The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards (27 page)

“You don’t believe in spirits or ghosts then?”

He clicks his tongue a few times and looks around, as if worried that someone else will overhear him. “My grandmother tells me you have your thought-soul and your life-soul. When you die, the life-soul goes away. But your thought-soul sometimes it stays here for a few years. But sooner or later it goes away, too.”

I chew this over. It is growing darker and the city is still some distance away.

“Can the two ever split up while you’re still alive?”

“If you are in danger,” he says, nodding, “your life-soul may go away and hide. And if then, you are hurt or wounded, you will still not be killed. And then, when you are better, it will come back again.”

“That sounds like a good system,” I say.

“Well,” he laughs again. “It is all just nonsense. Whatever.”

• • •

The tiny Kumasi hotel room that Tina and I have been inhabiting is home to bugs both crawling and winged, and we pass the evening as usual, under the sanctuary of the heavy gauze mosquito netting that hangs over the bed. We eat; we make love. I drink; she smokes. We watch the black oblong shapes hum across the transparent curtain. It is too hot to sleep, but we pretend for a while that we will.

“So, what happened to Shelley?” I ask. “You were starting to tell me before.”

“Percy?” She smiles to think that I’ve been mulling it over all day.

“I didn’t realize you two were on a first-name basis.”

“Well, he wrote in his diaries that he kept seeing himself through the windows, walking around on this high terrace garden outside his house in Italy. Once or twice he chased his double through the garden, but always lost him at a low wall, which dropped hundreds of yards on the other side, down into the town. He decided never to tell Mary about it, but then one day, when she was sure Percy had gone into town, Mary thought she saw him out in the garden. She went after him—wondering what he was doing back—and chased him all the way to the wall, where he vanished.”

“Poof,”
I say.

“She screams out,” Tina says, gesturing with her hands as if it is she who is doing this screaming. “And the gardener or somebody comes rushing over and says, ‘Mrs. Shelley, Mrs. Shelley. What is the matter?’”

Tina’s gardener sounds like Charlton Heston, which is to say, he sounds like every impression she does.

“And she says she’s sure her husband has just leaped over the wall to his death. And the gardener or whoever says, ‘But, no, that’s not possible. Mr. Shelley has gone into town.’ When Percy finally gets home, Mary is a wreck. Relieved to see him all right, but a wreck. And so he finally tells her that he’s seen this reflection of himself as well. And a year later, he is dead.”

“That’s quite a story,” I say. “I wonder if it’s true.”

“Oh, what does
that
matter?” she groans

“It’d just be nicer if it was, I think. They’re both writers, you know. Between the two of them, they could have made it all up.”

“You’re no fun.” Tina pouts, then blows a smoke ring at me.

“You like the Shelleys?”

Tina chews on her lip a moment, as if she cannot decide if she should talk to me anymore. “When Percy died,” she says at last, “they burned him on a pyre by the sea. Only a disturbed fan came rushing up and into the fire. People thought he was insane—trying to die with him, or something. But then he rolled away, all burned and on fire, with Percy’s heart in his hand. He rushed off before anyone could stop him.”

“Crazy,” I say.

“That’s not even the crazy part. Because years later, when Mary died, they found a little parcel in her desk. One of his original drafts of
Adonaïs
, his elegy for Keats, and wrapped up in it, this withered, burned-up lump of Percy’s heart.”

“I’ve heard that before. It’s just a myth,” I laugh.

“I think it’s the most tremendously romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Would you have my heart stolen from my funeral pyre?” I ask.

“I would,” she says. “Would you have mine?”

“Of course,” I say. It is a lie—but oh, it is a great lie—one I’d love to be true. I feel bad, but not too bad, considering she’s lying as well. Jeffrey’s heart, maybe, she’d steal, but not mine. A great buzzing scarab thing goes by the netting so quickly that it makes me jump.

“Come on,” I say. “It’s too hot. Let’s go out.”

• • •

We had not known it was Saturday; O’Bryan’s has jazz on Saturday nights. We walk in and it is dark but cool, despite the crowds of people that clog the place. Someone else is in our usual booth, but we hover nearby in the hope the interlopers may leave. News of the world flashes on the muted televisions. A few men stare vacantly, waiting for the sports scores to float by at the bottom. Up on the stage, all the way across the room, a little Ghanaian ensemble is playing something all horns and bluesy, while a large dark woman moans like she’s never seen things so bad in her life. Tina gets two beers for herself and two beers for me, and we set about drinking them down.

“Get anything straight out of the old man?” she asks hopefully. “True tales of the early oeuvre of Jeffrey Oakes?”

“We only got about ten questions in before he pointed a knife at me.”

And as I say this, I see myself again, all the way across the room, leaning up against the wall in another dark corner. He—me—is listening to the singer, who is going from moan to howl now, as the song circles up and up out of the blues.

“That’s him,” I say before I can stop myself. “That’s the guy.”

He is standing with another white man, about our same age, not paying attention to me at all. He and this other man are standing very close. In the dim light I see him whispering in the other’s ear.

“He
does
look like you,” Tina gasps when she sees whom I mean. It takes her a moment to realize what he is doing, exactly. “Oh, dear. Darling. I think your doppelgänger is gay.”

She thinks this is
very
funny. I’m mostly just glad that she can see him, too.

“He was by the house today. The old man thought it was Jeffrey.”

Tina squints and tries to look through the dark throngs, rippling in time to a saxophone solo. “It’s
not
Jeffrey, is it?”

There’s an excited squeak in her voice, as if it were Mick Jagger or Leonardo DiCaprio standing across the bar from us. For Tina, maybe Jeffrey is of that same caliber; after all, her copy of
Nothing Sacred
has more dog-ears than the Westminster Kennel Club.

After a long, long pause, I say, “It’s not Jeffrey. But I think that I might know who it actually is.” As I start to cross the dark floor, Tina moves to follow me and I stop. “I need to do this alone, if that’s all right.”

“You’re joking!” she laughs. “Come on, seriously. I want to find out who he is!” I can see it in her eye—this predatory feline glint—sure that she is about to unearth some big secret.

“I’m not joking,” I say firmly. “I need to talk to him alone. Can I meet you back at the apartment?”

“Why don’t you want me to meet him?” she says, and she seems upset at my change in tone.

“It’s personal,” I say. “He’s someone I knew a long time ago and . . . ”

She stares at me for a while, finishes her drink, and starts in on mine.

“Why are you
like
this?” she asks.

It is the question—the real question—she’s been trying to ask me for weeks. Since I met her, I’d been asking myself the same thing. Watching my double at the end of the bar I begin to worry I’ll lose him again, as the people in the bar keep swelling with the sad songs coming from the stage and sighing with the sadder songs that they alone know.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I say.

“I’d believe
anything
you told me,” she says. There are suddenly tears in her eyes, and I can’t look at them. But she turns away, thinking she’s robbing me of the satisfaction of seeing them.

“Well, that’s just the problem,” I snap. “You would believe anything. And I’m a liar! That’s just what I am. I lie like I’m breathing. I lie to everyone, myself most of all. But with you it’s just too easy. I can’t even stop myself, because you’ll believe
any
thing.”

It’s a mean thing to say and it stings her, I can tell. And it’s difficult to get out straight, because to be honest it’s the opposite that’s become true. I can hardly
stop
myself from telling her the truth. I feel it seeping out of me faster than my sweat. What’s truly too easy is forgetting all the lies that I’ve been believing for years.

But she buys my lie, and so I follow it with one more, without even realizing that it will be the last one I’ll ever get to tell her.

“I’ll be back in an hour, I promise.”

She gives me a look—a pitiful, pitying look—and then I think she really
would
grab my heart from a funeral pyre. For a second I think I would grab hers, too, but then she moves off into a darker part of the bar and is gone.

The trumpets tremble while the bass guitar aches, and I cross over to the bar and begin to work my way down toward my double through the crowd. My double looks up at me and realizes he’s standing in a corner and there’s nowhere to go. As I work my way across the room, I see him telling the man he’s with to give him a few minutes. The other guy sees me coming and begins talking very fast in French. Then suddenly it is only my double and me, standing face-to-face.

“Henry Waterford,” he says with a smile, reaching out a hand to shake. The blue lights above the jazz group gleam off our watches and now they look the same. Then gesturing to my clothing, he says, “They say great minds think alike.”

And now I see. My double doesn’t look like me; I look like my double. This is the boy I grew up wanting to be. And, twenty years later, I’ve become him.

“But fools seldom differ,” I say. “You followed me out to the lake today.”

“I’m sorry for that,” he says, reaching for a cigarette—a new affectation for Henry. He offers me one but I decline. “But you’ll know what I mean when I say that it’s not every day you meet a twin you didn’t know you had. My driver followed you out to the lake. I’m afraid my snooping skills leave a lot to be desired.”

“You don’t remember me, then?” I ask.

“From the accent I’d say you’re from around West Charlotte,” he says with a shrug. “If you know me from there, then you know there’s a lot I can’t remember about those days.”

He’s right—my Southern drawl has crept back in, despite a decade of firm repression.

“Billy,” I lie, shaking his hand. “We were on the high school tennis team together.”

He laughs and studies me carefully, as if trying to remember me. “Of course!” he lies finally. “Billy. It’s so good to see you again.”

“What brings you to Ghana of all places?”

“Business,” he replies vaguely, finishing his cigarette after three shaky drags. He’s looking around to see if his friend is still nearby. “You remember my family was involved in telecom?”

I don’t remember ever knowing this, but I nod.

“Well, Africa’s the new frontier in the market,” he says. “Fiber-optic cables. Cell towers. Wireless hot spots. They’ve sent me out like some kind of a scout.
Boring
.”

“Didn’t you have a sister?” I ask, a little breathless.

“Married. Kids,” he says, as if this is all there is to say. I suppose that it is. Still, it makes me wince, just a little, and while Henry can’t quite place me, he looks just a tiny bit uncomfortable at my reaction. Perhaps I am not the first man to ask after his sister in a dark bar somewhere. He fidgets a little. “Anyway, what brings
you
to Ghana, Billy?”

“I’m a writer, Henry,” I say, gesturing toward the bar. The singer is burning up a rough imitation of Ella. As the bartender sets two whiskeys down in front of us, I feel Tina coming up behind me. I turn to look at her and so does Henry.

“Another American!” he cries. “This really is the spot tonight. Do you two know each other?”

Tina catches my eye, daringly. She lets a moment go by.
This is your last chance,
her eye tells me.
This is it, right here.

“No,” I say. “We’ve never met.”

“Well, I’m Henry! Henry Waterford! Come on and join us for a whiskey! And this is Billy. Billy . . . ”

He pauses, not sure what my last name is. I am about to supply it, when Tina does.

“Littleford.”

“Oh, so you
do
know each other!” Henry says.

“No,” Tina says. “I suppose we don’t, really. I’m just a great fan of his work.”

I can’t even look at her. Henry doesn’t let the beat drop, though, bless him.

“He was just telling me all about it! Join us, join us!”

I hazard a glimpse and know immediately that for years after, I’ll wish I hadn’t. She looks so incredibly sad. Not for herself, but for me.

“Christina Elizabeth Edgars-Boyleston,” she says, shaking Henry’s hand. “Thank you so much but I’m afraid I’m leaving.”

“Tomorrow, then?” Henry says cheerfully.

“No,” Tina replies, “I’m taking off tonight. There’s a red-eye at six AM. Got to get back home. Got to hurry—there’s a lot to pack.”

She gives me a defiant look.
I’ll do it,
she seems to say.
I’ll really do it.

Henry gives her a pleasant smile. “Next time,” he says.

“Yes, next time,” I echo.

Tina looks as though she’s about to say something, but she just fakes a smile and turns away.

Henry shrugs and sips his whiskey thoughtfully. “What might have been, eh? Makes you wonder, sometimes. You know a friend told me I ought to write a novel someday. About everything that’s happened to me.”

“But you don’t
remember
anything that’s happened to you,” I say. I wonder what would happen if I showed him that story I wrote twenty years ago. Would he even know it was about him?

Henry laughs and sips his whiskey. “So, then I’ll make it up! Who’s going to know? Anyway, tell me. Is it exciting, being a writer? I’m so
bored
with my whole
existence
, I can’t even tell you.”