The Stranger Game

by Peter Gadol

  Of all the people I’d followed wherever I’d wandered, I found myself most melancholic when tracking mothers with young children. By now I knew what emotions I’d work through, the specific grief for a life not lived, and maybe this was what drove those of us who had engaged in the game with any kind of fidelity: the desire to track anyone we suspected might be very much like us but who occupied a shadow plane. Maybe this was why we kept playing long after we knew better, because we believed we would come to understand our choices, to accept our particular stories, to achieve the serenity of mind that eluded us. Maybe this in part was what sustained our addiction when we knew our chase would only yield deeper loss—heartbreak, alienation, death.

  After the station wagon was out of sight, I returned to the canyon in my mind as I often did, and as always I began shivering when I thought about what happened. It was autumn now, one year and one season later. There was a before and an after in my life, there always would be: the fact that a man very well could have shot me or thrown me to my death did not change the fact that I had pushed him to his. I still expected to be held accountable, although that anxiety was beginning to lessen. Mostly what I worried about was whether the private penance I had charted in the end really mattered. Would it be enough? Would it ever quell my restlessness?

  I DON’T REMEMBER HOW LONG AFTER CAREY PLUNGED INTO THE ravine it took for Detective Martinez to come hurtling down the exterior stairs of the abandoned house, but it wasn’t long at all. She found Ezra and I huddled together, Ezra clutching me, trying to turn me away from the edge of the terrace.

  “I told you to wait for me,” she barked at Ezra.

  She wasn’t in uniform, but she had her badge clipped to her sweats, her gun out. She glanced around.

  “So he didn’t show up after all,” she said.

  “He did,” Ezra said.

  “Oh,” the detective said, and took a deep breath. “Oh.” She knelt at the edge of the terrace and looked down.

  “He had a gun,” Ezra said.

  “I told you to wait,” she said quietly.

  “I called her when I found the note,” Ezra said to me.

  “I pushed him,” I said. “It was me. I—”

  “Quiet,” the detective said, and stood and walked the perimeter of the terrace, staring out toward the property wall, back at the house, once again down into the granite cleft of the canyon.

  When she returned to our side, she said, “It was no one.”

  “No,” I said, “I—”

  “Listen to me, Rebecca,” Detective Martinez said. “You were never here. Neither one of you was here. And this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to hike out the back way and take the long way down to your cars. Don’t talk to anyone. Then drive home and wait for me. Got it?”

  My hand had been pressed against his chest long enough to feel a single heartbeat. I pulled away from Ezra and had to look again: Carey’s body was twisted, folded in half, his hoodie pulled up and bunched over his head.

  “Go home,” the detective said. “I’m going to deal with this. I will be there as soon as I can.”

  At my house, my teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. I was in shock. Ezra wrapped me in a camp blanket. I noticed his hands were shaking, too, so I made him pull the blanket over his shoulders, as well. It was the warmest day of the year so far, yet we sat at the edge of my bed cloaked in wool, trying not to tremble.

  Ezra explained that when he went to confront Detective Martinez about being a so-called tour guide, she told him she was no such thing, that the police officers who had suggested this were pulling a prank on her, or—a more dangerous possibility—were on to her secret investigation.

  Ezra asked what or whom she was investigating, and this was when the detective started to get angry with him: Who do you think? And he said he assumed it was the police running the stranger game network, but the detective wouldn’t say more. Ezra asked if it was Allagash, and Detective Martinez told him to stop guessing, but it was clear from the way her eyes widened that it was.

  What she did admit was that she was increasingly concerned that no one had found Carey—and did Ezra know if I’d had any contact with him? He didn’t think so. She said she thought Carey was dangerous, and she’d hoped I would lead her to him, at which point Ezra became very mad and accused the detective of using me despite obvious risks, and Detective Martinez was done talking to Ezra and told him to go away. Before she let him go, however, she told him to find out if Carey had reached out to me and to let her know if he had.

  We waited three hours for Detective Martinez to come to my house. She made us speak to her out back. The sun showed no promise of setting, and we had to shield our eyes with our hands.

  She said, “Here is the story. I was looking for Carey as a material witness in my investigation. I knew he was connected to the wrong people and didn’t have a way out. I wanted to help and suspected he’d still be in the area, and then I had a lead, spotted him, and followed him into the park. He knew I was on his trail and ran. I didn’t want to lose him, and I lost reception when I should have called for backup. He scrambled up the trail to the abandoned house and ran around back, and when I reached him there and was coming down the stairs, he aimed his gun at me. I had my weapon drawn. And then I guess he knew nothing was going to go well for him, and he turned around, and he jumped into the ravine. At which point I called emergency services. It’s a terrible tragedy.”

  I started to say something, but the detective shushed me.

  “That is the story,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Ezra said.

  “You were never there,” Detective Martinez said to me. “That said, it would still be safer for you now to leave the city.”

  “I need some answers,” I said.

  “I’m trying to help you,” Detective Martinez said.

  “I’m not going anywhere unless—”

  “Fine. Ask away.”

  I wanted to know if what Ezra had told me about their conversation was true, and she said that the day after Garcia was pushed, she felt a line had been crossed. The police had been allowing all manner of stalking to go on, and they were providing cover for thrill-seeking burglars, even after two people got shot when the police didn’t offer the protection they were paid to provide. They were collecting a few hundred dollars here, a thousand there—not extraordinary sums, but it added up. Citywide they were raking in a lot of money. But now they were countenancing, maybe even facilitating cold-blooded murder. Detective Martinez wanted to collect the most damning evidence and make the best case to one of the good-guy prosecutors who might still be around, and so she lied to me and said I might be a suspect in Detective Allagash’s investigation so I would need to find Carey, and in doing so lead her to him.

  “I regret this now,” Detective Martinez said.

  She was angry at herself for missing Carey when he taped the note to my door; her stakeout had been frequent, but not constant. After all, she was working alone, and she couldn’t cover me twenty-four hours a day. When Ezra showed up at her house, she realized he could help and act as the lookout, too, and that was why she sent him to check in on me. It sounded like Detective Martinez was operating as a lone wolf, and I said she might be in over her head taking on Allagash and whoever else was profiting from the stranger game, because if this was going on in our city, certainly it was going on in other cities. Who knew the scale? Who knew the myriad ways this game had been manifested and monetized elsewhere?

  “Thanks for your concern,” Detective Martinez said, “but I’ll be fine.” And she added, “It may not seem like it, Rebecca, but I’ve always been on your side.”

  I wanted to believe this but didn’t know if I could. I stared at the back of my right hand, then my palm—my own hand was so disturbing to me, my own hand a weapon. Later Ezra would insist that Carey wanted to make it look like I was the one who had
jumped into the ravine, a noteless suicide, that either this was what he’d been told he had to do or it was his own dark plan. It was possible he only wanted to frighten me so I would stop going around questioning the police, but then again, maybe Ezra was right. We would never know.

  “I’ll deal with Allagash,” Detective Martinez said, “but you need to leave the city now, Rebecca, and you should not come back.”

  “Ever?” Ezra asked.

  The truth was that I wanted nothing more than to drive as far away as I could, but I was so confused about everything that had come to the surface, and my befuddlement probably came across as hesitancy or resistance. The detective withdrew a folded page from her pocket and showed it to us: Carey’s note.

  “If you come back, I’ll change my story,” she said. “You were already at the abandoned house when I got there. I saw you push him. Of course, you might be able to plead self-defense, but then who is to say a jury will believe that.”

  “You just said you were on my side,” I said.

  “I am,” Detective Martinez said. “You don’t want to be in the city anymore, not given who else might come looking for you.”

  I thought she might insist on escorting me out of town, but she left, and it was eerie how calm I became—Ezra, too. I had already packed that one bag earlier and didn’t need much else. If I was going to leave, I needed to leave before it hit me that I didn’t know where I would go. But first. First I took Ezra’s hand and led him into my bedroom, to my bed, where I sat him down, sat next to him, and reached over to unbutton enough of his shirt for me to slide my hand in over his heart. He was nervous, this was obvious. How could I make him less anxious? How could I convey to him that while our history was written, our future was not? I lay back on the bed. He lay back, too. We were facing each other. I unbuttoned the rest of his shirt; he took off mine. I needed to be held, and I believe he did, too.

  It was night by the time I said, “I need to go.”

  Ezra understood. He said, “Then you should go.”

  “I guess it’s my turn to wander,” I said.

  AND THEN I DRIFTED. AT FIRST I DROVE EAST AND NORTH, EACH night a different town. Eventually I started staying a week in a place, then a month. I volunteered where I could. I found temporary work in old brick libraries. I walked dogs; I delivered food to the infirm. I headed farther north and crossed the border, and when I reached the opposite coast, I stopped.

  Meanwhile, I was in contact with Ezra, daily texts, calls at night. He would ask me where I was, and I’d ask him what new novel he’d borrowed overnight from the bookstore where he was working again. I knew he was lonesome—I was, too—but I needed my isolation. Occasionally he ran into Detective Martinez, who asked after me; Ezra asked her in turn if she thought that I remained in any kind of danger as a witness to an unsolved crime, and the detective didn’t think I was, not with Carey gone. Although she maintained it was best for me to stay away. Ezra also asked if she was getting anywhere with her probe, and she admitted she was not. She didn’t say it to Ezra, but Ezra said it to me: the bad guys won. That said, Detective Martinez swore she wouldn’t give up.

  I thought about Carlos Garcia all the time, about how he wrote his essay with the naive belief that his example could make the world a better place. How rapidly and viciously he was misunderstood. How tragic he couldn’t stop what he never meant to start. How unfair, how awful the cost. My inability to accept what had happened to him in part was what kept me out wandering, perhaps. Could I at least live according to his model and erase all alienation and achieve greater empathy?

  After I decided not to follow the woman with the young son any farther through the forest that autumn morning, I returned home to the old cottage I’d been renting, and I avoided the known creaks in the floor as I made my way back to the bedroom, where Ezra was still asleep. After a year away, I had asked him to find a broker and put my house on the hill on the market, which he did, and it sold right away. He’d been living in my house and said he would rent an apartment, but I told him I had a better idea. I asked him if he would come to me.

  In bed, he pulled me toward him, and moored me there, and I could tell he was half-awake but didn’t open his eyes. Later he would tell me he wished I wouldn’t slip out the way I did, that I wouldn’t go on these drives, and I would point out that they were less and less frequent, which was true enough.

  As far as I knew the stranger game continued to be played in our old city and everywhere else, and given its various iterations and corruptions, I could not imagine what form it now took or what kind of networks facilitated how many daily invasions of privacy. No matter its traction, however, no fad could last forever. It would fade and be forgotten, but then what would replace it? Something, of course, something likely darker, but what?

  The world was a world of strangers, and all anyone wanted, I had decided, was to be seen and to be known, truly known. So perhaps the boldest strike you could make against the stranger game was to see and to know one person as completely as possible: How could you draw a line connecting you and this one great love? How could you make that line indelible?

  When I turned to face Ezra, I could see his eyes were open, blinking at me apprehensively. I smiled until he smiled. Be with me now, I told him. Be with me.

  * * * * *

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful to my friend and agent Gail Hochman for her guidance, enthusiasm, and wit, and to my editor Peter Joseph for the care and intelligence with which he has ushered this book to its readership. I feel very lucky to have Gail and Peter on my side, and to work with everyone at Brandt & Hochman, Hanover Square Press, and HarperCollins.

  My thanks also to my friends and family who sustain me: Charlie Gadol, Donna Sherman, Lano Williams, Joe Boone, Michelle Latiolais, Michael MacLennan, Scott Belluz, Marisa Matarazzo, Jamie Sher, and my colleagues at Otis College of Art and Design.

  My world has been so greatly enriched by Kent Doss. I cannot imagine having written this novel or any novel without Stephen Gutwillig in my life.

  This book is dedicated to Chris Tweed-Kent, who immediately became someone I felt like I had known forever.

  ISBN-13: 9781488014888

  The Stranger Game

  Copyright © 2018 by Peter Gadol

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