Man in the Empty Suit (23 page)

Inside, Mana waited in the lobby. “He’s upset. The power is out, and he can’t get anyone at the diner.” The diner around the corner supplied the food they ate during their performances. Sara had never seen the deliveries but had seen the bags in the garbage.

“Has anyone gone around to put the order in?”

Mana shuffled a damp tissue from one hand to the other. “No. I wanted to make sure you both made it here.”

Sara walked the two blocks to find the diner’s windows dark, a handwritten note on the front door:
“Out of business. Thanks for thirty-nine wonderful years.”

Sara stood in front of the diner for a minute. All the neighborhood buildings were dark, some long vacant. Storefront windows with signs advertising hardware, books, and pet supplies were covered with newspaper. The few buildings that showed life were vagrant tenements or hooker-friendly hotels.

Sara returned to the apartment, where she heard a mechanical hum. Mana stood in the living room smoking, and Phil and Joshua sat in the dining room. Joshua wouldn’t look Sara in the eye. His bravado was gone, flown away in the night. She heard his heartbeat across the room, high-pitched and fluttering, a fearful animal in a cage, dreaming and dreading escape. Phil’s face hung between his hands, his mouth open. The droning mechanical sound came from him.

Sara said, “The restaurant is closed.”

Phil’s moan peaked and stopped. He dropped his hands and stood up, blind to everyone else, and turned toward the bedroom, away from the actors he’d gathered as a family.

Sara went to the nearest window and looked down onto the street. Traffic lights at the nearest corner were all dark, the street empty. At last a car approached, a yellow cab. It slowed but didn’t stop, turned the corner, and drove the wrong way up the street.

She pulled her face from the pane. Beside her, Mana puffed on her cigarette and stared at the wall. Joshua concentrated on his hands. Sara walked past them, followed Phil down the hall. She passed the changing room. The sheets gusted around the open window, swinging over the floor, twisted on themselves. She stood outside the third bedroom and listened through the door. When she felt his sobs through the crystal knob, she almost let go and left the apartment. She knew in that instant that if she did, she would never come back.

She opened the door. Stacks of books and unopened reams of papers sat on a table, along the walls, beneath the windows. Here, as in the downstairs apartment where she’d found him wandering, there were boxes piled high enough to crush
themselves. Phil sat at the table, papers spread out before him, copious notes in a cramped, neurotic hand. The breeze created by the door blew pages onto the floor. Phil’s frame rocked with heavy sobs. His gray beard was beaded with tears.

She said, “We’d really like you to come out and see us.”

His sobs continued. He made no move to betray whether he’d heard her. She stood in the doorway and held the knob, vaguely aware of an unexpected fear of falling out the open window, of hurtling toward the crumbling city. Behind her, Joshua and Mana talked in muted voices, wondering what she was doing and why, what they should do. She ignored them and tried again.

“I really needed to tell you about—” She stopped, unsure of what to say, what lie to promise him without the food and Mana and Joshua. She understood that they couldn’t be counted on, that their ability to play roles depended on props and the promise of money. Their being there, playing at family, even a dysfunctional one, was a deception. It was morbidly funny, she thought, that the liar in each of them had found comfort not only in the paycheck but in one another, chewing on terrible food they pretended was edible, a liars’ banquet. She ached for the lie, and for the security the lie provided.
They can have the money
, she thought.
I need the lie
.

She said, “Listen, I know that Mom wasn’t able to make dinner tonight, but I’d still like to sit down with you and talk. We can talk without eating, right?”

He still didn’t face her, but his crying softened. She pulled the door closed again, slowly shut herself out of the room, left Phil on the other side of the door, and returned to the dining room, where Mana and Joshua regarded her with suspicion.

“Is he coming out?” Mana asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I heard you blame me for the lack of food.”

Sara stared at her. She whispered that it was part of the role, that circumstances demanded the improvisation, but Mana didn’t care. Sara took her glare in silence. The room was hot despite open windows. She sat at the table, mentally followed a sweat trail from her temples to her cheek and neck, watched the birds through the windows. Joshua had retreated to the other room. She understood now why Mana had warned her about him. But she was beyond his games. Beyond Mana’s as well.

An hour later Phil returned to the dining room. The sun had moved on. It was darker without direct light, yet no cooler. He regarded the three actors, his liars’ gathering. He took his seat at the head of the table. His hands shook as he looked at Sara. “So you wanted to tell me about something?”

Sara smiled. She was exhausted. Her stomach was empty, and the headache she’d brought with her had snaked down her back and left her sore and stiff. Her mouth was dry, and it was hard to work the words out. “Yes,” she lied. “I need to get your permission to join an after-school club.”

Mana moaned. “Oh, God.” She lit another cigarette.

Phil ignored her. “After-school club? What sort of club?”

Sara’s mind turned over. “Theater arts.”

Mana waved a hand, her cigarette drawing signals in the air. “Hold on. Before we go much further with this, what are we going to do about food? And will we still be paid the normal rate?”

Phil’s eyes darkened. He pointed toward the front door. “Go. I’ll send your money.”

Mana looked as if she’d been struck. Her head snapped back, and she exhaled a long, stale breath, smoke wisps at the tail end. “Are you kidding me?”

“Go, before I throw you out.”

Mana glared at each of them in turn, letting her eyes linger on Sara. Sara tried not to look back but couldn’t help herself and met Mana’s gaze. Mana gave a half smile. Her eyes had started to water. “I got you this fucking gig, street tramp.”

Phil stood and lifted a fist above his head. As tall and thin as he was, his raised fist and voice cracking in anger made Mana step back as he shouted, “Don’t you ever talk to her like that.”

He had not said “my daughter” but might as well have; everyone in the room heard it in the echo.

Mana stumbled across the living room. When they knew she was gone, Joshua went to the front door and shut it, returned to the table and sat. Phil watched the wall for a minute, then turned back to Sara, tears on his face, and said, “So an after-school club?”

They talked in circles for hours until Phil finally tired of the new game and went to bed. Through the door they could hear him talking to himself and drinking. He cried out at odd times, names Sara didn’t know. Joshua sat quietly with her after Phil left the room. Hours later, when Phil was silent and probably sleeping, they watched each other from opposite sides of the room.

She said, “I’m not going anywhere.” She had meant in the long term, that she would keep coming back to Phil, that Joshua’s attempt to make her feel uncomfortable had failed, but Joshua thought she meant that she would not leave Phil’s
apartment that evening, and so he left without her, without his money, without a word. After he’d gone, she realized that she had no reason to leave, that the Romanian couple waiting in their apartment for her money didn’t need her to return, that they could have what she’d left behind.

In the changing room, she took down the sheets hanging from the ceiling and laid them on the floor, folded one over the other until she made a small, soft pad. After drinking her fill of tap water from the bathroom, she lay on her makeshift bed, and as the sun sank across the river, she watched the window darken to black.

They went out the next day for food. Ten blocks away they found a deli and returned to Phil’s apartment with ham and cheese sandwiches, enough for a week. They placed them in the barely cool refrigerator. Sara complained of the lack of furniture, and Phil nodded. “We’ll go get some tonight. Okay? I’ll call Joshua.” She had begun to recognize when he was really there and when he was lost in his fantasy, when he saw her and not some other Sara.

For the first few days of the new scenario, Joshua arrived when called. As it became obvious that the roles had stretched and changed, that conversations were more natural and rooted in reality, Joshua became superfluous. Some days Phil neglected to call Joshua at all, and soon a week had gone by without their seeing him.
I may never see Joshua again
, she thought. And then she thought of Joshua himself, realized he might never
be
Joshua again.

But she was Sara.

Once they settled into a routine, once the apartment was usefully cluttered with tables and chairs, clothes and a
hand-cranked washer and decks of cards and candles to fill the evenings, she told Phil she must leave for a bit and would go for hours to window-shop or find the evening’s meals, to catch her breath, to escape the clutter of an apartment now exploding with collections grown beyond the confines of the lower apartments. She would return to find Phil passed out, his drinking having crawled from the solitude of his bedroom to the living room with her as witness. In his hand he clutched a strange metal device, silver, with tentacles and a needle. It disappeared during the day, hidden when he woke. She saw it only at night.

One afternoon on her way out, she noticed someone staring at her from under the awning of the dark, abandoned hotel across the alley. At first she didn’t recognize that it was Mana.

Mana walked the half block to Sara. Neither wanted to talk, but Mana had come for something, and Sara waited. At last Mana cleared her throat. “You’ve got him all to yourself, don’t you?’

“I’m just trying to—”

“You know Joshua is his son?”

Sara felt herself sink slightly into the cement sidewalk.

Mana said, “If he ever comes back, you can ask him.”

“I never asked for you to go. You got yourself fired.”

Mana nodded, her jaw set, and again Sara smelled the stale smoke around her. Mana looked up toward the building. “Just don’t hurt him.”

“I won’t,” Sara said.

Mana turned and walked away, didn’t look back even though Sara stood and watched her until she disappeared at
the corner. The street was a silent canyon. Sara imagined Phil waking with nothing to eat or drink and headed uptown to the latest restaurant she’d found with working electricity.

She continued that pattern the day after and the day after and beyond. She found new places for food and then, when the restaurants closed, new places. Some people had begun to farm in the parks, and simple markets formed, competed, merged. The days turned to weeks and soon enough weeks to years, and she and Phil had habits established so that daily routine was as natural as breath. Sara had come to expect that eventually Phil would succumb to his drink, or whatever it was that he suspected might kill him, and that she would have to find yet another new path, and new habits, and someone else to care for. She had thought that until the day I knocked at their door.

Sara finished telling
me about Phil. I sat on the bed next to her. I held the tentacled device, and she laid a hand over it. “He has this.” She ran a finger along its side. “One like it anyway.” She touched the hidden switch again, and the arms slid away from the needle, soundlessly reaching out to hide and reveal the spike. It looked alive, as if it squirmed in her hands, eager to escape, threatening to strike if it had to.

“He would spend hours in his room, making lists, going through junk he brought home,” she said, “using this machine to pull little bits of memory to the front, to replay them, trying to live them for the first time again. And he drank. I left him alone, took care of the apartment. Joshua stopped coming at all. I never found out if what Mana said was true. I think it is. Phil never talks about Joshua or Mana. I never ask.”

She moved her fingers from the device to my hand. If I asked her any questions, I had a feeling the story would stop, would dry in her throat and catch and make her sick and she’d never tell it again, to me or anyone. I let her talk.

“Eventually Phil’s money ran out, or the bank closed or disappeared. He spent a week hanging around the apartment, realizing we had no way to buy anything, and then he stopped using that thing.” She pointed at the device. “And then he focused on his collecting. Saving the things of the world.” She shrugged. “If he was going to save the world, I had to find some way to get dinner.” She forced my fingers from the device, but not to get to the device, to get to my hand. She held it, tight. “There are people with money and memories. I take both and give one back.”

She was silent for a long time. Outside my window I saw the fluttering of green-feathered heads where parrots had gathered on the ledge and talked quietly to one another of traffic and stock prices, their chatter comforting. I put the device on the dresser.

“You should get some sleep,” I said. “I’ll find another room.”

She shook her head. “No. I’ll go.” She stood, and we looked at each other for several moments. Finally she said, “He might wake up and need me.”

I nodded, and then we reached for each other and fell as we tangled. I caught us on the edge of the bed, and we lifted ourselves onto it. She pulled herself from me long enough to remove her dress and then straddled me. Her skin tasted of salt, and she smelled of candle smoke. She tugged my shirt and pants from me, and I entered her. Joined together, we stilled, listened to our breath. When I moved again, I felt a
desperation I didn’t know I could feel. I was blind, though I thought my eyes were open, and at the edge of my climax I gritted my teeth and whispered the name I needed her to have.

I called her “Lily.”

It was a name she might have forgotten, or forced herself to not remember. She might never have heard it before. When I said it, she stilled, her body tensed, and she came with a shudder. I heard her sobbing through it and came myself, arched into her and through her. When our shaking stopped, I drew away and looked down at her. Her face was in shadow; even the glint of her eyes was gone, either closed or turned off, I couldn’t see. She rolled away from me, pulled herself from the bed, and stepped into the bathroom. She closed the door.