The Man Without a Shadow (32 page)

For sedative reasons. That alone is why Margot Sharpe drinks.

(Is this an open secret in the department? Margot Sharpe's solitary drinking? Hai-ku knows that everyone knows and yet no one would mention the fact to Hai-ku any more than Hai-ku who is Margot Sharpe's disciple would mention it to one of her colleagues.)

“Hai-ku” is no longer a young man. No longer a presence in the department, one of the promising young graduate students who'd come to the university to work with Milton Ferris.

Not the first time “Hai-ku” will remain with Margot Sharpe into the early hours of the morning.

Hai-ku will not remove his university hoodie worn over dirt-stiffened jeans, sweatshirt. Hai-ku will remove just Margot Sharpe's shoes, he will not dare to loosen her clothing, or to tug her messy sweat-dampened hair away from the nape of her neck, that her head might rest more comfortably against a gnarled-looking pillow.

The single, narrow braid trailing down the left side of Margot Sharpe's head. It has become a bizarre feature of the woman's appearance, inexplicable and beyond even caricature by her departmental associates.

Poor Margot Sharpe! Yet, why feel sorry for Margot Sharpe who has lived the life she has wished to live. So one would think.

Neither has spoken more than a few mumbled monosyllables to the other this evening.

Hai-ku has a boy's wizened face. He is shockingly old—(that is, Hai-ku is shocked)—forty-three. He is skinny with a ring of slack flesh around his waist. Shock-black hair spiky as a punk
musician's, metal-rimmed glasses. Both his skin and his teeth are tea-colored. Milton Ferris's most trusted lab technician whom Margot Sharpe inherited grateful for the young Korean's knowledge and trustworthiness.

Another drink? No? But—why not?

Hai-ku tells the professor it is not a good idea, he thinks. This he tells the professor with gestures rather than words. Behind the metal-rimmed glasses, a fierce concerned gaze.

Everyone knows of brilliant young scientists-in-the-making who unaccountably fail to thrive. Fail to leave the department that has nurtured them. Failed to leave the home, the lab family.

Hai-ku the most reliable of lab techs has no instinct for ideas of his own. Leave him in a room with nothing, a notepad and pencil, at the end of the hour you will see that the notepad is still blank, the pencil unused if not untouched—so Milton Ferris complained of him, years before.

He'd begun an ambitious Ph.D. project in cognitive psychology in 1977, with Ferris. But years passed, and no dissertation emerged. The department would have dismissed him when Professor Ferris retired but Margot Sharpe cannily intervened and secured for the capable young man a succession of three-year contracts in effect making him her slave as he'd been Milton Ferris's slave for a decade, or more.

They will be a team, Margot Sharpe and Hai-ku, for a long time to come. Graduate students, postdocs, departmental colleagues will come and go in the now-famous “memory” lab but Hai-ku will remain faithful for Hai-ku has no life outside Professor Sharpe's lab.

As Margot Sharpe protects him, so he protects Margot Sharpe. No more willing slave than the senior tech of the neuropsychologist whose career he has helped advance, in a sense, from beneath.

The Ph.D. in cognitive psychology has long since been abandoned. Hope of a full-time job in psychology at a respected or even a second- or third-rate university has long since been abandoned.

(Is Hai-ku in love with Professor Sharpe?—some wonder.)

(Is Professor Sharpe in love with Hai-ku?—this is more doubtful.)

Hai-ku does not acknowledge that he is Margot Sharpe's “slave”—or anyone else's slave. Hai-ku is proud that his salary as a lab technician is the highest tech salary in the department, and that many of the professorial staff call upon him regularly for advice and assistance.

Hai-ku will be happy to serve as Margot Sharpe's assistant for as long as Margot Sharpe remains at the university, and Margot Sharpe is determined never to retire.

Hai-ku will never speak disrespectfully of his mistress. He will never speak of his mistress at all except admiringly, reverentially. And briefly.

In fact, Hai-ku rarely speaks. He has long learned to hide behind his “foreign-ness”—he has become a master of reticence.

Still, Hai-ku knows that, like Milton Ferris before her, Margot Sharpe could destroy him with a single telephone call to the departmental chair, a single stroke of a computer key. She is utterly dependent upon him until such time as she decides she doesn't need him, she will train someone else. Their understanding is that there is no (evident) understanding. Their bond is that there is no (evident) bond.

In the dim-lighted untidy bedroom heaped with books, journals, papers. In the narrow bed that looks as if it has not been changed in some time Margot Sharpe sobs and hiccups and lapses into an abrupt and dreamless sleep like a plug yanked from a wall socket.

At 2:10
A.M.
of this very long day—(unknown to Hai-ku, this has been the day that Margot Sharpe learns without any qualification that
she is not pregnant
)—Hai-ku perceives that Margot Sharpe has dropped off to sleep at last. He removes the near-empty shot glass from her fingers, and sets it on the bedside table. He sees, without internal comment, that the inexpensive maple wood of the bedside table is stained with the pale rings of glasses and cups, like the pale rings of Jupiter.

It has been years—(since Milton Ferris, in fact)—since anyone but Hai-ku has seen the interior of the professor's two-storey brownstone on N. Reading Street, a half-mile from the Psychology Building. Years since anyone but Hai-ku has seen the interior of the professor's bedroom in which a single bed takes up most of the space.

On the walls are a half-dozen pencil and charcoal drawings on large sheets of stiff white paper. In the dimly lighted room the subjects of these drawings are obscured in shadow.

Hai-ku recognizes these drawings of course. But Hai-ku would never comment on them, still less ask Margot Sharpe what they are doing on the walls of her house.

“Professor? Excuse me . . .”

Hai-ku hesitates to take hold of the professor's limp chill hand to check the pulse at the thin wrist. He can see, and he can hear, the professor's damp rasping erratic breath. He sees the closed eyelids quiver.

In a matter-of-fact voice Hai-ku announces that he is leaving now—“I will say good night, Professor.”

Hai-ku switches off lights in the rear of the house. In the kitchen Hai-ku puts the sticky-necked bottle of expensive whiskey away on a high shelf and carefully shuts the cupboard door.

Rinses glasses in the sink. Hai-ku is a very methodical person
wishing that no fingerprints, no DNA samples should remain to incriminate him if something happens to Professor Sharpe in the night.

Hai-ku will leave the professor's house by stealth. Darkened windows, and the outside light above the door seems to have burnt out.

Hearing, as he prepares to shut and secure the door at 2:18
A.M.,
a faint but forceful voice lifting in the dark—“Hai-ku? Seven forty-five at the lab tomorrow—don't be late. The car will be here. We're due at Darven Park by eight-thirty.”

T
he ritual. The knife.
Why he grips the railing of the plank bridge. Why he must brace himself against the wind.

Recalling how rifles and shotguns are forbidden to children at Lake George, locked away in a cabinet. But there is another cabinet that is rarely locked—in this, knives are kept.

Hunting knives, fishing knives.

Waiting until the adults have gone to bed. Through the house the prevailing smell of woodsmoke, cigarette smoke.

Downstairs, a prevailing smell of whiskey.

The hunting knife is heavy in his hand. A child's hand, but an adult knife.

He raises it. Heavy sharp-bladed hunting knife.

Stabs and stabs and stabs at the figure on its back in the bed, drunk-dazed waking instantly, desperate to escape but tangled in bedclothes.

Hate you! You need to die.

No one knows but me how you need to die.

The father's face, contorted with horror, astonishment. Seeing that it is his own son who has come to him in the night, in stealth. His own son who must murder him.

In the small dank bedroom at the rear of the house behind the fireplace. Where Daddy sometimes slept, too drunk to make his way upstairs.

Bled to death, it will be determined. Dozens of stab wounds to the chest, neck. Belly, groin. Stabbing stabbing in an ecstasy of hatred.

No child of five could be suspected.

And afterward carefully washes the hunting knife. In the little bathroom beside the kitchen.

Heavy knife that belongs in the cabinet on a shelf with other knives carefully washed and dried and put away where he found it.

AGAIN, REPEATED: BAREFOOT
and shivering descending the darkened stairs with childish care counting fifteen steps. As making his way upstairs he must count fifteen steps.

Opening the cabinet door—it isn't locked.

The knife he selects is not the largest or the heaviest knife. It is not a deer-gutting knife. It is not a fish-gutting knife. Yet, it is heavier than he expects, there is the worry it might slip through his fingers slick with blood.

No matter which of his father's knives he lifts it is heavier than he expects.

Barefoot and shivering through the darkened rooms. He is wearing flannel pajamas, the bottoms tug downward he's so skinny. Always a smell of woodsmoke in the house of logs.

The figure in the bedclothes is trapped, astonished. Too surprised to scream for help. Too deftly, rapidly stabbed to scream for help. The throat is stabbed, blood bubbles from the mouth
and not screams. It is futile for the father to try to defend himself against the murderous son, his hands are slashed at once.

Sharp-bladed heavy knife lifted and brought down hard multiple times
stabbing stabbing stabbing.

AND THEN, IN
the morning nothing has changed.

The drunken man is not drunk now. The drunken man is Daddy, winking at him.

Today we're taking out the big canoe, Eli. Time you learned to paddle properly.

“MR. HOOPES?—ELI? Excuse
me . . .”

Opens his eyes startled and wary. Very surprised to see that he isn't where he'd have believed he is but too canny to show it.

Young caramel-skinned girl, very black glossy hair in cornrows, beautiful eyes, beautiful body in dull-green smock, trousers. White nurse's shoes on her size-three feet. Tugging at his arm with laughter when he's slow to respond.

In a kind of terror he has been gripping the plank bridge railing. Heartbeat rapid and erratic though there seems to be nothing—no danger.

Not sure where he is but quickly realizes it isn't the lake. Not the Adirondacks.

He is disappointed. He is not frightened.

This is a wooded place, marshland. Wood chip trails, nothing that seems familiar. No hiking trail he knows. No white pines that he can see. A marshy soil, humid air. In the distance no mountains are visible.

“Mr. Hoopes?—we goin back now, OK?”

“Yes! Good.”

“Don't want to be forgettin your nice drawings . . .”

“Yes, Eva. Thank you.”

Smiling to disguise his confusion he has seen the girl's ID—
EVA
.

Exotic name. From the Caribbean he guesses.

She's a nurse, or a nurse's aide. He loves to hear her voice—doesn't matter what she says.

It is comforting, Eva is so short. Hardly five feet one or two.

Yet, her body is the body of a mature woman. Shapely hips, shapely breasts even in the dull-green loose-fitting uniform.

Nurse, or nurse's aide. Small-boned, short—but with well-developed muscles—shoulders, legs. Her shapely body at which he stares. And her smiling face, beautiful face, beautiful kindly eyes not judging him harshly.

What has he forgotten?—the sketchbook.

Quickly he snatches up the sketchbook. Of course, he must have been sketching—his fingers are smudged with charcoal. He will wait until he is somewhere alone before he examines the newest pages.

“That is good, Mr. Hoopes! Don't want to forget anything, OK?”

By Eva's manner he understands that she is someone who knows him well, and who likes him. Thus she is someone whom he knows well.

Gold and ruby studs in her perfect ears. Smooth skin, warm skin, beautiful line of the jaw, and beautiful mouth—a sweet fleshy mouth, accustomed to kisses.

On the third finger of her left hand, a thin silver band. Eva is married? Possibly, Eva is a young mother.

Feels a sense of loss so great, he almost stumbles.

“Eva help me, I am so terribly lonely . . .”

He laughs. Better to laugh than to sob.

“No reason to feel that way, Mr. Hoopes—you got all these folks interested in you, see? Some of them waitin in the testing-
room, by the time we get there.” Eva tells him how the doctors are paying more attention to him than anybody else she ever met or heard of, he should feel real good about that, and proud—“They been writin about you too, so you are ‘famous.' They takin care of you real good.”

Yet he is not walking so steadily this morning. Shooting pains in both legs but especially the right leg. Can it be
arthritis
?

Too young for damned
arthritis.
Only thirty-seven, in very fit condition. Just a few weeks ago he'd gone backpacking on the rock-strewn twelve-mile trail at White Cross Mountain, by himself.

Terror in being alone. He has not shrunk from such terror.

Islands of memory arise in his head jolted loose from the black muck below. Islands of light amid darkness. Lost in an open-eyed trance as the beautiful beguiling girl in the green uniform whose name he has (temporarily) forgotten leads him along a wood chip path in the direction of a place that appears to be known to her, familiar to her, thus must be known and familiar to him, and so he must not signal distress.

Calmly he thinks—
They will not abandon me. The family will come for me. They have forgiven me by now.

The high-rise building is not entirely familiar but he is not surprised to be brought to the rear entrance, and to navigate the briskly revolving doors. Would be panicked if required to think but there is no thinking required as he turns toward the bank of elevators even as with a gentle nudge of her fingertips the nurse's aide leads him in that direction.

Upstairs, fourth floor. Again, he isn't surprised to exit the elevator when the door opens.

Strangers are awaiting him. Always there are smiling strangers, happy to see
him
.

It is true, he seems to be someone special. Exactly why, he isn't sure.

“Mr. Hoopes?—Eli? Hello!”

“Hel-
lo
.”

Quickly he speaks. Quickly he smiles. Extends his hand to be shaken, and to vigorously shake.

These are doctors, he guesses. He is in a hospital of some kind—though he sees no hospital beds—though fortunately he isn't wearing a hospital uniform but rather his own clothes, and his shoes.

The doctors are greeting him warmly, he is known to them. As he greets them warmly in turn though he has no idea who the hell they are.

“Eli, hello! How are you?”

“Very good, thank you. How are
you
?”

In their eyes he sees himself reflected and he thinks—
They feel sorry for me.

He thinks—
Maybe this is the afterlife. It would feel like this—the afterlife. No way to recognize it.

Several smiling strangers of whom the evident eldest, and the one who has assumed authority, is a middle-aged woman with a striking white skin, intense eyes, urgent smile. She is not a beautiful woman and she is too old for him—in her late forties, at least—yet he finds himself strangely attracted to her. As she speaks in her soothing voice he is listening and yet not-listening. Hears her words even as he forgets them. Disconcerted by the proprietary air of a woman whom he has never seen before who stands slightly too close to him as if to provoke him to step away, and clasps his hand too tightly. He is disturbed that she calls him
Eli
—as if they are known to each other.

In his life there have been numerous women. Like water falling through his fingers when he was young and reckless.

Somehow, he'd failed to marry one of them. He had not loved enough. And where they'd loved him, he'd felt scorn for them and fled.

Fitting that Amber died of the same raging fever that almost killed him. At Lake George she'd died, he'd had to arrange for her body to be airlifted home to her family. He fears that like his cousin Gretchen she awaits him in the afterlife.

And other wraiths of the dead he has betrayed.

“MR. HOOPES? ELI
. . .”

Strange how the white-skinned woman provokes in him a curious stir of longing, and yet of dread. A sex-yearning, that uncoils in his groin like a snake coming to life.

Usually it is (much) younger women to whom he feels attracted and this woman is certainly not young.

But her voice!—her voice is soothing, seductive.

Her voice is (he thinks) familiar . . .

And that single narrow tight-braided plait falling down the left side of her face redolent of—what? The Caribbean, the summer streets of South Philly?

As others listen intently (and respectfully) the white-skinned woman with the incongruously exotic braid addresses him. She is explaining—something technical, complicated. No point in listening, he won't remember anyway. At the same time, he finds himself (perversely) attracted to her.

“Mr. Hoopes?—Eli? Are you listening?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

He is juvenile, defiant. He will have to run away and hide him
self.
God damn you leave me alone
—wants to shove the woman from him, and flee.

But knows he must not succumb to this impulse, that would be an error.

Soul mate
. Is that what this woman
is
?

But Eli Hoopes is too shrewd, too canny, too educated, too steeped in the devious, self-deluding ways of late capitalism to believe in anything so naïve as a
soul mate.

Marxist principles. Nothing naïve or sentimental about killing your class enemies, dumping their bodies in a ravine. Erasing their histories, for the enemy deserves no history.

He is worried, too: with their brain-X-ray machines they will detect that he has had a stroke. The Alabama deputy sheriff's billy club must've cracked his skull, a hairline crack no one noticed at the time. And years later, at each hairline crack a “stroke” in the brain. There is nowhere to hide, trapped inside such a machine. Arms and legs strapped in place. A strap at his neck, to secure the neck.

They will shave his skull, and operate (again) on his brain. This time will be fatal. They will touch his very soul with their rubber-gloved fingers.

A soul is nerve-endings. When the nerve-endings fail to respond, the soul is no longer living.

The several strangers are being introduced to him as if he has not already met them and shaken their hands. Suffused with the sensation of—what is it: déjà vu. Not doctors presumably since they aren't wearing lab coats nor is the white-skinned woman with the sexy braid a doctor after all. Their chatter hurts his brain like shaken bits of glass.

“Probably you don't remember me, Eli—my name is ‘Margot Sharpe.'”

“‘Mar-
go
'—yes. How could I remember
you
.”

God damn, he has misspoken. Corrects himself with an irritable chuckle: “‘How could I not remember
you
.'”

Politely and gallantly he speaks. Despite the pain in his legs he is straight-backed. Though he finds the woman's manner grating he is nonetheless friendly to her—it is the old Hoopes diplomacy.

The woman who has identified herself as
Mar-go
—(whose last name he has forgotten)—expresses an interest in his charcoal drawings. He is flattered, but he is baffled—for how does
Mar-go
know that he has been sketching in his sketchbook unless she has been spying on him?

“Will you show us some of your drawings, Eli?”

He sees that yes, he has his sketchbook with him, secured under his arm. But he is reluctant to open the book to the prying eyes of strangers.

They are waiting for him to misstep, he thinks. All these years they have been seeking the murderer of his cousin Gretchen, and the murderer's identity is hidden in the charcoal sketches.

“No. I don't think so. My work isn't good enough for anyone's eyes except my own.”

“But that isn't true! Your drawings—and your photographs—are excellent. Your work has been exhibited in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Eli. That's how good it is.”

This is true. This he recalls, with surprise.

How strange, the white-skinned woman knows about his single photography exhibit in the museum. He wonders if this means that she knows many other things about him, too.

It is easier often to kill than to dissuade. But it would not be easy to get the woman alone, and to squeeze her white-skinned throat between his fingers.