Backward-Facing Man (5 page)

Stardust double-clicked, and a grainy photo of Lorraine's group materialized. Everyone else was facing forward, smiling tentatively. Several were pointing to bits of clothing and gear, proudly. Lorraine was looking at the young man next to her. Underneath the photo, the caption read, “Clad in only long johns, a wool hat, and a miner's light, an American woman (third from left) was found facedown, 350 feet from her encampment.” Why would Lorraine have ventured out alone in the middle of the night during a storm? Didn't they have guides or leaders to prevent these things? Stardust sat very still. It was only one day old, and the new millennium carried an impossibly heavy load. For her, an adventure gone bad, a narrow escape from rapists, a pistol aimed between her eyes, and her mother, Lorraine—first missing—now dead! Stardust closed her eyes and felt herself free-fall, no perch, no perspective, no solid ground underneath her feet. She sat hunched forward, breathless, as if she herself was buried under snow. Then she began to shake and then sob, before collapsing on the carpet.

 

The following week, Lorraine's trip mates invited Stardust to join their listserv in a discussion around understanding and accepting Lorraine's death. Stardust declined in a terse e-mail they discussed online for a week. She was determined to leave Lorraine's New Age mumbo-jumbo mysticism behind. A few days later, the graduate student from Lorraine's trip called to express his condolences. He'd been with her near the end. Stardust asked how her mother seemed—what she'd been thinking—but he didn't know. “She'd been reading Rumi,” he said sheepishly. “In group circle the night before, she seemed kind of blissed out.” That same day, a postcard arrived. “Stardust,” Lorraine wrote in her meticulous block print, “I'm finally learning to let go. I love you. Mom.”

She stared at the heels of his sneakers as they lifted and then touched the ground. Periodically he turned, dazed, as though he'd forgotten where he was, or that she was behind him, and then suddenly his stride would lengthen and Stardust had to struggle to keep pace. She became a scientist tracking a rare primate, a political refugee being led to a safe house, a pickpocket following her mark. She studied him—his shoulders slumped, chin forward, head tilted down, his urban skulk down one numbered street, across another, behind a row of blackened shells.

Although it was just after seven thirty in the morning, the streets were crawling with life. Young mothers pulled kids in ratty coats by their mittenless hands. An Asian man with aviator glasses called out to an Hispanic woman who nodded from behind a grocery store window advertising lottery tickets. Two black girls, their hair pulled into pigtails and their broad brown foreheads shining, played hopscotch parallel to a chain-link fence. A pay phone on the opposite corner was ringing. What compelled Stardust to stand up on the train and follow him receded in importance. Once committed, the adventurer must press on. The air was metallic and crisp. There was a smell like explosives. Winter. Poverty wearing itself like a scent.

When you're a receptionist at a busy downtown law firm and you're not going to show up for work, there's a certain protocol you must follow if you expect to keep your job. For starters, you have to call in ahead of time. And you need a pretty solid excuse. Under no circumstances do you just
not
show up. Stardust looked at a clock hanging in a grocery store window. It was seven fifty
A.M
. Work started at eight-thirty. If only she had a cell phone.

At Allegheny, they turned left and headed toward the river. Dark figures huddled around an oil drum facing a small fire. Suddenly, the backward-facing man reached into his pocket and Stardust froze, memorizing the moment, the sun glinting off parked-car roofs, a pickup truck filled with scrap metal pulling out into traffic. She imagined him pulling out a gun, lifting it to her temple, and firing; the headline: “Daughter of Frozen Skier Murdered in Ghetto.” But the backward-facing man withdrew his hand and turned, slapping the parking meter next to him. He turned the dial and continued walking. Ten steps later, he repeated the motion. She didn't understand. A beat-looking, middle-aged guy dressed in a loopy outfit lures her off a commuter train promising information about her past—information she has waited a lifetime to hear—he walks twenty blocks in silence, then jams coins into some parking meters in front of empty spaces.

A few minutes later, they stopped at a twelve-foot fence surrounding a parking lot in front of several industrial buildings that were joined sloppily—brick to cinder block, cinder block to stucco—with nothing in common except their unredeemable ugliness. Off to one side was a large loading dock with heavy plastic strips hanging like sooty curtains. An old forklift gutted for parts sat in a truck well, and above it, along an iron girder, a row of pigeons looked as if they'd been feasting on Big Macs.

The backward-facing man raised a steel bar, swung open the gate, and walked across the yard. Stardust knew that if she followed him, her chances of getting to work at all would diminish significantly. Yet the possibility of hearing more about Lorraine and her life in Boston or something about her father drew her in. She looked around, first at the squat buildings and then back toward the street. There were rows of clapboard houses with tiny porches, well kept, nicely painted; no pay phones, no neighbors standing around, no cars passing. The only other commercial establishment, the Montana Beef Company, was shuttered. The backward-facing man seemed more confident now, like a kid near his clubhouse. As if sensing her dilemma, he turned and spoke to her for the first time since they got off the train. “C'mon in,” he said. “Relax. Have some tea. I have a lot to tell you and not a lot of time.”

Who could resist a fellow human being offering stories about her past? Stardust took a deep breath and followed him toward an archway that joined two of the buildings. She tried to memorize her surroundings, making note of something for later, an address, anything she could reference in case she needed to. They climbed the steps of an enclosed fire escape: him, stoop-shouldered, shuffling; her, light on her feet, tentative, uncertain. At the top of the landing, before a large red door, the backward-facing man flipped a cover up over a keypad, and his fingers tapped out numbers in a pattern. There was a high-pitched tone, and a small red light turned green. He pulled a round key from his pocket, inserted it, and turned it ninety degrees. The red door opened, and he stepped inside. Stardust took a deep breath and followed him.

The city has a thousand secret places. Stardust felt the soft whoosh of warm air and heard jazz playing softly in the background. A man, very slight, got up from a brown leather couch and walked toward them. Low ceilings, skylight, exposed ductwork, cantilevered lighting suspended from above that barely illuminated the floor, open kitchen, and beyond that, a large fish tank set off to one side. She had the feeling she was entering a kingdom inhabited by a separate species of people living strange lives in a make-believe place.

 

“Hey, Chuck,” the wire-thin man with a knitted cap and small round glasses said to the backward-facing man. “And hello, dahling,” he said, taking Stardust's hands. “My name is Rahim. Welcome to Fantasy Island.” He smiled graciously. “Would you like some breakfast?” They were standing in the kitchen. The decor contrasted so radically with the exterior of the building that Stardust kept blinking, then looking from one visual anomaly to the next, unable to take it all in—the blighted exterior, the abandoned parking lot, the elaborate alarm system; and inside, the posh carpeting, the earth tones, the matte black kitchen appliances, the tropical-fish tank; and now this guy offering to make her breakfast.

“What am I doing here?” she said more to herself than to him. And then, considering he might be more talkative than the backward-facing man, “Where is
here
anyway? And where'd the other guy go?”

“Chuck has a big day Monday,” Rahim said pleasantly. “Lots of preparing to do. I'm his assistant, the innkeeper, the beekeeper, the gatekeeper, the bookkeeper. I handle inquiries, enquiries, exquiries, investments, divestitures, one misstep at a time.”

She looked at him carefully. On his hands and his face, the skin was translucent, and as he talked, she imagined she could see where his jaw met his skull. “You're probably famished,” he said. “Let me fix you something.” He spoke with a slight accent, reedy and effeminate. “A cup of tea, cappuccino, a Spanish omelet”—he moved his hand in a little circular gesture—“with egg whites…?”

“No thanks.”

He took her coat, and she looked down at her blouse for one of those plastic laminated badges visitors to the law firm are always forgetting to take off when they leave. “Can I use a phone?” she asked Rahim.

“You're in a no-phone zone.”

“Seriously. I need to call work. I'm willing to go along with the game for a while, but I can't afford—”

“I'm serious, too. This is a no…phone…zone,” he said slowly, pronouncing each word now with a heavy local accent, like he was sucking on a straw.

“Am I being kidnapped?” Stardust said.

Rahim looked at her, mock horrified. “No-oo-oo,” he said in three syllables, putting his hands on his hips.

Stardust shuddered. “C'mon, I gotta make a call.”

“How about a cup of tea?” Rahim said, smiling. He filled a pot with water and turned the heat up, then took two mugs out of a cabinet, set them on a counter, and walked across the kitchen. He was wearing a black turtleneck, black Levi's held up by a black belt with little silver studs, and black Adidas. His cheeks were concave and covered with some kind of rash. Under his knitted cap, his hair was jet black. Stardust caught herself staring at his diamond-stud earrings, which were larger than hers. She checked her watch. It was eight fifteen. Soon, the reception desk at Drinker and Sledge would be piled with unsorted mail. By eight thirty, somebody's secretary would call HR. By then, it would be too late.

“We're in a blackout zone,” Rahim said, stepping into the living area. “No windows, no handhelds, no free-floating radio signals. The walls are lead-lined to prevent eavesdropping. The satellites see only a factory. We can't afford contact with the outer world. Our work may seem humdrum, irrelevant, benign even, but it's not. We antagonize the infrastructure. We're enemies of the status quo. We're the antidote to spin, the masters of spamnation, we're medication for the nation.” Stardust stared at him. “The neighbors think we run a shelter, and in a few minutes you'll see why. The telephone is a weapon of oppression. It rings, and humans respond. It's autonomic, physiological. Have you ever tried to resist? It requires great strength. We're against knee-jerk reactions, mechanical responses, mindless, thoughtless rote of any kind.” He was working it very hard, like he was nervous or speeding, or trying hard to impress her.

“Listen, Ra…him,” Stardust said. “You guys, this place…” She copied his little motion with her hands. “I mean, it all seems very interesting. It does.” She made herself smile and then resumed. “The problem is that I have less than five minutes to call my boss and get someone to cover for me before I lose my job, and if I lose my job, well…” The water in the kettle started to boil. Rahim stepped lightly on the balls of his feet like a man walking on eggshells and poured. Louder, she continued. “I'll be fucked!”

Rahim leaned back on his heels, raised his eyebrows, and exhaled, shrugging his shoulders in an exaggerated way. There was something effeminate, theatrical, even comical, about his gestures. “I totally understand,” Rahim said. “I really do.”

“Why don't you show her the factory,” Chuck said, interrupting. Through the fish tank, Stardust saw him standing at the end of a hallway, a manila folder in his hand.

Rahim handed Stardust her mug with a teabag soaking in it and walked over to an elevator shaft with two sliding grids and a canvas strap attached to the top. He pressed a button on a junction box hanging from the wall and a noisy motor engaged. When it stopped, he slid the gate open, and Stardust breathed in cold air that smelled like metal and oil. Rahim held the door open and motioned for her to step inside. “Come, dear,” he said gently. He smelled like antiseptic.

“This is fucked up,” Stardust mumbled, stepping in.

“Indeed it is,” Rahim said, closing the gate. “When you realize how easily the courts can be subverted by politicians to keep an innocent man locked away from his loved ones. It's fascism, really.” Stardust felt the floor drop under her.

They descended into what appeared to be an old factory, now abandoned. Thirty-five-foot-high ceilings, fluorescent light fixtures hanging at odd angles, gas-fired heaters, epoxy-coated gray floors marred by forklift gashes and divots, chunks of plaster missing from walls where filing cabinets had been removed. It was as though Stardust was looking down into a dollhouse with the roof removed, except the dollhouse was decorated like a factory office—water-stained ceiling tiles, bare fluorescent fixtures, mismatched metal filing cabinets, a blackboard with little magnetic squares that might have represented production orders, long since canceled or filled—and as they descended, the old fixtures looked larger. The elevator settled into a small area sectioned off from the shop by drywall. Rahim used all his strength to open the gate and they stepped into a small, well-lit room.

On the wall was a photo of Chuck, in a dark business suit, wraparound sunglasses, and a tightly cropped goatee. He was smiling at the camera through clenched teeth, looking younger and meaner and more focused than he did now. Directly in front of them was a long table with four computers, each screen showing a different display. A young woman with short-cropped hair, long in the back and a row of bangs over her face, sat at one of the keyboards, reading something from a clipboard and then typing. When she finished, she turned around and smiled.

“Chuck would like us to show our guest what we do,” Rahim said. Then he turned and disappeared into the elevator, shutting the doors with his spindly arms.

 

She looked to be in her late twenties, Latina, a little heavy in the haunches, with a line of studs around the outside of her left ear. She wore a gray sweatsuit and a button with a picture of a girl giving the photographer the finger. She had a strong chin and sleepy-looking eyes that were wary, but relaxed: a city girl, sultry, in a butch kind of way. “Ovella Rodriguez,” the computer operator said, sticking out her hand.

“I have no idea what I'm doing here,” Stardust said.

“Who does?” Ovella said, sympathetic. She moved to one of the screens and typed in a sequence of letters, which brought up a photograph of what looked like an industrial vacuum cleaner. “About a year ago, we started fencing stuff. Nothing hot, just stuff that didn't move in pawnshops—furs, rings, electronics, guns—stuff that was too expensive or maybe didn't appeal to people in the neighborhood.”

Stardust must have looked uneasy.

“It's not illegal or anything. We just broker it. We're like an auction for pawnshops to put merchandise in front of people who wouldn't be caught dead in their stores. My brother set up the software, Chuck gets the pawnshops to list their shit with us, and we take orders….”

Stardust still looked confused.

“I'll show you,” Ovella said, pointing to the computer screen in front of her. “There's a guy in North Philly who has telecommunications equipment. We don't know where he gets it and we don't care, but he's selling and there's somebody out there who needs it. We type in descriptions, upload photos if there are any, and, boom, we're live.” Ovella sounded like anybody doing any job. If she wasn't sitting in a windowless basement of an abandoned factory, she might have been a secretary or a paralegal having coffee and describing the intricacies of her job. There was something calming, chummy, even intimate, about her inflection, her cadence, the way she was explaining it.