The Book of Illusions (21 page)

No, Hector said, he’d never heard of him. Who was this Hector Mann? Nora didn’t know much about him either. An actor, she said. He’d made some silent comedies a few years ago, but she hadn’t seen any of them. There hadn’t been enough time to go to the movies when she was in college. No, Hector said, he didn’t go very often himself. They cost money, and he’d once read somewhere that movies were bad for your eyes. Nora said that she dimly remembered hearing about the case, but she hadn’t followed it too closely at the time. According to Stegman, Mann had been missing for almost two years. And why had he left? Hector wanted to know. No one was sure, Nora said. He’d just vanished one day, and he hadn’t been heard from since. It didn’t sound too hopeful, Hector said. A man can stay hidden for just so long. If they hadn’t found him by now, that probably meant he was dead. Yes, probably, Nora agreed, and Brigid was probably dead, too. But there were rumors, she continued, and Stegman was going to look into them. What kind of rumors? Hector asked. That maybe he’d gone back to South America, Nora said. That was where he was from. Brazil, Argentina, she couldn’t remember which country, but it was incredible, wasn’t it? How so incredible? Hector asked. That Hector Mann should have been from the same part of the world that he was. What were the odds against that? She was forgetting that South America was a big place, Hector said. South Americans were everywhere. Yes, she knew that, Nora said, but even so, wouldn’t it be incredible if Brigid had gone down there with him? It made her happy just to think about it. Two sisters, two South Americans. Brigid in one place with hers, and she in another with hers.

It wouldn’t have been so terrible if he hadn’t liked her so much, if a part of him hadn’t fallen in love with her the first day they met. Hector knew that she was off-limits, that even to contemplate the possibility of touching her would have been an unpardonable sin, and yet he kept returning to her house every Tuesday and Thursday night, dying a little death every time she sat down beside him on the davenport and nestled her twenty-two-year-old body into the burgundy velour cushions. It would have been so simple to reach out and begin stroking her neck, to run his hand down the length of her arm, to turn toward her and begin kissing the freckles on her face. Grotesque as their conversations sometimes were (Brigid and Stegman, her father’s deterioration, the pursuit of Hector Mann), tamping down these urges was even harder on him, and it took every ounce of his strength not to cross the line. After two hours of torture, he often found himself heading straight from the lesson toward the river, walking across town until he reached a small neighborhood of collapsing houses and two-story hotels where women could be bought for twenty or thirty minutes of their time. It was a dismal solution, but there were no alternatives. Less than two years before, the most attractive women in Hollywood had been fighting to jump into bed with Hector. Now he was shelling out for it in the back alleys of Spokane, squandering half a day’s wages on a few minutes of release.

It never occurred to Hector that Nora might have felt anything for him. He was a lamentable figure, a man not worthy of consideration, and if Nora was willing to give him so much of her time, it was only because she pitied him, because she was a young and passionate person who fancied herself a savior of lost souls. Saint Brigid, as her sister had called her, the martyr of the family. Hector was the naked African tribesman, and Nora was the American missionary who had thrashed her way through the jungle to improve his lot. He had never met anyone so candid, so hopeful, so ignorant of the dark forces at work in the world. At times, he wondered if she wasn’t just plain stupid. At other times, she seemed to be possessed of a singular, rarefied wisdom. At still other times, when she turned to him with that intense and stubborn look in her eyes, he thought his heart would break. That was the paradox of the year he spent in Spokane. Nora made life intolerable for him, and yet Nora was the only thing he lived for, the only reason why he didn’t pack his bags and leave.

Half the time, he was afraid that he would confess to her. The other half of the time, he was afraid that he would be caught. Stegman followed the Hector Mann angle for three and a half months before giving up again. Where the police had failed, so had the private detective, but that didn’t mean that Hector’s position was any more secure. O’Fallon had gone to Los Angeles several times in the fall and winter, and it seemed likely to assume that at some point during those visits Stegman had shown him photographs of Hector Mann. What if O’Fallon had noticed the resemblance between his hardworking stockboy and the missing actor? In early February, not long after he returned from his last trip to California, O’Fallon began looking at Hector in a new way. He seemed more alert, somehow, more curious, and Hector couldn’t help wondering if Nora’s father wasn’t on to him. After months of silence and barely restrained contempt, the old man was suddenly paying attention to the lowly lifter of boxes who toiled in the back room of his store. The indifferent nods were replaced with smiles, and every now and then, for no particular reason, he would pat his employee on the shoulder and ask him how he was doing. Even more remarkable, O’Fallon began opening the door when Hector arrived at the house for his evening lessons. He would shake his hand as though he were a welcomed guest, and then, somewhat awkwardly, but with obvious goodwill, stand around for a moment to comment on the weather before retiring to his room upstairs. With any other man, this behavior would have been seen as normal, the bare minimum required by the rules of etiquette, but in O’Fallon’s case it was altogether confounding, and Hector didn’t trust it. Too much was at stake to be suckered in by a few polite smiles and friendly words, and the longer this sham amiability went on, the more frightened Hector became. By the middle of February, he sensed that his days in Spokane were numbered. A trap was being set for him, and he had to be prepared to skip town at any moment, to run off into the night and never show his face to them again.

Then the other shoe dropped. Just as Hector was planning to deliver his good-bye speech to Nora, O’Fallon cornered him in the back room of the store one afternoon and asked him if he was interested in a raise. Goines had given notice, he said. The assistant manager was moving to Seattle to run his brother-in-law’s print shop, and O’Fallon wanted to fill the position as quickly as possible. He knew that Hector didn’t have any experience in sales, but he’d been watching him, he said, he’d been keeping an eye on how he went about his business, and he didn’t think it would take him long to catch on to the new job. There would be more responsibility and longer hours, but his salary would be double what it was now. Did he want to think it over, or was he ready to accept? Hector was ready to accept. O’Fallon shook his hand, congratulated him on the promotion, and then gave him the rest of the day off. Just as Hector was about to leave the store, however, O’Fallon called him back. Open the cash register and take out a twenty-dollar bill, the boss said. Then go down the block to Pressler’s Haberdashery and buy yourself a new suit, some white shirts, and a couple of bow ties. You’re going to be working out front now, and you need to look your best.

In practical terms, O’Fallon had handed over the operation of his business to Hector. He had given him the title of assistant manager, but the fact was that Hector didn’t assist anyone. He was in charge of running the store, and O’Fallon, who was officially the manager of his own enterprise, managed nothing. Red spent too little time on the premises to concern himself with petty details, and once he understood that this go-getting foreign upstart could handle the responsibilities of the new post, he scarcely bothered to come around anymore. He was so tired of the business by then, he never even learned the new stockboy’s name.

Hector excelled as de facto manager of Red’s Sporting Goods. After the yearlong isolation of the Portland barrel factory and the solitary confinement of O’Fallon’s stockroom, he welcomed the chance to be among people again. The store was like a small theater, and the role he had been given was essentially the same one he had played in his films: Hector as conscientious underling, as snappy, bow-tie-wearing clerk. The only difference was that his name was Herman Loesser now, and he had to play it straight. No pratfalls or stubbed toes, no slapstick contortions or bumps on the head. His job was to persuade, to oversee the accounts, and to defend the virtues of sport. But no one said that he had to go about it with a glum expression on his face. He had an audience in front of him again and numerous props to work with, and once he figured out the routine, his old actor’s instincts came rushing back to him. He charmed the customers with his loquacious spiels, enthralled them with his demonstrations of catcher’s gloves and fly-fishing techniques, won their loyalty with his willingness to knock off five, ten, and even fifteen percent from the list price. Wallets were thin in 1931, but games were an inexpensive distraction, a good way not to think about what you couldn’t afford, and Red’s continued to do a decent business. Boys would play ball no matter what the circumstances, and men would never stop casting lines into rivers and shooting bullets into the bodies of wild animals. And then, not to be forgotten, there was the matter of uniforms. Not just for the teams from the local high schools and colleges, but for the two hundred members of the Rotary Club Bowling League, the ten squads of the Catholic Charities Basketball Association, and the lineups of three dozen amateur softball outfits as well. O’Fallon had locked up that market a decade and a half ago, and every season the orders continued to roll in, as precise and regular as the phases of the moon.

One night in the middle of April, as Hector and Nora came to the end of their Tuesday lesson, Nora turned to him and announced that she had received a proposal of marriage. The statement came out of nowhere, with no reference to anything that had come before it, and for a couple of seconds Hector wasn’t sure if he had heard her correctly. An announcement of that sort was usually accompanied by a smile, perhaps even a laugh, but Nora wasn’t smiling, and she didn’t sound the least bit happy to be sharing this news with him. Hector asked the name of the lucky young man. Nora shook her head, then looked down at the floor and began fidgeting with her blue cotton dress. When she looked up again, there were tears glistening in her eyes. Her lips started to move, but before she managed to say anything, she abruptly rose from her seat, put her hand over her mouth, and rushed out of the parlor.

She was gone before he knew what had happened. There wasn’t even enough time for him to call out to her, and when he heard Nora run up the stairs and then bang the door of her room shut, he understood that she wouldn’t be coming down again that night. The lesson was over. He should be going, he said to himself, but several minutes went by, and he didn’t stir from the davenport. Eventually, O’Fallon drifted into the room. It was just past nine, and Red was in his usual nocturnal condition, but not so far gone that he couldn’t keep his balance. He fixed his eyes on Hector, and for the longest time he went on staring at his assistant manager, looking him up and down as a small, crooked smile formed in the lower part of his mouth. Hector couldn’t tell if it was a smile of pity or mockery. It looked like both, somehow, a kind of compassionate disdain, if such a thing were possible, and Hector found it disturbing, a sign of some festering hostility that O’Fallon hadn’t revealed in months. At last Hector stood up and asked: Is Nora getting married? The boss let out a brief, sarcastic laugh. How the hell should I know? he said. Why don’t you ask her yourself? And then, grunting in response to his own laugh, O’Fallon turned and left the room.

Two nights later, Nora apologized for her outburst. She was feeling better now, she said, and the crisis was over. She’d turned him down, and that was that. Case closed; nothing more to worry about. Albert Sweeney was a fine person, but he was just a boy, and she was tired of being with boys, especially rich boys who lived off their fathers’ money. If she was ever going to get married, it would be to a man, to someone who knew his way around the world and could take care of himself. Hector said that she couldn’t blame Sweeney for having a rich father. It wasn’t his fault, and besides, what was so bad about being rich, anyway? Nothing, Nora said. She just didn’t want to marry him, that’s all. Marriage was forever, and she wasn’t going to say yes until the right man came along.

Nora soon recovered her spirits, but Hector’s relations with O’Fallon seemed to have entered a new and troubling phase. The turning point had been the showdown in the parlor, with the long stare and the short, derisive laugh, and after that night Hector sensed that he was being watched again. When O’Fallon came into the store now, he took no part in transacting business or dealing with customers. Rather than lend a hand or fill in behind the cash register when things got busy, he would install himself in a chair beside the display case for tennis racquets and golf gloves and quietly read the morning papers, glancing up every now and then with that caustic smile pulling at the lower part of his mouth. It was as though he regarded his assistant as an amusing pet or wind-up toy. Hector was earning good money for him, putting in ten and eleven hours a day so that he could live in quasi retirement, but all these efforts only seemed to make O’Fallon more skeptical of him, more condescending. Wary as Hector was, he pretended not to notice. It was all right to be considered an overzealous fool, he reasoned, and maybe it wasn’t even so bad when he started calling you Muchacho and El Señor, but you didn’t get close to a man like that, and whenever he entered the room, you made sure that your back was turned to the wall.

When he invited you out to his country club, however, asking you to join him for eighteen holes of golf on a bright Sunday morning in early May, you didn’t say no. Nor did you turn him down when he offered to buy you lunch at the Bluebell Inn, not once but twice in the span of a single week, both times insisting that you order the most expensive dishes on the menu. As long as he didn’t know your secret, as long as he didn’t suspect what you were doing in Spokane, you could tolerate the pressure of his constant scrutiny. You bore up to it precisely because you found it unbearable to be with him, because you pitied him for the wreck he had become, because every time you heard that cynical desolation seeping out from his voice, you knew that you were partly responsible for putting it there.