Monster

by William Young

Officer Claypool was peeling a banana when Nick walked in the next morning and pulled the clipboards off the wall. Nick sat down and flipped through them quickly, barely interested in the fender-benders, petty-thefts and noise ordinance violations he found detailed in the glib prose of policemen. Who cared if "the actor then proceeded to flee on foot" or if "the driver of vehicle one stated that she did not see the other vehicle as it exited the parking garage"? Not him, that's for sure. He had more important things to worry about, and first among them was the man with the smoke-stained beard.

  "Hey, do you know anything about a guy whose first name is Mordechai? He hangs out around this area of town a lot. He's always in The Grove drinking, has a scraggly white beard and always wears the same clothes," Nick asked Claypool after hanging up the clipboards and walking up to the desk.

  Claypool smiled while chewing on a bite of banana. "Oh, yeah, Mordechai Romanov," he said as he chewed, showing pulpy white clumps of banana between his teeth. Claypool swallowed and looked down to peel his banana further. "Why?"

  "Just wondering. I've seen him around a lot and just wanted to know his story."

  "Why don't you ask him? Ain't that your job, to ask people questions?" Claypool asked and bit another section of banana.

  Nick shrugged. "Yeah, and I'm asking you, I guess, and it seems you've heard of him."

  Claypool nodded. "Sure, everybody around here knows him. Used to be in the symphony; now he's just a drunk. Every once in a while, we get a call from some lady at a bus stop or someplace telling us he's being a nuisance. He's mostly harmless, though."

  "Mostly harmless?"

  Claypool swallowed and tossed the banana peel into a nearby trash can. "Yeah, well, he's never done anything but annoy people with his beer breath and conspiracy stories. He's never done anything to anybody."

  "What kind of conspiracy stories?"

  Claypool shrugged. "Hard to say. I talked to him once a couple of years ago after he started talking to some lady in a diner who kept asking him to go away. He didn't, so I walked over to ask what the problem was and he just told me some mixed-up story about there being forces we didn't understand that were controlling our lives," Claypool said, his voice level and bored. "Same old crap you always hear. Vast right wing conspiracies, neocons, stuff like that. I just escorted him out of the restaurant and finished my lunch. After all, he wasn't hurting anybody, just annoying them, and there's no reason to arrest nobody if they're willing to leave when you ask."

  Nick was silent for a second and then said, "Oh."

  Claypool laughed. "Why, what did you think about him?

  Nick shook his head. "I don't know. I heard he was an interesting character with a lot of stories and I was just wondering whether it was worth it to talk to him. I guess not, if he's just a nut."

  At the office, Nick immediately called up the paper’s archives on his computer and scanned for hits on Mordechai Romanov, but the computer archives only went back ten years and came up blank, so he had to go downstairs to the library and pull manila folders from steel filing cabinets. He shook his head in disbelief for a moment, wondering how his paper’s owner, a winner in the Internet bubble scam, hadn’t bothered to get around to digitizing the rest of the paper’s archives. It took actual time to pull files, riffle through the paste-and-clipped articles within, and find articles mentioning Mordechai, but he found them. The most recent one was from eleven years ago; it was a lengthy interview with him after he had played his final concert with the symphony and had been allowed by the conductor to perform a solo, the only one of his symphony career, as the night's final performance piece. For the most part, the article related his anecdotes as a partying violinist who loved to go on tour, the hidden inference being that he liked to bed women from foreign countries after a night of hard drinking. The photo accompanying the article was of a much different Mordechai. He was lean to the point of skinny, his hair a thick black tangle, and he was dressed in a tan blazer, his neck protected by an ascot. The only thing similar to the Mordechai Nick knew were the eyes: They stared out from the page with a pale urgency of desperation which sharply contrasted the bright smile flickering across his lips. It was impossible to miss, the duplicity of the look his face gave off: on the one hand flippant and cocksure, on the other the weight of a state secret.

  After that last entry, the computer showed nothing. No arrests, no performances, nothing. Before that, it was all mundane reports or interview-blurbs about the violin section. Until he came across an article done in Hungary decades earlier while the reviewer was touring with the symphony through Europe. It was a slice-of-life article: what the musicians did when they were between shows, what the conductor ate for dinner, what the crowds coming to the performances were like. Fluff. But buried deep in the article were three paragraphs about Mordechai, who was then 32-years-old and in his fourth year with the symphony. Nick scratched his head as he reconciled the age of the man then and how he appeared now and wondered how he could possibly seem so young while certainly being more than seventy.

  There, though, in the article, mid-way through it, the interviewer had come across Mordechai slumped against the steps of the concert hall in Budapest the morning before the show and, apparently, though it wasn't stated in the article, awoke him. Nick thought the passage oddly worded:

  "A tour like this can work oddly on a performer's psyche. After the strain of several weeks of nightly performances, Mordechai Romanov, a second-section violinist, was found sleeping on the Budapest Concert Hall's front steps the morning before a performance.

  After being awoken, a chagrined Romanov explained his odd choice of sleeping accommodations: `God knows that I owe this position to more than just the fear I wouldn't wake up on time for tonight's performance,' Romanov said. 'But sometimes the voices in your head will make you do crazy things to make you perform at your peak, and this is just one of them.

  When that voice talks, I listen, because it's gotten me to where I am today. Without it, I'd be fiddling for dimes on a corner somewhere or cobbling in my father's shop.'

  And with that, Romanov tipped his fedora back over his eyes and returned to the dreams that had obviously roused him from bed or tavern and brought him to such a poured-concrete reality."

  Nick didn't much like the author's prose. It smacked of an over-achiever incapable of matching his words with the grandiose visions he saw in his head. The quote, doubtlessly gathered from a Mordechai only a few hours removed from a drink, seemed to back up, in some uncertain way, his contentions about their being voices, symbionts -- something -- guiding his career and making him what he otherwise would not have been. Could he have known, then? He must have known something, felt something, having only been on the symphony a short time and, apparently, amazed that he had ever gained the ability to play with one. But Mordechai had told Nick that just a week earlier.

  Because of that, Nick found himself checking the computer files for references to symbionts. He found none. In fact, the word symbiont had only been used once in the paper during the thirteen years in the computer files, and that reference was nine years old, and then only in reference to pilot fish and sharks in an article on a marine biologist. Nick wasn't even sure if it was used correctly.

  Bleary-eyed, Nick pushed himself away from the computer terminal and stared blankly at the ceiling tiles. He had come into the reference library to check on art thefts but had immediately been sidetracked, thinking the chase would lead nowhere. It had, but now he was tired of staring at the screen and hungry after having missed lunch. There was no sense in any of this. He knew that. Why he had searched through the files on Mordechai instead of trying to figure out how to get himself out of his potential art-scandal dilemma befuddled him. He could only rub his eyes in disbelief and hope the investigation would never come to him. Even if it did, he had done nothing illegal. Or had he?

  Thinking about it was a jinx. He closed his eyes and tried to think about Sarah only to be interrupted seconds later by his editor, John Holc
ombe.

  "Nick, some woman's been calling for you all morning and I'm tired of telling her you'll call her back shortly. She's holding now, can you take the call?" John asked, although it wasn't really a question.

  Nick swiveled around in the chair and looked up at John. "Sarah?"

  John shrugged. "Maybe. She's called about five times and I'm the only one in the newsroom and I'm tired of writing you notes to call her back, especially when I knew you were in here somewhere."

  Nick nodded and stood up. "Yeah, transfer it my phone."

  Nick wanted to vomit, but knew that wasn't an option. When he answered and heard Sophia on the other end, feelings of repulsion and lust coursed simultaneously through him.

  "Nick, I've been wondering what you're up to. You haven't called," Sophia said, her voice cool and calm.

  "I've been busy. You know how it is. Well, maybe you don't. I am still working on the story, though," Nick said, trying to make his voice light.

  "So, what have you found out, so far?" Sophia asked.

  Nick furrowed his eyebrows at the question and sucked in his lower lip. "Nothing," he said nonchalantly, "I haven't had any time. It's been kind of busy normal stuff."

  "So, when can I see you again?" Sophia asked, her voice losing it's edgy curiosity and waxing seductive. Nick felt himself get instantly aroused at the question and shook his head to clear his mind.

  "Ummm," he said, knowing that wasn't the best thing to say.

  "Oh, Nick, come on," she said softly, her words burred with intention. "I could be your secret confidant. Your inside informant ... your deep throat."

  Nick shook his head and rubbed his forehead. This isn't how he ever imagined an affair continuing, with the woman calling him at work and dropping double entendres, especially not a wealthy, older woman with better things to do. He didn't know how an affair would have continued, he had never even thought of how one started, but here she was, on the other end of the phone, beckoning him. And he knew he wanted it as badly as he knew he should resist. He should say something definitive against the possibility or, at least, something sufficiently hazy enough to buy him some time to steel his resolve.

  "How about next Monday after work?" he said instead. "I get off around three, usually."

  "I'll close up here at four," Sophia said. "An hour early, just for you."

  Nick closed his eyes, licked his lips quickly and said just one word before hanging up.

  "Wow."

  TWENTY-ONE