Falls The Shadow

67

I was late for my date with Carol Kingsly.

What with the police and the paperwork, the arrest warrant sworn out for Randy Fleer. What with returning to Julia’s apartment and packing up Daniel’s clothes in a spare black garbage bag and driving him to Social Services, where Isabel worked the phones to find him a foster home. What with going along with Isabel as she drove Daniel to the house of a nice, smiling couple, parents of two older children, who had volunteered to take a foster child on an emergency basis and had already been interviewed and examined and prequalified. What with all that, I was late, yes, I was late. But I didn’t think it was anything to cry about.

Obviously I was wrong. Because there was Carol Kingsly, at our table in a crowded little restaurant called Rembrandt’s, a place not far from the great blackened hulk of Eastern State Penitentiary, with a half-drained glass of white wine in front of her, and she was crying.

“What’s going on?” I said as I sat. “I’m not that late, am I?”

She just waved away my question and tried to compose herself. She wasn’t doing a whole sobbing-out-loud thing, which would have been really uncomfortable. It was more a soft, contained cry, like her cat had died or something. Except Carol Kingsly didn’t have cats.

“Carol?” I said. “Are you okay?”

She gained control, expertly wiped her eyes with her fingertips, leaving her mascara intact. “No,” she said, shaking her head.

“What happened?”

“I received some really bad news. I’m not okay.”

A bolt of terror slashed through me. She had some sort of disease, I could tell. She had cancer. I was sure of it. I had a vision of Carol Kingsly in her hospital bed, her limbs withered, her head shaved, looking up at me with sunken eyes. Gad. Looking up at me with the expectation that I would care for her. Me. Somehow now she was my responsibility? We had only been going out for a couple of weeks, I didn’t even like her all that much, and still I was on the hook? What were the rules on that? And with whom could I lodge my appeal? I had the almost uncontrollable urge to excuse myself, to stand up, step outside, and run like the wind. When it’s fight or flight, my first impulse is always to gallop the hell out of there. But this time I gripped the edge of the table, pressed myself back into my seat, tried to not show my terror.

“What is it?” I said. “Something serious?”

“Very.”

“Tell me. What?”

“Remember I told you about my yoga instructor, Miranda? Who recommended I start going to Dr. Pfeffer?”

“Your yoga instructor?”

“She’s very concerned about me. She said I looked out of sorts, and after class, she gave me a private reading. What she found was terrible.”

“Your yoga instructor?”

“Yes. Victor, the quality of my chi has turned. The energies of the five elements are not interacting within me in a positive way. Everything’s feeding upon itself. Water extinguishes fire, fire melts metal, metal cuts wood, wood controls earth, and earth absorbs water. Do you see?”

“No, I don’t.”

“My life is out of balance. Do you know feng shui?”

“All that mumbo jumbo about where to place the couch?”

“It’s not mumbo jumbo, Victor, and it’s about more than interior design, though the interior-design part of it is really lovely. But it’s also about keeping a balance in every part of your life.”

“And your life is out of balance?”

“So she says. I have to make a change, or the destructive energy is going to cause serious damage to all my chakras.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s okay, Carol. Stay calm. It’s not a disaster. We’ll make some changes. What is the problem? Is it your job?”

“No.”

“Your apartment?”

She shook her head.

“Do you need a new car? An upgraded wardrobe?”

“Do you think I need an upgraded wardrobe?”

“Well, you always say there’s not much a new pair of shoes can’t cure.”

“It’s not my shoes, Victor.”

“Then what is it?” I said, like a dope.

She sat and stared at me for a moment, and tears again began to fill her eyes.

“Oh,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Does this mean now? Right away? Can we at least have dinner?”

“I’m sorry, Victor. I’m so sorry. But I felt that things weren’t exactly perfect with us, even from the start. And you must have, too. There was always this distance between us. I tried, I thought maybe time might help. But now Miranda tells me that I don’t have so much time. I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” I said, and surprisingly, I was.

I had never given Carol a real chance, and that was a crime, because if I sensed anything about her, it was that she had a true and yearning heart. Maybe she was too pretty for me, too well dressed, too obvious in her attempts to find answers where there are no real questions. Or maybe she was too damn connected with Dr. Bob. But whatever it was, I had never really made the effort to see her clearly. She had seemed to me like a finished product, picking a man the way she picked a blouse, trying to find something that matched her sense of style, but I think I was wrong in that judgment. She was no different from the rest of us, searching for something solid to hold on to in this world. I don’t know if I could have been that for her, or she for me, but I had blown any possibility of our finding out.

She downed the rest of her wine, wiped a tear from her cheek with a knuckle, gathered her things, clutched her bag to her chest as she stood. I stood, too. It seemed the polite thing to do.

“Good-bye, Victor,” she said.

“Good luck with your… whatever.”

“My chi.”

“That’s it.”

“Thank you,” she said before she started walking off.

“Carol.” She stopped and turned. “I’ve got something I want you to have.”

I reached up to my collar, loosened the knot of my yellow tie, untied it, held it out to her.

“Victor, that’s yours.”

“It’s not really my color. Keep it as a memento. Or give it to your friend Nick. He could use a neckwear upgrade. Take it. Please.”

She looked at me for a moment and then took the tie. She closed her eyes as she rubbed the silk against her cheek. Tears welled, and I wouldn’t have been surprised had I heard the sweep of violins.

“We’ll always have Strawbridge’s,” I said.

Damn, I thought as I watched her walk out of the restaurant and out of my life, she sure is pretty.

And then something caught my attention at the bar on the other side of the restaurant. It was an old man, tall and dapper, staring at me through the bar’s entranceway.

Whit.

He stood there and stared until he was sure I had seen him, before following Carol out the door. I suppose he figured he didn’t have to stay, that just his presence left enough of a message. This wasn’t simply the inevitable ending of a tepid affair, though it was certainly all of that. This was also another shot across my bow. Dr. Bob, my dentist, had told his patient, Miranda, the yoga instructor, to instruct Carol Kingsly, my sort-of-fulfilling sexual relationship, to give me the boot. And Whit, my old friend Whit, had shown up just so I got the full impact of the message.

The D.D.S. giveth, the D.D.S. taketh away, blessed be the name of theD.D.S.

I sat back down at my table and was thinking it through, the breakup, the warning, the sacrifice of my tie, the increasing amount of pressure being brought to bear, when the waitress appeared at the table.

“There’s only one of you now?” she said.

“Afraid so.”

“So what will it be?”

I looked up at her. She was pretty cute actually, short orange hair, black lipstick, a stud in her nose. She looked like she might be fun. I know she was only a waitress, and men are helplessly attracted to waitresses, it is something in our jeans, but still, it was a pretty good sign. I guess it hadn’t taken me too long to get over Carol.

“Let me have a hamburger,” I said, “and burn it.”

They have damn good hamburgers at Rembrandt’s, and I suppose, after being pushed around once again by Dr. Bob, I was in the mood for charred red meat.