The Executor (34 page)

“People change,” I said.

“Well, let me be the first to say it: I may have misjudged you.”

I made a conciliatory gesture.

“I will say that parts of the argument feel antiquated to me, such as the section on action theory. A lot has happened since mid-century. Still, I’m interested in seeing where you go from here.”

Though I had already finished translating most of the second chapter while waiting for her to read the first, I didn’t want to give the impression that my new work was coming to me too easily. I said I could get her the next section by mid-February.

“I look forward to it,” she said.

I asked if I could still qualify to graduate in the spring.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. One page at a time, mm?” She smiled, raised her mug to me. “For now it’s enough for me to feel gratified that there are still some things about the universe I don’t fully understand.”

 

 

MY RELATIVE GOOD MOOD was dashed that afternoon when I came home to find a stranger standing on my front porch.

Heavyset, with smooth, sallow skin and heavy bags under his eyes, he presented with a peculiar combination of youth and age. A dingy brown scarf overflowed the collar of his oversized nylon jacket; on his belt he wore a beeper.

“Can I help you?” I said.

He stared at me for an interminably long time before asking to speak to Ms. Spielmann. His tone was robotic, an impression bolstered by the color of his eyes-bluish-gray, what people call gunmetal.

“She’s passed away.” I paused. “I live here now.”

He nodded once.

The wad of gauze on my face felt gigantic; it was difficult not to turn away.

“Was there something I could do for you?” I said.

He came down off the porch, a photograph in his hand.

It was a snapshot of Daciana, faded and badly creased. I was startled to see that in her younger days, she had not been entirely unattractive. A tad horsey around the mouth, but far from the meaty fortress I had known. I set down my lambskin bag, pretending to examine the photo for much longer than I needed to but not nearly long enough for me to explore every branch of a rapidly expanding decision tree. On the one hand, I could say that I was new here and had therefore never known Daciana. This would seem to nip any problem in the bud, but it also had the potential to backfire severely. If, for example, she had talked about her new employer. Getting caught in a preemptive lie could raise all sorts of questions that might otherwise go unasked. On the other hand, I could allow that I did in fact know Daciana, but had (a) not seen her in a long time (a lie somehow less damning than claiming to have never known her in the first place) or (b) had seen her on the day she showed up to work and had paid her as usual and sent her along on her merry way. The advantage of (b) was that it accounted for the possibility that someone had seen her car in the driveway; the disadvantage was, obviously, that it linked me to her in time and place. On the other hand, I might not have anything to be concerned about at all. It wasn’t the police at my door but a stranger. Her son, I assumed. He seemed about the right age. Andrei? And I understood then that if he was her son, then she was his mother; together they made a family, one that I had destroyed. Families were not abstractions, they were made of real people; but that did not factor, it could not factor, in the present calculus, and so I wrenched myself back toward a more constructive line of thinking. Whoever this person was, he was clearly not the police. Come to think of it, it was possible he hadn’t yet reported her missing. Perhaps he didn’t live with her, and had come home only recently to discover her gone. How old was he, exactly? Old enough to have moved out? I couldn’t refine my initial impression of him any further without looking up from the photo, which I didn’t want to do because I could feel him waiting for me to speak. Even assuming the worst—that he did live with her, and that he’d known of her absence since that very morning—would a young man really know his mother’s work schedule, down to the hour? What child pays that kind of attention to his parents? (And how hard had she worked to give him a life here? And how many toilets scrubbed? And how many loads of laundry washed, dried, fluffed, folded?) Moreover, that it was specifically him standing here
and not
the police could mean that he
had
talked to them but that they did not consider me a person of interest; therefore, I had nothing to be afraid of. On the other hand, that might just reflect ineptitude on their part, a slow or lazy investigator. Neither the police nor her son (if that was in fact who he was) had any reason to suspect me at all, and if they or he somehow discerned that I was lying, that might rouse them or him to full attention. On the other hand, why in the world would I ever want to hurt Daciana? What did I stand to gain? She was a housekeeper. (A hardworking lady with a library card, the modern embodiment of the American dream.) On the other hand, if it emerged that Eric was missing as well, that lit a fire under the idea that people had a tendency to disappear around me. On the other hand, nobody had contacted me about Eric, which might mean that his disappearance had gone unnoticed—which made sense, given the kind of person he was, the kind of circles he probably ran in. On the other hand, I had to assume that he had at least a couple of friends, other losers or girls he’d picked up and dropped much in the way he had that awful night that I couldn’t bear to think about now. No man is an island, I thought, and then I thought about my first Harvard roommate, a gay theater junkie named Norman Slepian who liked to tell people that he was an island, as in “Norman is an island,” and though it was outrageous and inexplicable to be thinking of him then, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to him. We had gone our separate ways after freshman year. And but back to the present: Eric was gone. Someone would know. When they could not find him, would they assume that he had skipped town? Would they call the police? It was a giant leap to assume that anyone could/would connect Eric with me, and me with Daciana; what happened happened rather more out of serendipity than due to any planning on my part. On the other hand, I still had so many other hands to consider, and this boy—this man-boy—he was waiting for an answer, and I was operating in a complete vacuum, right out on the brink of plausibility, all of these pluses and minuses racking up in my white-hot brain in the space of twenty long seconds. I had to say something.

“Right,” I said. I flapped the photo, handed it back to him. “My housekeeper.”

“It’s my mother,” he said.

The decision tree began to collapse.

“Ah,” I said. “It took me a second. How old’s that picture?”

“She hasn’t been home in three weeks,” he said.

Another branch collapsed.

“Oh, no,” I said. “I hope everything’s all right.”

He licked his lips. They were horrendously chapped. “Did she come to work that week?”

“When are we talking about?”

“About three weeks ago.”

A third branch.

“Gosh. Well, I—I hate to say it, but I actually had to let her go a little while back. I was sorry I had to do it, but—”

“How long ago.”

“Beg pardon?”

“How long ago did you fire her.”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that I
fi
—it wasn’t like that, it’s more a question of cost, the economy being how it is right now, but, uhhhh. Maybe six, seven weeks?”

“So she wasn’t here.”

“When are we talking about, again.”

“Three weeks ago.”

“Well, then, I suppose not, no, I don’t think so.”

Silence.

“Is everything okay?” I said.

“They found her car,” he said.

A fourth.

“Oh, no. Oh, that’s, that’s ... So you’ve called the police, I assume.”

“They’re looking for her.”

“I see. But you don’t know where she could’ve gone.”

“No,” he said. “Do you?”

My right eye socket pulsed. “I don’t know why I would.”

“Maybe she said something to you the last time she came to work.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “If she did, I’d’ve forgotten by now.”

“Okay,” he said.

Silence.

His face shimmered and danced before me.

“She was a very nice lady,” I said.

“She might still be alive.”

“Well, yes. I’m sure she is. I mean, hope so.”

He said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—I’m sorry. It’s upsetting to hear, is all. I hope she’s fine. I’m sure she’ll turn up. You don’t know anything else?”

“No.”

“Well. Please, do let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“Can I get your number?” he asked.

“Well—uh, sure. Sure.” I reached into my pocket, found an old grocery store receipt. “I, uh, I don’t seem to have a—”

He held out a pen.

“Thanks.” I used my leg as a desk. “Please do let me know what happens.”

He said nothing.

I gave him the receipt, raised a hand. “Take care.”

“My pen,” he said.

It was a cheap ballpoint, not the kind of thing people are particular about getting back. His asking for it made me nervous. As he took it from me, the briefest flicker of a smile passed across his face. It left as quickly as it had come, and he walked away without looking back.

 

 

“THAT SOUNDS LIKE IT WENT WELL.”

“Hm?”

“I said it sounds like it went well.”

“What does.”

Yasmina glanced at me over her shoulder. “Your meeting with Linda?”

“Right,” I said. My mind was still replaying that little smile of his, the way it blinked on and was gone, like a blown lightbulb. “I guess it went pretty well.”

“Don’t get too excited, now. It’s only your entire academic future.” She gave the pot a stir, covered it, reduced the heat. “This has to simmer for a half-hour.”

“... okay.”

“If you’re hungry in the meantime, I picked up some hummus.”

“... thanks.”

She faced me, her hands working in a dishtowel. “Honey?”

“Mm.”

“Is everything okay.”

No.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure.” I paused. “I’m thinking about everything I have to do.”

“You’ve been working so hard. You must be tired.”

“I’m a little tired.”

“Maybe ...” she said.

I looked at her. She was biting her lip.

“What,” I said.

“Maybe you should see a doctor.”

Silence.

“What for,” I said.

“I don’t know, maybe they could give you something to help you sleep.”

“I sleep fine.”

“Last night you were thrashing around so much I had to wake you up.”

I said nothing.

“Were you having a bad dream?”

Silence.

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, it must have been bad.” She reached for a package of couscous. “You were mumbling.”

“. . . oh?”

She nodded, reading the back of the box.

“What did I say.”

“Nothing, per se. Mumbling’s not really the right word. More like humming.”

The room bowed inward, as though the surface of reality had been depressed by a giant finger.

“Was I,” I said.

“Mm-hm.”

“What was I humming.”

“I couldn’t tell.” One corner of her mouth went up. “It was pretty off-key.”

“... I’m sorry.”

“Oh, I don’t care. I have my earplugs. But you always used to sleep like a log.”

I said, “I guess I’m stressed.”

“I’m sorry. Is there something I can do?”

I shook my head, which in movement felt large and dense and graceless and above all suffused with heat. The room—my visual field—they were still rippling, and I began to sway drunkenly.

“I’m going to sit in the living room,” I said.

She looked at me.

“It’s the stovetop,” I said. “It’s making the whole room stuffy.”

Without waiting for her response, I got up and left the room and took a seat on the sofa, staring at the empty fireplace. It might as well have been going full bore; the small of my back felt humid and so did my armpits and I untucked my shirt. My feet, too, seemed swole up, too big for my shoes, which I kicked off, flexing my toes in discomfort. The drunkenness was intensifying, and along with it came a truly unnerving sensation of my mind slowly migrating outside my skull, so that my thought process was happening a foot in front of me, and that when I turned my head my awareness followed on a delay, drifting like a buoy.... To release the heat building up under my shirt, I undid the top button, rolled up the sleeves, and finally pulled it off, and that was when I became conscious of Yasmina, watching me from the doorway.

An aura surrounded her, golden and lambent.

“Honey?”

I stared at her, fascinated.

“Honey, you ...” She did not sound like her usual self. “Do you want a drink?”

“I’m not thirsty.” I said it but then realized that I was thirsty; very thirsty, in fact, thirstier than I had ever been. But I didn’t want to ask her for anything or do anything to alarm her further. I wanted to be left alone, to keep very still until the room slowed down.

“You should check on the stew,” I said. My words had a close echo, like I was speaking into a paint can. “You don’t want it to boil over.”

“What’s going on with you,” she said.

“Of course I’m okay,” I said.

Silence.

“That’s not what I asked,” she said.

I said nothing.

“You look ...” she said.

“I look what.”

“Nothing,” she said.

Silence.

“I think you should go to the doctor,” she said.