Here & There

by Joshua V. Scher

  “So you’re saying the FBI murdered him?”

  “I’m saying that not a single periodical ever mentions the rye—just that the barbiturates were combined with an unspecified alcohol.” Eli went over to his bar again. “And that my goddaughter has a healthy suspicion of the powers that be.”

  Considering the Department’s and Beimini®’s resources, I was dubious that Lorelei’s ruse, even with the actors, would fool either for long. An hour later, as we packed, I shared my concern with her.

  “Trust me, Tri-Me. It’ll do the job,” Lorelei said, zipping envelopes of cash into various pockets of a suitcase she borrowed from Eli.

  My packing had already been taken care of. It sat in a couple of shopping bags of new clothes she had picked up for me in SoHo after work. “All they’d have to do is go to Pittsburgh or Bloomington and find ‘us’ to realize it’s not us,” I said, going on to point out that the only thing that had been working for me so far was them not knowing where the hell I was.

  “It doesn’t matter if they figure out the whole thing is a red herring as long as they lose our actual trail.”

  “Huh.” I had to admit, it was a pretty good plan. As long as our pursuers (real or hypothetical) took the bait and followed our doppelgängers. In the meantime, one of her investment banker boyfriends had parked one of his cars, a Range Rover, in the underground lot below Eli’s building. Eli then took Little Li-Li’s suitcase and shopping bags down in the elevator, and with the spare car key (to the banker’s car) that Lorelei already had, loaded up the trunk of the IB’s car, conveniently parked in a surveillance blind spot. Eli’s generous tipping habits had their perks. While we avoided security cameras of our own by hiking down fifty-three flights, Eli also retrieved my mother’s briefcase from storage and tucked it next to the suitcase and shopping bags. Leaving the spare key on top of the front tire, Eli then got in his own car and drove down to Tribeca to meet a business associate for drinks at his favorite bar, The Brandy Library.

  It was hard not to laugh as I followed Lorelei’s ass serpentining between parked cars, both of us hunched over like we were in some bad remake of Three Days of the Condor. I wasn’t quite sure whether it was a testament to how much better I was feeling after three days of rest or just how far gone I was. Either way I felt invigorated. And also amused at how the universe works its way around. Years of daydreaming about being this close to Lorelei’s intoxicating rear end, and there I was, sober as a Mormon in Mecca, panting in exhaustion from our five-hundred-and-fifty-foot descent, relieved to finally plotz down into the almond-leather seat of some devoted Lorelei suitor’s Range Rover. Wheels within wheels.

  It wasn’t until she reached back, grabbed my hand, and pulled me toward the car that I remembered the dream I had about her last night.

  It began with the quiet, soft beat of feet padding against a bare stage, legs leaping impossibly high into the air with foot flutters that end in the slightest pitter-pats. From somewhere far off, maybe the sewers, leaks in a foreboding sound of harried apprehensive violins rushing along to a distressed time signature. I recognize it. Facades from Philip Glass’s Glassworks.

  The hair on the back of my neck rises with portent. I turn. Downstage the orchestra pit is entombed in a mausoleum of water three feet thick. Blurred behind the water wall, I can just make out the conductor. It’s Hilary—hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, dressed in a tux. She looks through the wall of water at me and cues the brass section.

  The soprano saxophone whines in with an eerie, melancholic resignation. I turn back to see a figure of incandescent blue bound on from upstage right, curve into center stage, and leap at me. It is only in mid-flight that I recognize the dancer as Lorelei.

  As if by their own accord, my arms lift up and catch her beneath her armpits. She bends her knees up and crumples into me. Her momentum spins and draws me downstage, as I swoop her downward then back up, turning upstage and releasing her back up into the air, like an incandescent dove that unfurls and alights on the stage with barely a sound. She floats in rhythm up stage left, then circles back downstage and leaps at me again. Again, possessed, I catch her under the armpits, spin, swoop her down then up, and release her.

  Neither of us are in control of our movements. We are possessed. Captive marionettes manipulated by string instruments.

  We keep doing this, tracing out infinity signs in the air, each spin pulling me slightly more downstage, until finally I realize we are no longer on a stage at all, but atop a massive rock towering over a fast river that bends around the granite base. Heavy currents strain against the curve, murmuring music, whispering dares in my ear.

  Lorelei relentlessly soars at me, again and again. I keep catching her every time without impulse. My focus is on the impending edge, until finally I feel pebbles pop out from under the grind of my pivoting feet. The bits of gravel drift down over the brink like popcorn. I toss Lorelei back, she unfurls, lands, flutters in a circle, orbits back to me, and leaps. Catching her pulls me around, she swoops down below the ledge, then back up as we complete the upward curve of infinity, and I release her, once again feeling the slightest shift of inertia push away from her as our momentum divides in two. This time the pebbles pop away from the brink as I drift down.

  It’s not so much that I feel like I’m falling as much as it seems like the cliff top is rapidly shrinking, as the vibrato of the saxophone’s lament decrescendos with distance. Until the cold slaps against my face.

  The chilled, salt air of the Hudson River rushed through my cracked window. It was just a dream, I kept telling myself. Some nighttime neural discharge. I tried willing myself not to make the connection to Lorelei’s namesake, the German siren Lore Lay who enticed despairing sailors into the dangerous, rocky waters of the Rhine. I worked hard to keep from wondering if maybe she was a Department plant seducing me into revealing Hilary’s secrets. What else could I do? Wheels had been set in motion. I just needed to stay sharp, resist her beautiful pull, and keep ascetic focus.

  West Side Highway, to the Saw Mill, to the Merritt. We were heading to a friend of a friend’s beach house in Newport. We were getting the fuck out of this city.

  I had escaped the oubliette.

  Now maybe I could stop running in circles ‘round her report. Maybe I could find something tangible out there. Retrace her footsteps. Pick up her trail. With Lorelei’s help and a little luck . . . Who knows, maybe Hilary had left a little something else for me. Another breadcrumb. Maybe not. At least Lorelei insisted it was worth a shot. But I sure as shit wasn’t going to get any closer to finding Hilary staying holed up in my landlocked carriage house.

  It wasn’t until we got past New Haven that Lorelei reached behind the passenger seat and handed me the third burner mobile phone and a folder that I instantly recognized as being a part of my mother’s oeuvre. One I hadn’t gotten to yet, though.

  “You need to read this before we get there,” Lorelei said, her eyes fixed on the road, as cars merged into our lane from a roadside McDonald’s.

  The weight of it pinned me down into the almond leather. Three days of pining for my dear, sweet PsychoNarrative and I felt nothing but apprehension. Finally, my arm moved of its own accord: a stranger to my body, like a limb that had been slept on wrong, moving purely by faith rather than feel. The foreign fingers slid under the corner tab, and peeled it back, like a boulder being rolled away from the entrance of the tomb. And I sank into its darkness.

  * * *

  XIV

  No one keeps a secret so well as a child.

  ~Victor Hugo

  To keep a secret, one must pretend to forget it.

  ~Anna Aither

  His mind of man, a secret makes,

  I meet him with a start,

  He carries a circumference

  In which I have no part.

  ~Emily Dickinson

  Secrets cleave. They can sever apart or bind together. It is not the secret that determines this, but rather the nature of its keepers
and, more importantly, those from whom it is being kept. A secret, like a virus, can evolve and adapt as it permeates the host. What was a wedge can sharpen into a hook, what was a confidence can grow into a tumor. Contrary to popular opinion, however, exposure does not necessarily inoculate it. Too much sunlight can singe.

  If it weren’t for the accident, Reidier and Eve’s secret might never have been unearthed, despite interminable hours of footage, mountainous piles of transcripts, and pilfered journals. Ironically, it was the unrelenting mundaneness of bureaucracy that cracked the code: a form-letter response to an auto-insurance accident claim.

  Reidier or Eve most likely filed it without even considering its implications. Endless machinations of deception implemented to cloister and camouflage the truth, undone by banality. To be fair, it was most likely in an effort to expedite the cover-up.

  Eve had had an accident.

  The car had been damaged.

  The accident had uncovered damage.

  Fix the car, cover up the damage.

  The only problem was they needed help to fix the car and to pay for the fix. And then also there was Bertram. The secret’s circumference had grown.

  The insurance claim was found amidst crates of unopened mail, received shortly before and after The Reidier Test. Originally filed on August 10, 2007, after an anomalistic rainstorm during an otherwise drought-like summer, the accident occurred near the corner of Adelphi and Wayland Avenues. The damage to the car was minimal. Dented fender and busted headlight on the front passenger side, along with a deployed air bag, cracked driver’s-side window, and shattered rear-passenger window. No personal injuries were recorded or covered.

  The question then is why did Eve, Otto, and Ecco go to the hospital?

  The auto-insurance claim brings into relief a surprising discrepancy as compared with the Providence Police Report. According to the police report, all three were transported to Rhode Island Hospital. The police report itself only provides a little more insight into the how of what happened.

  Vehicle 1 [Eve’s car] was traveling within the speed limit on Wayland Avenue. Vehicle 1 slowed to make a left-hand turn onto Adelphi Avenue. While completing turn, driver of Vehicle 1 lost control of vehicle on puddled rainwater covering the intersection. Vehicle 1 slid in diagonal path across intersection and collided with telephone pole on corner. No other vehicle was involved.

  Dep. T. Andrews responded and conducted injury evaluation. Driver-side airbag was deployed. Driver, identified as Eve Tassat Reidier, appeared to have suffered minor head wound. She was in an agitated state, insisting on getting her son to the hospital. Twin boys were in backseat. One had suffered severe burns on his hand and arm.

  Due to slick road conditions, traffic from rain on roads, and a spike in incidents all over city, EMS was having difficulty making it to accident site. Dep. Andrews called them off and delivered above three to Rhode Island Hospital.

  Follow-up interview: Driver’s comment on relevant events is as follows: “I was traveling down the road. The telephone poles were passing me in orderly fashion at thirty miles per hour. Suddenly one of them stepped into my path.”

  The public record trail ended there. Rhode Island Hospital itself yielded no further insight. They could not produce any medical records pertaining to this incident. At first, it seemed that the administration was just being obstinate. However, upon further pursuit—presenting myself as Eve’s psychologist, following up on lasting damage from the head injury—it became apparent that the hospital was unable to locate any such records.* A loss they were either remiss to admit or compelled not to.

  * * *

  * Ok, so this is not my mother. Hilary has clearly gone rogue, or at least ‘round the bend. Posing as Eve’s psychologist? All this time, I thought my knack for bullshit was my own little gift. Apparently it’s a family trait. My mother is not who I thought she was, and I am more like her than I ever knew.

  In the car, Connecticut hissed by the window.

  * * *

  It would seem that Dep. Andrews was mistaken. If so, why did he not include a correction in his otherwise detailed report? No, they must have arrived. Perhaps Eve and the boys could have left after being dropped off. Still, for liability reasons, Dep. Andrews would not have left before they were checked in. And if they were checked in, there would be a file. So, was the file lost or squelched?

  I am remiss to resort to Department resources and/or pressures. If the records were lost, then no amount of pressure could produce them. However, if they were suppressed, then it’s a good bet that the Department suppressed them. It would have been a calculated choice, then, for them not to include it with my material. One they would most likely continue to stick by.

  If someone or something else were responsible for the deletion, then they were most likely doing so in an effort to hide something from the powers that be. Assuming this is the case, I am apt to follow the obfuscator’s lead, trusting that calling down the higher-ups would only serve to muddy the waters.

  Whose secret is this?

  Finding Bertram proved to be challenging. Phone calls, e-mails, office visits, home visits, more phone calls—all to no avail. The summer had freed him from any curricular responsibilities. His graduate students continued to toil away in his lab, accepting he was at this or that European conference followed by this or that vacation. I assume he was checking in periodically, but he certainly wasn’t picking up any ringing phones in any of his alleged hotels.

  I had spent too much time in Providence, and it wasn’t getting me anywhere. Neither was trolling Narragansett Beach. On a whim, I returned to the site of our enlightening lunch at Crazy Burger. Of course Bertram was nowhere to be found. I was banging my head against the proverbial walls, hoping for a breakthrough.

  Breakthrough is such a misleading metaphor. It connotes a persistent, unrelenting battering, hitting the wall again and again, that ultimately reduces a block to rubble and leads to open enlightenment. Creativity doesn’t actually work that way. Inspiration doesn’t come down from the heavens because we offer up ourselves as sacrifices to the muses. Focus is the enemy. Insight (in not, sight seeing—seeing without seeing) comes from a relaxed state, away from the problem, where we are allowed to free associate. It is in this way that our neurons can make connections precluded by a tunnel vision. I feel I’m unraveling with no thread left to follow.

  I stayed that night in Narragansett, renting a room at the Stone’s Throw Inn. That evening, I made my way under the town’s towers, along the coast, across The Narrows, and ended up at a blue-collar Irish bar overlooking the water, where the bay met the ocean. Lots of wood paneling from 1958 decorated with black-and-white photographs of turn-of-the-century Narragansett in its casino days. I ordered lobster rolls and gin.

  I was done. No more head banging. I had decidedly finished.

  Tonight was a celebration.

  But the gin and tonics resulted in the leaving of an ill-advised voice mail: “Bertram, I hope you are well. I apologize for the litany of messages and e-mails. You have been more than generous in this process, like patience on a statue. Especially considering the—your personal costs in walking me around memory lane. I can only imagine the weight of it all. You carry your grief well. It’s a difficult thing to hold your mourning and abeyance in abeyance. Anyhow, I apologize for haranguing you amidst the rubble. I’m afraid I can be like a bulldog once I get a hold of something. Bulldog? Is it a bulldog? They’re the ones that bite down and hold on. And snore. Eve’s accident—it’s been my bone, so to speak. Once I found it, well, you know . . . Considering the final outcome of things, perhaps I just need a little perspective to see the forest for the trees. Nevertheless, it’ll be our little secret garden. I haven’t shared it with anyone. I wish you the best. And of course, please look me up if you’re ever in DC.”

  A heartfelt but thoughtless, inebriated phone call. The Department was most likely listening in. Or was that Pierce’s prerogative? Hopefully, Eve’s accident will
simply be assumed to be an oblique reference to the fallout from The Reidier Test.

  Tomorrow I’ll leave for New York to have lunch with Danny.

  Fallaces sunt rerum species.*

  * * *

  * The appearances of things are deceptive.

  A dead language for a dead end.

  Connecticut’s Indian casinos lay ahead. Perhaps Little Li-Li and I should try our luck there. She smiled and guided us past New London, the old stomping grounds of Eugene O’Neill and nuclear submarines, a town made famous by descents.

  * * *

  For now, sleep is a welcome blackness.

  NB Footage: Providence, 7:37 p.m., July 25, 2007—

  The dark walnut-wood door to the basement scrapes a quarter of an inch out into the hall and stops, still wedged within its frame. Its latch sticks out like a tongue. Swollen with age, the door often settles for the tight embrace of the jamb rather than bothering to engage the latch.

  From behind the door, Reidier’s muffled voice takes on the high-pitched tone of encouragement.

  The door slips out another quarter inch. More supportive intonations. Another quarter inch out and then it suddenly bursts open, tracing its familiar arc into the hallway.

  Ecco stands in the emptiness of the frame, looking back at his father with pride.

  Reidier smiles and waits.

  Ecco grabs his father’s hand, turns back, steps up into the hallway, turns left, and leads his father into the kitchen.

  Ecco and Reidier stand just inside, next to the counter. Ecco looks up at his father, who takes in the view of the kitchen much like Balboa must have after summiting the Sierras and seeing the Pacific Ocean before him.

  A pot and roasting pan are upside down to the left of the sink, drying over a dish towel. On the table, two place settings have been left along with a Saran-wrapped plate of half a roast chicken and a bowl of escarole.