The Invisibles (16 page)

The train rushed forward over an elevated track, descended along a three-block stretch, and plunged into a tunnel under the city. As the daylight disappeared and the dark walls and vacant passageways came on, now visible, now gone, he felt the first clutches of fear in his chest. He was suddenly certain that he would not like what he was going to find in the apartment, that whatever lay hidden there would tie him forever to an awful crime. Who was Marcus Schwartz, anyway? Who had he been that he had forgotten who he was? The truth must be terrible, he thought, if he had somehow hidden it from himself. That the people who recognized him and the messages he'd read suggested he was a nice person pointed to secrecy, which frightened him more.

He stepped out in a crush of people onto the platform beside
the ghoulish mosaic of Lazarus. The hustle of others moved him along quickly, down the long, bright white, domed tunnel, then up another flight to the bustling city street. Winter air descended onto his head and shoulders like a heavy blanket, stuffed his lungs with chill. He walked through black and gray slush past people hidden under long coats, scarves, hats. Many women were wearing fur-lined boots. He walked through the clouds of strangers' breath, past bright storefronts displaying gaudy jewelry and winter hats on mannequins dressed in form-fitting clothes. He watched out for the slush holes appearing suddenly underfoot. The blocks were long, but eventually he came to the address Laura had given him on a quiet street.

It was an eight-story brick building, old and faded and ugly, with a black fire escape zigzagging up the side. The doorman, seeing him wander onto the green doormat and stamp the ice from his loafers and soaked pant cuffs, came and let him in. He was an older man, with heavy jowls and thick folds in the cheeks around his smile. He nodded slowly in the manner of monolingual immigrants and ushered him toward the steel elevator doors.

He rode to the eighth floor and went to the apartment number Laura had given him. The hallway was dark, the walls covered in burgundy wallpaper, the red and orange carpet short and coarse. He looked through the peephole and saw dim daylight on the other side, the gray wateriness of depression. He knocked and waited, listened to the wood and heard nothing within. He took out his key ring and tried keys. His hands were shaking a little. The dead bolt turned on his second try.

Mail had piled up in a heap inside the door, and he smeared it across the foyer pushing his way in. The warm air held the wild stink of unwashed dishes and the life forms they favored, cigarettes and booze, garbage long ready to go out. The kitchen was as the stench portended — dirty dishes and pans and empty
bottles appeared to have erupted from the sink and flowed out over the countertops. By the blankets and crushed pillow on the living room couch, he guessed Marcus Schwartz had been sleeping there, perhaps too drained to drag himself to bed when there was a television to keep him company. In the bedroom, the mattress was stripped bare and covered with wrinkled and dirty clothes. In the half-open drawers he found a pair of clean socks, briefs, dry jeans, a few shirts. Fresh jogging shoes on the closet floor. In the dingy bathroom, he looked at his weary reflection as he scrubbed his hands with hot water to warm them up and decided, as it appeared no one had been here for a while or would be soon, that he could take a shower. Afterward, shaved and washed, wearing Marcus Schwartz's clothes — which fit him well — he felt like someone else. He opened the medicine cabinet and found an old blue toothbrush and a curled tube of toothpaste.

In a spare bedroom that had been used as an office, he dug through bookshelves and the stacks of books left on the desk and in the corners. He could not find the translation by Marcus Schwartz. Only when he had given up searching did he notice the answering machine on the shelf above the writing desk, message button blinking red. He stood licking his lips, unsure about the situation. He felt now as if he were being guided toward some fate of Marcus Schwartz's design; after all, who else was responsible for all that had happened to him so far?

To know or not was not much of a choice. He pressed the button. An automated male voice informed him he had fifteen messages. The first was over thirteen days old. A woman's voice, husky and full of sadness, filled the room. He knew immediately he had heard it many times.

“It's Liz. I'm wondering if you're going to ever call. I know you're probably sitting there, all messed up and angry at me, but I
wish you'd just pick up. Don't be such a baby. Pick up. I'm worried about you, okay?”

Seven of the messages were from Liz. Starting almost two weeks ago she had called once a day for six days, finally threatening to come over and use her key. In the seventh message, left on the evening of the seventh day, she reported stopping over and coming in, finding the place filthy as his place in Boston, which he guessed dated from college or grad school. He had not been there, she said; he should call her when he was sober and ready to talk. The rest of the messages were robocalls from politicians, credit card companies, insurance scams.

He picked up the phone, found Liz's number in the caller
ID
, and called her. It rang five times before she answered. She sounded in good spirits but a little detached, as if she were in the middle of vacuuming the house.

“It's me,” he said.

“I see,” she said. “So.”

“I'm at the apartment now.”

“Finally decided to call me back, I see.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I — ”

“Don't apologize, Marcus. Don't do it.” He saw her: a tall woman with a pretty, expressive face and long cinnamon-colored hair, pinching the bridge of her prominent nose, closing her eyes. “I'm really just not up for that right now. I kind of doubt you are, either.”

“Something's happened.”

“I don't want to hear about it. Really.”

“I don't understand it.”

“Marcus. You can do what you want to do to yourself. It's not my business any more. Listen, I screwed up, too, I'm just as much to blame as you are. We fucked it up a long time ago. I can't go
into it. The thing with Jeff, and you, you were in a completely different world. And that shit with your job.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess maybe that's it.”

“You guess? Jesus, Marcus, we were like a fucking case study. We started too young, forced it too long. Period.” Her voice was filled with nostalgia and relief. She gave a long sniff. Then she spoke away from the mouthpiece. “Hold on a sec, okay? It's Marcus. Are you there? God, I wish you had called some other time. Jeff and I have got this thing at the Breton tonight. It's a little one-act we wrote together. We're just getting ready. Can I call you back?”

“Sure. But Liz, hold on.”

“Yeah. What is it?”

“Do you have a copy of that book?”

It was where she said she'd leave it, in a manila envelope leaning at the foot of the townhouse door. She had left the lamp on, as she said she would, so he could see it there. A brass ashtray on a tall tripod stood beside the door, and he knew before he looked in it that he would see half-smoked menthols, their white butts stained with pink lipstick. He leaned and picked up the envelope. The name
Marcus
had been scrawled hastily across the paper in her large looping script, was sealed with a red sticker shaped like a heart. She used these for everyone, to represent her friendship, but he could imagine the pain she must have felt sealing this parcel. He tore open the package and removed the book, a black paperback with an image of a green ouroboros on the cover, beneath the title. He looked at the dark bay window beside the door, its white curtain concealing a living room, dining room, or some other room that called to mind a stage set. He wondered what it looked like, how the air inside smelled and felt. He felt compelled to ask for a glimpse, a taste, to join it temporarily, to knock on the heavy wood, to speak his name and be admitted. He knew they had plans
tonight, that the house stood empty. He had heard the excitement in her voice.

He sat on the top stair and read through the table of contents. He knew these stories, had committed many to memory. He had been translating them almost twenty years, since his first days as an undergraduate, and still he loved their distance, their romance. He found what he was looking for right away. He read it twice and sat in the cold night, lost in vague thoughts, until he heard someone coming. It was a younger couple, still in their work clothes, stumbling drunkenly up the sidewalk. He imagined they had just come from happy hour somewhere, surrounded by strangers whose minute differences from them and each other made the world feel safe and rich. They passed through a streetlight. The man was tall, grinning under his thick-framed glasses. She was laughing hard with her eyes shut tight, her arm wrapped around his narrow waist. She had reached a state where all he said made her laugh harder, bent over by stomach cramps.

He watched them walk down the darkened street until they passed beyond his sight. Then he stood and walked, moving his stiffening joints through the cold air until they warmed and found a rhythm. He stopped at the corner and dropped the book into a black steel garbage can. The book hit the bottom and made a single dull echo. Seeing the yellow glow of a drugstore across the street, he proceeded to the pay telephone next to the door, took the scratched black receiver from the cradle, wiping it on his coat before he placed it beneath his ear. He dug out Laura's card and, in the yellow glare of the sign, read the neat printing on the soft rose-colored paper. He slid two quarters through the coin slot, looking through the glass. The shopkeeper leaned on the counter, reading a magazine over a display of lottery tickets.

“It's Marcus,” he said when she answered, her voice tired and rough and curious.

“Where are you? Where is this number?”

“Some phone,” he said. “I'm north of the city. Not far.”

“I'm still at work,” she said. “Another twenty minutes. Today has been a real bitch.”

“Will it be too late to grab a bite somewhere?”

A long silence on her end, the hesitation that was a willingness to be convinced. “I don't know,” she said. “What did you have in mind?”

“Not sure. I'm starving. Let's talk about it. I'll meet you at the station near there.”

In Paphos there was a playwright who had been married off young and was terribly unhappy. His wife too was discontent. When she took a lover, the playwright, seeing no blame in either of them, prayed to Mnemosyne to make him forget himself and be thus freed from his misery. Because he had so faithfully mimicked human strife on the stage, Mnemosyne heard his prayer and appealed to Zeus, but the cloudsplitter remonstrated that it would not be sufficient for the playwright to forget himself while the memories of so many others held him in place. So the mother of the muses convinced the dream god Morpheus to kidnap the playwright and replace him with a double.

Many years passed and the playwright's family and friends had died or gone away. His double lived on, old and wild haired, wandering the street, harassing strangers and conversing with phantoms. The period when others found his antics amusing had long passed. The double was thought to be truly mad, and his wife now lived in the household of another man. It was only when he slept that the playwright woke in his replacement's dreams, never remembering what had come before.

Once more Mnemosyne went to Zeus and pleaded the playwright's case. The father of the gods looked down on the double, cavorting in the
street in filthy rags, and took pity on the playwright. He decreed that not only should the playwright be restored to his rightful place, but that his youth would be returned to him, as a reward for his faithful sacrifice.

When the people saw that the soiled beggar had been transformed into a young man in full possession of his wits, they took a goat to the temple and slaughtered it in honor of the gods.

This is why in the city Paphos, when they see an old person dancing, they say, “It is unhappy memory, not time, that makes one grow old.”

The man is the corrupt dream of the child, and since
there is only decay, and no time, what we call days
and evenings are the false angels of our existence.
—
EDWARD DAHLBERG
,
Because I Was Flesh

Look at it this way. Fourteen years old and I stand six feet two inches high, a lummox with charm like the muttering lord of the dead. Last summer most of my mom's breasts were removed, which is no excuse, though it is a reason I began to hate everyone. She shed her hair; I grew mine to my shoulders and dyed it black. Once partners in sarcasm, observers of amphibians in our Black Swamp surroundings, the parent-child duo that chatted past the zero hour, we have become strangers, willing to hurt with words. To ease life I roam the downstairs, now that she's as bald as Lionel, the boy on our front porch, listening after the doorbell's echo, his pipe-thin arms short and flared.

Lionel's baldness is self-imposed, and to ensure that no one mistakes this, he wears a heavy chain-link necklace and a black Megadeth T-shirt that portrays an emaciated man sweating bullets out of his forehead and chest onto a wooden table. Lionel is my age, has hounded blue eyes and crooked teeth, and lives in a slab house on the south side of this large park of Black Swamp forest, in a neighborhood of slab houses, a neighborhood with snarling dogs and no government, alongside the railroad tracks. He is my best friend, and for a long time was my only friend,
until Brooke became pregnant, around the time the surgeons cut the tumors out of my mom. Until Brooke began driving him over in her old blue Stingray, the rumbling and rusted wonder of our minds, Lionel was forced to ride the dirt trails on his secondhand mountain bike to reach my house through the riparian forest.