At night he hung out with the chef who came to make dinner, and sometimes he played board games with the fellows, although the one rule was that no matter how interested he might be, he could not ask them about their work; he only discovered about the cantos and epics and prints and videos they were making if they chose to talk about them, which sometimes they did.

  I asked if being around all this art production made him long to be writing again; he said it did not, not really. Though he was beginning to see a role for himself in the world that had to do with supporting and celebrating artists, but not with making anything. He wasn’t sure; his ideas were still fuzzy. And there was an artist who gave him a few life-drawing lessons. I asked what or who Ezra drew, and he said, trees—and from memory.

  After a month, all of the fellows departed, including Lois, who insisted Ezra come visit her when he needed a vacation; she was a good cook; she’d invite her unpartnered friends; she’d set him up. After all of the hugs goodbye, Ezra thought about leaving, too, but as far as the colony manager was concerned, he had work to do to help prepare the studios for the next group of fellows who would arrive in a few days.

  It was during this interstitial period that Ezra said he became involved with the assistant colony manager, a younger woman who was a painter, and who on her days off went to see a boyfriend who lived two hours away; they had an arrangement for now, for as long as they were living apart. Ezra was uncomfortable at first for a lot of reasons—a coworker, a woman who wasn’t really available—but in many ways this worked. He was shy about telling me the details, but in some ways it was a relief knowing he’d found comfort somewhere; it didn’t sound complicated.

  Another month, another cohort of fellows arrived. The colder months meant more time indoors. There was a library in the main house where the meals were shared; Ezra read and reread classics. He continued to tend to the grounds and take hikes. The colony sat atop a mountain, but the mountain seemed like nothing against the endless ocean; the ocean reminded him of how small he was in the world, he said, and I got the sense Ezra was enjoying a kind of self-effacement, an erasure, a starting over.

  Another month—but it wasn’t all paradise. Ezra was lonely, deeply lonely some nights. (The assistant colony manager quit and went to live with her boyfriend, and an affable replacement came in instead, but not someone with whom Ezra would want to get involved sexually or romantically, which was for the best anyway.) And one night when he was up drinking whiskey with the choreographer-in-residence, Ezra opened up about me and what we’d been through and what happened when we were last together. You mean you left without telling her? the choreographer asked. That’s horrible. Well, Ezra said, we had a complex history—Horrible, the choreographer insisted. I’m sure your plan worked, I’m sure she hates you now, nice work.

  The next day the choreographer apologized for her bluntness, but Ezra said it was good to be reminded that he’d been terrible and he’d pay the price in time. Your ex-girlfriend might be worried, she might think you’re dead, the choreographer said, and Ezra said he knew that I knew he was alive; that much he was sure about. Then she might wish you were dead, the choreographer said, which she probably meant as a joke but which made Ezra miss me in a way he could no longer deny. At this point, he’d been gone seven months and worked the winter at the colony and begun to see the wildflowers bloom. For several years, Ezra and I would drive out of the city when the poppies opened.

  I wanted to know why, if he missed me so much, he stayed at the colony another two months, and Ezra said his goal was a year—could we be apart a year? Could he go one year without seeing me, talking to me, joking with me, confiding in me, being less lonely around me? Hugging me, holding me, making love to me. And then he loathed himself for being so pathetic, so selfish, for wanting to reknot us to one another, and why on earth would I want that, too? Of course I would not want that, especially not now. I didn’t know what to say when he told me this, so I said nothing.

  Finally he couldn’t stand being away, and after nine months he gave notice and rented a car and headed south, arriving at the museum, calling me from the room with my favorite painting, idiotically romantic, ridiculous yet hopeful, calling me and leaving messages and then driving to my house, but not using his key to let himself in because that breach of privacy of all things was a line he could not cross.

  I’d been so mean to him when I discovered him following me in his rental car, maybe because I didn’t want to explain my folly or appear helpless—certainly not like I needed his help. Or maybe because it wasn’t Ezra whom I wanted to materialize and express care and concern; it was Carey I wanted to see. I arrived home in a worn-out state, which didn’t make me as sharp as I should have been when I pulled into my driveway at the same time Detective Allagash with a crew of uniformed officers approached my front door, a search warrant in hand, his brow and mustache forming twin parabolas when he frowned.

  I STOOD IN THE DOORWAY TO MY BEDROOM AND WATCHED TWO police officers pluck Carey’s clothing from my closet, hangers and all, and drop it into plastic bags. A third officer walked around my house with a comb and tweezers. The detective wanted to speak with me out of earshot from the other cops, so we stepped onto the back terrace.

  “This Carey Taylor,” he said.

  “You’re going to tell me that’s not his real name,” I said.

  “For starters.”

  “Well, you have his shirts now, so you can see he’s tall. Sleeves for days.”

  “We’ve canvassed the neighborhood,” Detective Allagash said. “No one seems to know him.”

  Picturing the police questioning my neighbors made heat rush to my cheeks. I had nothing to hide yet still suffered some measure of shame.

&nb
sp; “I’ve never been very chatty with my neighbors,” I said.

  “None of the local restaurant people know about him either.”

  “Really? We ate out often enough,” I said. “How did you describe us?”

  Detective Allagash was staring at me skeptically.

  “I didn’t invent him,” I said. “You’ve got his clothes now.”

  “Oh, we’ll figure out who they belong to,” the detective said.

  He went inside, and I stayed on the terrace until his men were done, which didn’t take long. They were quick and tidy and at most displaced the throw pillows on the couch.

  Before he left, Detective Allagash said, “Please don’t think about going anywhere without letting me know first. We’ll be wanting to continue our conversation.”

  I called Detective Martinez right away.

  “What did the warrant say?” she asked.

  “The warrant,” I said.

  Detective Allagash had waved a folded white page, but he hadn’t given it to me, and I hadn’t read it. This was embarrassing to admit.

  Detective Martinez scolded me: “Do you not watch police shows on television?”

  “Is he trying to intimidate me?” I asked. “Trick me into saying something?”

  “Shake a tree, fruit falls out,” she said. “It’s possible. By the way, I located several Carrie Taylors, all women, but only one male Carey Taylor, and he was seventy-two.”

  The reception wasn’t great and I was having trouble hearing her.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “I’m an hour south, driving back. I interviewed the 911 caller.”

  “You talked to them, not Detective Allagash?” It was still his investigation, wasn’t it?

  “Right” was all Detective Martinez said. “There were two of them, tourists from out of town,” she said.

  “The two men we saw running away from the house,” I said.

  “They were fake playing the game. You know what I mean. One of them hired the stagers, the other had no clue what was going on.”

  Apparently the one who’d arranged and paid for the stagers was deeply embarrassed about being a player and didn’t want to tell the police at first. They were in the middle of the prearranged follow at the abandoned house when Garcia appeared out of nowhere (although the tourist later realized that he had been following him and his friend for at least as long as they were hiking). Garcia started yelling something at them too rapidly for the two men to understand, and sensing they were in danger, they fled. And as they were heading down the trail, the men looked back and saw the old man fall from the terrace.

  “The first one, the one who had arranged everything,” Detective Martinez said, “called 911. But they got nervous, worried maybe they’d broken the law, so they ran.”

  “And we have no idea what Garcia was shouting,” I said.

  “Not really. It was only clear that he wanted the game to be over.”

  “I can’t figure any of this out.”

  “That’s not your job,” Detective Martinez said.

  “But—”

  “I’m working on something. Call me again if Allagash comes back. And, Rebecca, please—”

  “Be careful,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  Nightfall came late and was a relief in a way; at night I could focus better. Allagash didn’t have a workable theory or he would have questioned me again or even arrested me. Martinez did not seem to be collaborating with him, but why? And why did the man named Garcia need to stop the tourist players and the bald stager, and why was the bald stager wearing surgical gloves, and had I even seen that correctly? I no longer trusted my own memory. Carey could verify my story, if only he existed as the man I thought I’d known—but who was he? My confusion about why he had vanished, my worry something had happened to him, was turning into something else—hurt that he had abandoned me, anger.

  I was startled when my phone rang some hours later. I’d fallen asleep on the couch.

  “I apologize for bothering you so late,” Ezra said.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I’m sorry about how mean I was before. I’m still mad, but I’m also sorry I yelled.”

  “Oh,” Ezra said.

  “That’s not why you’re calling?”

  “No, I’m calling because a detective came to see me—”

  “Allagash,” I said.

  “That wasn’t her name.”

  “Her? Martinez?”

  “Yes,” Ezra said. “I should have told you earlier.”

  I was fully up now and pacing.

  “She wanted to know if I’d ever met someone named Carlos Garcia,” Ezra said. “Who is Carlos Garcia? Actually never mind. I don’t need to know. She wanted to know if he was someone in our world or someone maybe you’d met after I left.”

  Hold on: Someone I had met?

  “What else did she want to know?” I asked.

  “She asked me about your mental state.”

  “You mean whether I’m delusional?”

  “Or depressed,” Ezra said. “She wanted to know what you’d told me about the guy you were dating. And when I’d last seen you.”

  “And you told her about how I was driving around and caught you following me.”

  “No, I talked to this detective yesterday morning before I started following you, not today,” Ezra said. “I don’t know how she knew where I’m staying, but she found me.”

  I could see now how the conversation with the detective had made Ezra troubled enough to trail me, but what I couldn’t understand was why Detective Martinez didn’t tell me about talking to Ezra when I’d spoken with her earlier. Why was she involving him at all? Didn’t she believe me? Was she investigating me, too?

  “I didn’t call you yesterday because I know you don’t want me contacting you, but I was thinking about it and decided you should know,” Ezra said.

  I was nodding, although of course Ezra couldn’t see me trying to say thank you.

  “And that’s all I’ll say. She only talked to me for a few minutes. I’m sorry I bothered you. I promise I won’t anymore,” he said, and hung up.

  I was more baffled than ever. I’d thought Detective Martinez was my ally, but maybe not. I no longer knew who to trust.

  DAYS OF SILENCE FOLLOWED, SOME THE LONELIEST I’D KNOWN. Days speaking to no one, never leaving the house, working my way through whatever provisions were in the pantry, soup, crackers, pasta and bottled sauce. Finally one afternoon I had to go down to the grocery store, and I lapsed instead into some shadow version of the game, following strangers but never speculating about the man taking phone photos of the racks of spice bottles, in no way trying to connect with the woman who kept having to replace the bottom-shelf bags of grain her toddler pulled onto the floor. Out on the street, I watched a kid practicing soccer tricks at the bus stop, a woman clutching a bouquet of daisies behind her back.

  I stopped wandering when I noticed a lost dog flyer stapled to a telephone pole. A wire-haired terrier, big eyes. I wondered what I looked like as I stood there on the sidewalk crying. Perro perdido. I tore off the please-contact-if-found phone number.

  At home I put away my groceries, but then I went on a walk because I was convinced that somehow I would be the one to find the terrier. Before the day was out, I would be the neighborhood hero. Hi, you don’t know me, but I think I have Stuart here. No, it would be my pleasure to bring him back to you.

  The streets around my house looped in on themselves, and something odd happened when walking roads usually driven. Why had I never stopped to look at that magisterial eucalyptus before, growing at a dangerously acute angle, raining pods on the several houses beneath its reach. Was that tarp-covered motorboat always parked in that driveway?

  I didn’t expect to find the dog, but I also didn’t expect to
observe this: about a mile from where I lived, a half block up from where I was walking, I noticed a sports car drift out of a concrete garage attached to a concrete modern house, turn up the street, and vroom off. Right as the car disappeared, a man and a woman emerged from a parked car and shuffled over to the concrete house. They did not ring the doorbell. Instead they went around the side of the garage, reached over a gate to unlatch it, glanced around, and then stepped into the backyard. The way they moved, fleet, almost on tiptoes, one shushing the other, reminded me of all of the followers I’d followed—but they weren’t in pursuit of strangers; it looked like they were breaking in.

  I waited for them to reemerge carrying a television or computer or other loot, but that didn’t happen. I waited a little longer. I had my phone ready to call the police, although I’d had enough of the police and was not interested in playing the good samaritan. Then I heard splashing.

  I approached the house now, too, peered through a gap between the gate and gatepost, and saw the pool in back. Two piles of clothes lay on the decking. Both the man and the woman were skinny-dipping.

  I went back out to the street and noticed that in the time I’d been spying on the trespassers, a squad car had parked across the street. No siren, no flashing lights. Maybe neighbors had witnessed the break-in and called. The sole officer in the squad car wasn’t getting out. He was watching a video on his phone. When I approached, he seemed reluctant about rolling down his window.