Low Life

2 JEREMY

Even though there was parking directly in front of the house, Simon drove to the end of the block – about six houses down – before pulling his Volvo to the curb and killing the engine. His right cheek was free of band-aids now and lined with a meaty white scar. There was still a bit of pink where the wound hadn’t completely healed, but he couldn’t make himself wait any longer. He’d just been sitting around thinking about it for days.

He knew more about mathematics than he ever had before.

He tongued at his cheek. There were a dozen hairs growing on the inside. When the wound healed it healed with hair follicles in the pink interior of his mouth and they had begun growing hairs that made the lining of his cheek itch.

He tongued at the centimeter-long hairs as he stepped from his car, and then slammed the door shut. He had become aware of the hair growing in his mouth six days ago, but on the drive over it had become an obsession, despite what he was doing here this morning. He reached into his mouth with his left hand and grabbed one of them between his thumb and index finger – pinching it against the pad of the finger with the thumbnail – and yanked.

There was a sharp sting and his eyes watered and he tasted blood. He looked at the small gray hair for a moment – examining it closely, the way it curled and formed a half circle, the white pin-dot of flesh hanging on one end – and then tossed it away.

He tongued at his cheek again, but then forced himself to stop. He wasn’t thinking about it despite what he was doing here this morning; he was thinking about it because of what he was doing here this morning. He was distracting himself from it. But it served no end. There was no profit in it.

He turned away from his car and walked toward the Shackleford house. He could see Samantha’s Mercedes sitting in the driveway.

Soon he would know if she believed him.

‘Hey, Jeremy. Got that hammer you borrowed?’

Simon paused. He was standing on the first step leading up to the front porch. When the morning breeze blew he could smell basil and rosemary on the air. The pollen in the purple flowers on the front porch made his eyes water and his nose run. The voice came from behind him – the voice of a man who ate gravel.

Simon swallowed and turned around.

A heavy man in his late forties was jogging in place about ten feet away on the sidewalk. He wore stained gray sweatpants and a T-shirt that didn’t quite cover his light-bulb-shaped belly. Between his sweats and his shirt, a white slice of hairy gut. He had a face like wet papier-mâché, drooping off the bones, and his neck was dotted with razor bumps. A few white bits of toilet paper were stuck to his skin with drops of drying blood. Simon’s adoptive father used to call those red-dotted bits of toilet paper Japanese flags. As in, ‘You got a Japanese flag stuck to your neck there, pal.’

He had been dead for six years now. Simon hadn’t gone to the funeral, but after his mom told him about it – that the old man had been found dead in his motor home in Nevada (they were divorced when Simon was fifteen) – he’d spent two weeks walking around in a daze. He hadn’t cried. He hadn’t even felt particularly sad, but he felt something related to sadness, something that lived next door to it, a kind of echoing hollow. A month later he cried about it for the first and last time. It was strange. He hadn’t liked the man – in fact, he had hated him – but he was the only father Simon knew and he’d loved him too.

‘What’s that?’ he said.

‘My hammer. You got it?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s in my garage. Mind if I bring it by later? I’m kinda busy.’

‘Yeah, no prob. I can’t take it now anyway. About to go on a run. I just saw you and thought I’d toss out a reminder.’

‘Oh,’ Simon said. ‘Okay. I’ll bring it by later.’

‘Sounds good. See you then.’

‘Right.’

The man turned and jogged a few steps before stopping and backing up again.

‘By the way – what happened to your face?’

‘My face?’

‘That scar.’

Simon touched his cheek.

‘Oh, that. My barber had a seizure.’

The man was silent a moment.

‘Really?’

Simon nodded.

The guy whistled, sucking in through his teeth. ‘Tough luck.’

‘You’re telling me.’

‘Okay. Later, then.’

‘Later.’

The guy went on with his jog.

Simon watched him go, letting out a relieved sigh: one person had believed him to be Jeremy Shackleford, anyway.

But what had he meant mentioning the scar? Hadn’t Shackleford had one just like it?

He pushed quietly through the front door and walked down the hallway. He felt sick to his stomach. Despite having brushed his teeth, the dry slab of his tongue tasted awful. He swallowed, or tried to, but had no spit.

At the bedroom door he stopped. It was cracked a bit, and he could hear the sound of shallow breathing – the shallow breathing of sleep, one long sigh followed by another – and he could smell the clean smell of a woman’s sweat and the stale smell of slept-on sheets. He put his hand up, pressed his fingers against the coarse grain of the wood, straightened them till his knuckles were locked, and pushed. The door opened easily, sliding gently against the plush wool bedroom carpet and then stopping, leaving behind a half circle of nap it had brushed flat, like the wing of a snow angel.

Samantha was asleep on the bed. She was lying on striped burgundy sheets, beneath a white quilt, her head resting on one pillow, her arms wrapped around another, hugging it in place of a human absence – which absence, Simon thought, was in his bathtub. Well, some of it was. Once the smell had gotten too bad to tolerate, once neighbors started calling Leonard and complaining about a foul stench, once he had given up on burning incense and icing the body, he had driven to the store and picked up a half dozen bottles of drain cleaner. He poured the drain cleaner over the corpse, let it dissolve the tissue, and ran warm shower water over it. He did this four days in a row (going to a different store each time). The drain had clogged several times, but he’d managed to plunge the stoppages through. Now what was left was mostly bones and teeth and what hair hadn’t swirled down the drain. He still had to get rid of that, but he was afraid. Dental records and so on. He would have to smash out the teeth and—

That was for later.

He walked to the bed and stood over Samantha. Samantha was for now.

She was pale and smooth and beautiful.

He had to make her believe that he was Jeremy Shackleford.

When he sat on the edge of the bed a low moan escaped her throat. He reached a hand out and brushed the back of it across her smooth cheek, feeling the light blonde hairs on it like the fuzz on a peach. He ran the pad of a thumb across her soft lips. His breathing grew heavier. He swallowed.

Yes, Samantha was for now.

He imagined lying with her, loving her. He imagined her loving him in return. It seemed like a dream. Would she know he wasn’t Jeremy? There were so many things besides appearance that made a man – the way he closed his eyes when angry, forcing himself to calm down; the way he bit at his bottom lip; the way he carried himself when he walked – and marriages, Simon thought, were so intimate that it would be impossible for a spouse not to, eventually, pick up on all of them. Twins, for instance, might look identical to strangers, but parents and spouses could tell the difference in an instant. Would she be able to see he wasn’t Jeremy just as quickly? Would she look at him and just know? Would all this have been pointless?

There was only one way to find out.

‘Samantha.’

She rolled over in her sleep, mumbling something under her breath.

He reached out and ran fingers through her hair.

‘Samantha.’

She brushed his hand away.

‘Not right now, Jeremy,’ she said, still asleep. But a moment later her eyes opened. ‘Jeremy?’

She sat up and there was something like fear on her face, her eyes wide and blue and beautiful, and her mouth was hanging open, and she crawled backwards, away from him, until she bumped up against the dark wood headboard.

‘Jeremy?’

‘Hi.’

‘Where – where have you been?’

‘I – I don’t know.’

‘You don’t – did you have another?’ She pinched her eyes closed and rubbed at them, still mostly asleep, apparently incapable of grasping completely what was happening when only a moment earlier she had been dreaming impossible dreams. She opened her eyes again. ‘Did you have another – spell?’

‘I guess I must have.’

Had Shackleford had blackouts as well? Simon’s had been less and less frequent (six months ago he was having them often, but now they almost never came), but just a couple of days before all this started – before Shackleford broke into his apartment – he’d found himself in the adult book store and didn’t know how he’d gotten there, couldn’t remember it at all. He was wearing only one shoe. When he got back to his apartment, he’d found the other shoe sitting on his coffee table. What did it mean that—

Suddenly Samantha was crying. At first Simon didn’t know what was happening – she simply looked down at her lap, and a moment later her body began to shake and hair that had been tucked behind her small but jutting ears – flopped out like loose shutters – fell into her face and small sobs escaped her – and even after he did know what was happening he didn’t know what to do. He simply sat and stared at her as she shook and looked down at her own lap.

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’m back. It’s me – Jeremy.’

She looked up at him with her red-rimmed eyes and wiped at her cheeks and her nose with the back of her hand. She tucked loose strands of hair back behind her ears. Her eyes were alive with emotion and beautiful for it. But as she searched his face, something behind them changed somehow. Something entered her eyes that Simon didn’t like at all.

‘You’re not – who are you?’

Simon swallowed. His face got hot with blood but he tried not to show it, tried only to give Samantha a deadpan while he thought of what to say next. Like stealing a kite, half the trick was not to give yourself away.

‘Who am I?’ he said with absolutely false humor. ‘Jeremy.’ He said this in the same tone he’d use to explain to someone that the sky was blue: it was so obvious it didn’t deserve mentioning.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

She shook her head.

The way a man held his shoulders, the way his mouth looked when he was relaxed, how often he blinked while lying or telling the truth, where he rested his hands – in his pockets or on his lap or pressed against his hips – the way he scratched his face, whether he crossed his legs at the ankles or knees or not at all when sitting down: a man was more than his appearance. He should have known he could never get away with this. He had known, hadn’t he?

He licked his lips.

He had to make her believe. She hadn’t seen him for weeks. Her memories of him weren’t fresh. He could make her believe. He had to.

‘Why?’ he said, then cleared his throat and swallowed. His tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth. ‘Why would you say that?’ He smiled. ‘Who else would I be, sugar bear?’

She returned his smile then, only hers was real. Had he stumbled upon a correct phrase when he called her sugar bear? He thought he must have. He swallowed and then smiled again. This time his was real too.

There’s my sugar bear,’ he said.

She reached out and touched the scar curving down his face from cheekbone to chinbone. She traced the pad of a finger across it.

‘What happened?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your face.’

‘Accident,’ he said, guessing. ‘You remember.’

She shook her head.

‘I remember twenty-five thousand dollars in surgeries to have it removed,’ she said. ‘What have you done to yourself?’

‘I don’t…’

He shook his head.

‘Goddamn it,’ she said.

She appeared to be on the verge of tears again, but then she looked away, blinked several times, and swallowed. It passed. She had the weary and ragged look of a woman who had suffered her husband’s insanity for a long time. Simon hadn’t seen it on her before, but he saw it now. The tired eyes, the set jaw.

He’d been insane. She had loved Jeremy Shackleford, but he had been mad. Maybe that was all there was to Shackleford wanting him dead. Maybe Shackleford had seen him on the street and their similar appearance had been enough to send him over the edge. It could be that simple, couldn’t it?

There was no rule that said things had to be complex. Didn’t Occam’s razor even state the opposite, that the simplest answer was usually the correct one – that you should cut away all that was superfluous?

But was that an answer? Simon wasn’t sure.

‘Why are you wearing your old glasses?’ Samantha said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

She grabbed his face in both her hands and looked at him and said ‘Goddamn it’ again, and then she pulled his face to hers and kissed his hair and his cheeks and his chin and his mouth and his neck.

‘Goddamn it.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’re always sorry.’

‘I’m sorry for that, too.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you into a bath. You smell like you haven’t had one in weeks.’

Simon stood barefoot on the cold tile floor. The bathtub was running hot water, and Samantha had put soap into it, so there was now a mountain of foam just beneath the faucet – a reverse volcano into which water was rushing. Steam rose off the liquid’s surface.

‘Do you remember anything?’

Simon shook his head. He thought it was best if he remembered nothing. If he had nothing to say he was less likely to say the wrong thing, to give himself away.

Samantha pulled his corduroy coat off and hung it on a brass hook poking from the door, and then unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off him.

‘I thought you donated all these clothes to Good Will.’

‘I – I boxed them up, but I never drove them over.’

Samantha unbuttoned his pants and shoved them down his legs. They piled at his feet and he stepped out of them. He had hairy white legs covered in skin like a plucked chicken, thin hair except at the knees, which his pants had rubbed bare, and thin calves lined with blue veins.

‘Get in the tub,’ she said. ‘I’ll scrub you down.’

He walked to the bathtub and stepped his right foot into the water. At first he couldn’t tell whether it was hot or cold – the shock had confused his body – but after a moment his nerves were reoriented, and he yanked his scalded foot back out, sucking in air through his teeth.

‘Don’t be a baby. Get in.’

Simon tried a second time, going easily, first one foot and then the other. He stood still a moment, letting his body adjust, and then lowered himself in slowly, hands gripping either side of the tub. He was all right until his scrotum touched the water, and then he stood up again, or tried, but couldn’t manage it before Samantha pushed him back down. His skin turned pink.

He kept waiting for Samantha to see some scar or birthmark on his body that Jeremy didn’t have, or to notice the absence of a scar or birthmark, but neither of those things happened.

Samantha grabbed a dry loofah from the edge of the tub, soaked it in the water, squeezed it out, and scrubbed Simon’s back.

‘How did you get home?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your car’s been in the garage.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘So?’

‘I took the train,’ he said, despite the fact that he had never used the city’s public transportation system. He had seen the tracks near Union Station, and occasionally saw one of the light rail trains rolling to or from Pasadena, and every once in a while walked over subway grating on the sidewalk, in Hollywood and Koreatown, but he’d never actually ridden one of the city’s trains, or even one of its busses. Still, it was the first thing that came to mind, and it seemed to do the job – Samantha asked no more questions.

She scrubbed at his back silently for a couple minutes.

‘My show’s tonight.’

‘Your show?’

‘My exhibition. My paintings.’

‘Oh.’

‘I have to go. Gil’s been planning it for weeks.’

‘Okay.’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘I’ll stay home if you want.’

‘I don’t feel comfortable leaving you home alone.’

‘Then I’ll come with you.’

‘Do you think you’ll be okay? I know you hate crowds, and on top of everything else—’

‘I’ll be okay.’

‘Sure?’

He nodded.

Samantha bent down and kissed the back of his head.

‘Okay. Now wet your hair.’

Then she shoved his head down, forcing it underwater.

There were still beads of water dotting his naked back, and his clean underwear was spotted with moisture. He stood in front of his side of the closet – Jeremy Shackleford’s side of the closet – looking at ten suits, five of them gray, three black, one brown, one dark green. They were hanging on wooden hangers, and they were all facing in the same direction. To their right, about a dozen dry-cleaned white shirts. To the right of the shirts, cardigan sweaters in various colors, about half of them plaid. And at the end of the closet, a tie rack with at least a dozen silk ties hanging from it, each facing out so that Simon – Jeremy – could examine the patterns and pick which one he wanted. On a shelf above all this, several white T-shirts – no yellow sweat stains in the pits of these – folded and stacked neatly.

Simon grabbed one of the T-shirts off the shelf and slipped into it. It took a bit of effort because the moisture on his body clung to the fabric, but soon enough he had it on. He grabbed the brown suit and pulled the pants off the hanger, tossing the jacket to the mattress behind him. He slipped into them, wondering how they would fit. They were a bit big around the waist – which was nothing a cinched belt couldn’t fix – but otherwise the fit was nice.

Samantha walked in wearing a paint-splattered pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She was carrying two cups of coffee. She handed him one of the cups and the warmth of the porcelain against the palms of his hands felt good.

‘Thank you.’

He sipped his coffee. She’d prepared it just how he liked – lots of milk, no sugar.

‘You’re still wearing those glasses.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, I hate them.’

‘Oh.’

‘Please don’t wear them.’

‘Okay.’

‘There’s contact lenses in the medicine cabinet. I checked.’

‘Okay.’

He sipped his coffee again, and then set it down on the dresser. He grabbed a white button-up shirt from the closet and put his arms into it and buttoned it, starting at the bottom to make sure the buttons were lined up, and then sliding the rest through their buttonholes and into place. Then he grabbed a green checkered cardigan, put that on, and started looking for a tie.

‘Are you going somewhere?’

‘I thought I’d go to the college. Do I have a class today?’

Samantha nodded. ‘In an hour. You have that one Monday class. The history of geometry or something.’

‘It’s Monday?’

Samantha nodded. ‘But are you sure you’re ready to go back to work?’

‘I think so.’

‘You’re okay?’

‘I’m fine. I want to get back to work.’

I want to find out why Jeremy Shackleford wanted me dead.

‘Howard’s been covering your classes. He can cover one more.’

He had no idea who Howard was.

‘How many did I miss?’

‘Several.’

‘Several?’

‘A week’s worth – six. Classes only started a week ago or you’d’ve missed more.’

He nodded.

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Who?’

‘Henry.’

‘Howard?’

‘Howard.’

She paused and there was concern in her eyes. She looked like she might say something about him using the wrong name, but then she didn’t. ‘I said you’d had an accident and I didn’t know when you’d be able to work – and with that fucking scar on your face—’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, I think everything’s okay.’

‘Good,’ Simon said. ‘Thank you.’

Samantha nodded.

‘I made you a two o’clock appointment with Dr Zurasky.’

A pulse of pain throbbed just above Simon’s left eyebrow and his eye began to water. He pinched his eyes closed, opened them after several blinks, and looked at Samantha.

‘How did – how did you know about Zurasky?’

‘Of course I know about Zurasky. My sister referred us to him.’

‘When?’

Samantha said nothing for a long time. She just stared at him. Then: ‘Are you sure you should be going to work?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You don’t seem fine.’

‘Well, I am.’

‘You don’t seem yourself at all.’

‘I’m just— When did I start seeing him?’

‘You saw him a few times two winters ago, I think, then last June— You know this. I don’t know why we’re having this conversation.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘I don’t think you should go to work.’

‘I’m going.’

‘I’m against it.’

‘I need to. I don’t want to feel like – I don’t want to feel like an invalid.’

Samantha bit her lip.

‘If you think—’

‘I’m fine.’

He took the disposable contact lenses from their boxes in the medicine cabinet, first the right one and then the left. He peeled the foil from the top of the right lens case, being careful not to spill the saline solution, and then got the lens on the pad of his index finger. He examined it a moment to make sure it was right side out and once he was sure it was he held his right eye open with his left hand, and settled the lens gently onto the green of his eye. He blinked a few times, wiped at the water running down his cheek.

He closed his left eye and looked at his own reflection with his right. It was somewhat blurry, but not as blurry as he had expected it to be, and the blur might be the result of his being unused to wearing contact lenses. He might be able to get away with wearing these despite the fact that the prescription wasn’t made for him.

He peeled the foil off the container for the left lens and repeated the process. He blinked both eyes several times. He felt something in his left eye, looked closely at his reflection and thought he saw an eyelash floating around in there, rinsed it out with saline solution, blinked again, wiped the water off his face again, and looked at his own reflection again.

‘I’ll be goddamned,’ he said.

His car was a Saab. At first he thought it was the same Saab that killed the mutt he had fed, but there was no blood on the rear license plate and it didn’t look like it had been washed recently. It was covered in a thin coat of grime. Also, Samantha said it had been in the garage. And Jeremy, being dead, couldn’t have driven it back here. Death tended to hinder such activity.

He got inside, started the engine, slid the transmission into reverse, and backed out of the garage, careful not to hit Samantha’s car, which was parked in the driveway to his right. He rolled out into the street, put the car into drive – and drove.

While he drove he thought about what he was doing and why. Was he really doing this in order to find out why Shackleford had broken into his apartment – was he really doing this in order to find out why Shackleford had wanted him dead? Or was he doing it because Shackleford had had everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d dreamed of but had never attained – because he wanted to step into a life he’d always desired but which someone else had built?

‘There’s no reason it can’t be both,’ he told himself while he drove. Shackleford was already dead. Why shouldn’t he step into his place – if he could get away with it?

Jeremy Shackleford’s office was a small rectangular box, about eight feet wide and ten feet deep. The walls were roughly textured and one of them – the one to the left of the oak desk which sat in the middle of the room, facing the door – was painted green. A captioned picture of Bertrand Russell hung there. The caption read:

Simon sat at the desk and looked around. He pulled open a drawer and found a pint of whiskey. He unscrewed the whiskey and took a swallow. It burned his throat and felt good and warm inside him.

The clock said he had half an hour before his class started. That gave him some time to search the place. He took another swallow of whiskey, put the bottle back, and started looking.

Fifteen minutes later he walked into the room where he would be teaching. He’d found nothing in the office, but then he had no idea what he should be looking for. Maybe once he knew more he’d know better what to look for. He glanced around the classroom. It did not surprise him to find that it was small – about big enough to hold an algebra class in a high school. This was an arts college, after all; people loved neither their maths nor their sciences at such institutions. He was glad for that. He was pretty sure he could handle teaching the history of geometry to students who were fidgeting and thinking about the short film they were directing or the oil painting they were in the middle of – or whatever – without too much trouble. If he’d had to deal with people who gave a damn about mathematics, it might have been a problem.

He’d stopped at the cafeteria between here and the office and picked up a large cup of coffee, and he sipped it now, looking around the room, at the empty wooden desks with initials carved into them, at the overflowing trash can in the corner, stuffed with donut boxes and orange juice jugs and coffee cups and muffin wrappers from whatever class was here at eight o’clock. Based on the red writing on the whiteboard at the front of the room –

– Simon guessed first-semester French.

He walked to the whiteboard, used a stained cloth that was hanging from a nail in the wall to wipe the board clean, and then stared at the blank surface, fluorescent light reflecting off it. He exhaled, wondering if he was crazy for doing this. Maybe he was – maybe he was crazy – but he had never felt more himself either. Of course, that might be a symptom of his insanity. Probably was.

He turned to face the empty room.

‘Today,’ he said, ‘we’ll be discussing the development of geometry in ancient Greece.’

‘I already covered that chapter.’

Simon jumped, startled, and turned toward the door.

A man in a plaid yellow suit stood in the doorway. He was in his fifties with a trimmed mustache and white shoes with buckles on them. He was bald on top – the slope of his head shiny enough to see your reflection in – but the hair he had growing around the back and hooked over his ears with sideburns was long and wrapped in a rubberband to form a ponytail. His eyes were brown – except for the whites, which were very red – and cocked up on the inside to give him a permanent look of gentleness regardless of mood. His skin was bad. He wore several bracelets for various causes – he appeared to hate cancer, AIDS, and orphaned children in equal measure.

‘How are you, Jeremy?’

‘I’m okay, Professor Ullman.’

Simon must have accidentally raised his pitch at the end of the sentence, making it a question, because Professor Ullman said, ‘Who else would I be?’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Neither would I, Jeremy.’

‘Okay.’

‘And since when do you call me Professor Ullman?’

‘I’m sorry. Henry.’

Wrong answer. Simon could see it on the man’s face. What had Samantha said his name was? Don’t panic, just give him a deadpan and maybe he’ll let it slide.

But, of course, he didn’t.

‘What did you call me?’

‘What?’

Oh, goddamn it, what did Samantha say his fucking name was?

‘You called me Henry. Are you sure you’re okay to come back?’

‘I didn’t call you Henry.’

‘I heard you, Jeremy.’

‘Well, Howard – ’ there it was – ‘if I did I simply misspoke.’

‘You’re sure you’re okay?’

‘Sure I’m sure. I’m fine. I had an accident is all.’

‘That’s what Samantha said—’ Howard put a finger on his own cheekbone and traced an invisible line down to his chin. ‘That’s what Samantha said, but that doesn’t look like an accident to me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think you know.’

‘Well, I don’t. And anyways, I’m fine, Howard.’

Howard took several steps closer to Simon, examining him. Simon suddenly understood why his eyes were red and tired-looking. The stench of marijuana clung to his clothes and hung around him in a pungent cloud. You could almost feel it sticking to your skin.

‘You just – ’ Howard exhaled through his nostrils – ‘you don’t seem yourself. I look at you and I think: this man isn’t Jeremy Shackleford. His face doesn’t move quite right, his eyes don’t look the same.’ He looked away. ‘I don’t know. Maybe after what happened— Anyway, you’re back.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’ll talk later, and I’ll rip out your fucking heart.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘We’ll talk later,’ Howard said. ‘Your class is about to start.’

He sat at the desk at the front of the room as students walked in with backpacks strapped over their shoulders, thumbing cell phones off, listening to music through ear buds, chattering.

He felt nervous and sweaty. Once the class was full – there were still a few empty desks, actually, but once it seemed no one else would be arriving – he got to his feet. He put his palms on the surface of the desk and leaned forward.

‘All right,’ he said, hoping no one heard the nervous tremor in his voice. ‘Where did Professor Ullman leave off?’

A male student, thin and young – pale cheeks still smooth and free of stubble despite the fact that his hair was dark – raised his hand and, without waiting to be called upon, said, ‘Conic sections’.

Simon blinked.

‘Chronic what?’

Two hours later it was over.

He fell into the chair behind his desk, covered in a thin gloss of garlic-stinking sweat, his carefully combed hair now hanging in his face. He exhaled in a sigh and watched the students grab their bags and strap them over their shoulders, turn their phones back on, pull cigarettes from their pockets and pack them against the backs of their hands, and shuffle out of there for the courtyard or their next class or home or one of the fast-food joints that surrounded the campus.

He ran his fingers through his hair and then wiped his sweat-damp and pomade-oiled palms against the legs of his pants.

His thoughts were directed inward and he didn’t even notice the girl until she was standing directly in front of him, her knees inches from his knees, her breasts directly in front of his eyes. He tilted his head up to look at her face. She was maybe eighteen, certainly no older than twenty. She was wearing a short skirt and a white blouse. Her hair was short and black. A backpack was strapped over her right shoulder, and there were childish tchotchkes – lanyards and key-chain ornaments – hanging from the various zippers. But there was also something sensuous about her that – combined with the childishness still clinging to her despite her tentative steps toward adulthood – made Simon uncomfortable. A woman’s body despite the young face and something in the eye that said she knew a lot more than she pretended. Or perhaps she was pretending to know more than she did.

‘I was worried about you, Professor,’ she said. ‘Where did you get that scar on your cheek?’

‘I cut myself shaving.’

‘It’s kind of sexy.’

‘And you are?’

‘Is this some kind of game?’

Simon smiled out of nervousness, because he didn’t know what else to do.

She smiled back.

‘Kate Wilhelm,’ she said, and Simon saw by the sparkle in her eye that she thought it was indeed a game of some sort. ‘And I’m having an awfully difficult time learning all the hard, hard math you teach.’ She sat on his lap. Simon saw something like nervousness flicker behind the eyes and realized that she was acting, playing a part she’d seen in movies, or imagined herself playing while sprawled out on her bed, pretending to be all grown up. He could understand that: playing a role you had been assigned or had assigned yourself. It was part of life, wasn’t it? Every day, in order to live with others, you pretended to be something just a little different from what you really were. That it was obvious with Kate, that the role she was playing didn’t quite fit on her, made him like her. ‘Maybe you can tutor me. I saw in the paper that your wife has a thing tonight. Maybe I can come over and we can run through some equations.’

‘She expects me,’ he said. ‘Tonight. To be there.’

‘So,’ Kate said. ‘Go but leave early. She has to stay all night. You don’t.’ She stood up and touched the scar on his face, ran a red-painted fingernail along it. ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

‘Oh, goody.’

She stood and pivoted on a shiny black shoe and swayed away, sparing a glance and a ‘See you later’ before she disappeared into the hallway.

Simon tongued the inside of his mouth and felt a heaviness in his gut like he’d swallowed a brick.

He ate lunch – which is to say he ordered lunch and picked at it without eating much of anything – at a Greek sandwich joint on Ventura in North Hollywood. Once he’d tired of staring at the food on his plate – a gyro and hummus and tabouleh – he got back into his car. He took Ventura to Lankershim, and drove north toward Dr Zurasky’s office.

Ten minutes later he pulled into a parking lot in front of a strip mall. The first floor was filled with standard businesses – a pizza joint and a dry cleaner’s and a barber shop and a liquor store – but the second floor had quiet little businesses with no signs, or small signs that couldn’t be read until you were already upstairs. The kind of places you’d never see unless you already knew they were there.

Dr Zurasky’s office was on the second floor between an aromatherapy place and a medical marijuana place.

He pulled open the fingerprinted glass door and walked into the cool blue reception room.

Ashley was sitting behind her desk, and when he walked in she glanced up. At first, there was a look of confusion on her face, and then she smiled.

‘Hello, Mr Shackleford.’

‘Ashley.’

‘How are you today?’

‘I’ve been worse.’

‘That’s thinking positive. I’ll let Dr Zurasky know you’re here.’

She got to her feet and walked around her desk. She did not have a pretty face – she was rather plain and her hair was dull and flat and colorless – but she had unbelievable legs, long and muscular and perfectly shaped, and Simon was pretty sure she knew it. She took every opportunity to show them off. She could as easily have let Zurasky know Simon was here by telling him over the phone’s intercom. She poked her head into Zurasky’s office and said something inaudible, pulled her head out, and closed the door.

‘He’s got a few more minutes with his one o’clock.’

Simon nodded and sat down on a vinyl couch.

There were several magazines spread across a coffee table, but he didn’t even consider picking one up. Instead, he sat there wondering where Zurasky fit into the picture. He had something to do with this. Simon couldn’t figure out what though. He had been Shackleford’s doctor as well. It couldn’t be simple coincidence that two men who were nearly identical had been seeing the same shrink. Never mind the fact that Simon hadn’t seen him in over a year. Los Angeles probably had more shrinks per capita than any other city in the world – it certainly had more people who needed one – so it couldn’t be simple coincidence. Somehow Zurasky was involved.

That thought made Simon feel sick to his stomach. Had Zurasky been manipulating Shackleford? Had he been—

‘Hey, Jeremy.’

Simon looked up. Zurasky was standing in the doorway to his office and the glass front door was swinging shut behind a heavyset blonde woman who was wearing a pair of pink sweatpants and a man-sized T-shirt.

‘Hi.’

Zurasky was a kind-looking man with a wild head of hair and round cheeks and glasses. He was wearing a pair of striped slacks and a blue shirt with one of the sleeves rolled up and a pink tie with pictures of golfers on it. He had one bad arm, a stump which he said he was born with. It grew about six inches past the elbow and ended in a smooth rounded-off mound, but today the sleeve was folded over it and pinned up so it wouldn’t flap about like a windsock.

He smiled a wide open smile.

‘Are you coming in?’

Simon blinked.

Zurasky suddenly seemed cold behind the jolly facade.

Simon stood up, took a step toward Zurasky, and then stopped.

‘You know – I’ve changed my mind.’

‘You’re already here,’ Zurasky said. ‘You can’t change your mind.’

‘But I have.’

‘Nonsense. Come on.’

He stepped aside and gestured for Simon to enter his office. Simon had seen it many times – blue walls and carpet, just like the waiting room, with a big oak desk and shelves lined with books and a vinyl chair and couch that matched the one he’d just been sitting on – but somehow today it seemed incredibly uninviting. He didn’t want to go in there. He didn’t want to go in there at all – not until he knew how Zurasky fit into this.

Simon shook his head and backed toward the glass door.

Ashley simply sat at her desk. The phone was to her ear but she was staring at Simon. He didn’t like the look on her face. She was probably in on it – whatever it was.

‘Jeremy,’ Zurasky said. There was a sternness in his voice, but he kept on smiling. Simon didn’t like it. His adoptive father, when leaving a car dealership, or flipping the channel on a politician or a televangelist, had liked to repeat a saying he attributed (incorrectly, Simon thought) to Mark Twain: ‘Never trust a man who prays in public or one who smiles all the time.’ While he hadn’t liked his adoptive father much, it had always seemed very good advice.

Simon shook his head again, turned around, and pushed his way out the door.

If he’d considered what Samantha had said this morning – that Jeremy Shackleford had been seeing Dr Zurasky – he would have realized sooner that he was somehow involved in the break-in, even if indirectly. He had to be. It couldn’t be a simple coincidence. But he hadn’t thought about it. His mind had been focused on making sure Samantha believed him to be her husband.

But now, knowing that Zurasky was somehow involved, Simon felt an intense urge to get the corpse out of his bathtub – what was left of the corpse. When he thought no one knew – no one but Robert, who seemed to have kept his promise – holding on to the body seemed the safest course of action, but if Zurasky knew, well, there was no telling what he would do.

It was time to get rid of it.

Simon parked on Wilshire, waited for a patch of traffic to pass, pushed open his door, and stepped out into the midday sunshine.

He felt cold despite the heat. He didn’t know why, but he did. The sun warmed his skin but he felt cold inside.

He stepped up onto the sidewalk and headed for the Filboyd Apartments. But then he froze. Helmut Müller was walking by on the sidewalk in front of him, wearing his yellow cardigan sweater and threadbare slacks, aged skin hanging loose from his bones. He looked skeletal but he was very much alive.

He turned toward Simon as he passed him.

‘Walk the mile,’ he said.

‘What?’

But Müller simply turned away, looked straight ahead, and walked past.

‘What did you say?’

The man did not respond.

Simon grabbed him by the arm and spun him around.

‘What did you say?’

Müller put his arms out to keep his balance, looking for a long moment like he might topple anyway, swaying left on one foot while his arms waved, and then finally he managed to stabilize himself. He looked up at Simon with fear in his eyes.

‘I have no money.’

‘I don’t want money. I wanna know what you said.’

‘I – I said nothing.’

‘I heard you.’

The old man’s eyes were wide and pale and water was building up on the bottom lids.

‘I said nothing. I swear to you, sir. Please – do not – please.’

Simon grabbed his collar and shook him.

‘Just tell me what you said!’

As Simon shook Müller water fell from the edges of the man’s eyelids and rolled down his cheeks, flowing along the deep lines that were carved into his flesh, and a sob escaped his mouth.

‘Please.’

Simon stopped.

Several people on the sidewalk were looking at him. The old man’s entire body was shaking violently.

‘I’m – I’m sorry.’ He let go of the man’s shirt.

It couldn’t have been him. He was dead. It had been in the newspaper.

Walk the mile.

Did he know that Simon was wearing another man’s shoes?

He couldn’t know anything; he was dead.

Goddamn it – what was happening?

He pushed through the glass doors and into the lobby of the Filboyd Apartments. It smelled stale and dusty after the bright sunshine of mid-afternoon. He entered the darkened stairwell and made his way up its creaky steps.

He was three steps from the top (and seventeen steps from the bottom: he still counted every time), the light from the second-floor corridor just penetrating this far down, when he saw it on the wall. It was right where he had seen the other graffito, and he thought it had been sprayed on by the same person. The letters were formed the same way, with the same looping strokes.

Simon stood motionless, looking at it for a long moment. His tongue felt like a dead piece of meat, dry and coarse, and it stuck to the roof of his mouth.

There was no evidence that any other writing had ever been there. The other graffito was not painted over – it just wasn’t there.

Walk the mile.

He turned around and pounded back down the stairs, through the lobby, and out into the sunshine.

Cars passed by.

An old couple holding hands.

A helicopter throbbed overhead.

He glanced left, saw a homeless man sleeping on the bench in front of Captain Bligh’s. He glanced right and saw a yellow cardigan disappearing around a corner.

‘Hey!’ he shouted.

But Müller was gone, swallowed by the edge of a building.

Simon ran down the sidewalk after him. His throat still hurt when he breathed hard. It was strange that his cheek had healed but his throat still hurt. The bruising hadn’t been that bad.

He turned the corner.

Müller was gone. The side street was empty of human life. A block north traffic flowed. Then, from an alley, a dog came trotting out onto the sidewalk with something in its mouth, perhaps a half-eaten hamburger.

Simon recognized the dog – he recognized it by its steak-fat ear and its one white eye with its bulging vein.

He pushed his apartment’s front door closed behind him. Then he stood with his forehead pressed against the cool wood, his moist, sweaty skin sticking to the paint. His head throbbed above his left eyebrow. His eye watered.

Calm down, he told himself.

There’s an explanation for this.

He pushed himself off the door and turned around.

You’re okay. You’re better than okay. You’re on the verge of a new life. You just need to get rid of the evidence and walk away from here. If there’s no evidence, then it doesn’t matter what Zurasky knows or how he’s involved; he won’t be able to prove anything.

Forget Helmut Müller for now, forget the dog. You can find out what that’s about later.

Just get rid of the evidence.

He walked into the kitchen. He found the box of trash bags underneath the sink – the cardboard slightly damp from leaking pipes – but couldn’t find the other item he needed. He dug through several drawers, coming across dead batteries, broken screwdrivers, dirt-black pennies, rusty screws, bent nails, twisted spoons, and then, finally, in the last drawer in the kitchen, bottom right, hello, he found the electric carving knife and a brown extension cord he thought would probably be long enough. He had bought the carving knife while drunk at one o’clock in the morning about two months ago after watching an infomercial about it and deciding that he had to have it – though he didn’t know why. Well, now he did know. He thought it would be perfect for cutting whatever meat was left between the bones, whatever was holding them together at the joints.

With the knife in one hand and the damp box of trash bags in the other he made his way down the hallway, past his bedroom, and into the bathroom.

He put the items on the tile floor, unzipped his pants, and took a leak.

He exhaled.

‘I guess it’s time,’ he said, ‘for us to part ways, Jeremy.’

He finished urinating, the last coming out as a shiver elevatored up his spine, then shook, tucked, zipped, and flushed.

‘It’s safer this way,’ he said. ‘And anyways, it had to be done sooner or later.’

He turned to the bathtub. It was empty. Someone had taken the body.

‘Oh – oh, fuck.’

He walked to the bathtub and looked down into it. There was dirt lining the bottom of the tub and a brown ring running around the inside and black mold growing in the corners where it met the tiled walls, but it was empty. He ran his fingers through his hair. It was oily and slick with pomade and sweat. The pain above his left eyebrow burrowed deeper into his brain. He wiped his palms off on his trousers. He thought he might start crying.

This was not good. This was not good at all. Who would have done this? Who would have taken the body from his tub? It had to be Zurasky, didn’t it? It couldn’t be anybody but Zurasky. He was the only one who had known – if he had known. But Simon wasn’t certain he had. He was involved somehow, but he might not know everything.

Simon walked in a counter-clockwise circle, mind racing.

‘Oh, God,’ he said.

He looked around frantically. There was nothing to do in here. Nothing useful.

He shook his fists, looking for something to grab, to throw, to break, and when he saw nothing and the pressure in his gut which demanded action of some kind was too much to deny any longer he simply swung loose, throwing punches, one two three four, goddamn it, into the wall. It was an old building and the walls were lath and plaster, so he didn’t break through. He dented the plaster and managed to crack the rotting wood beneath – dark and moist – and bruise his knuckles, but not much else.

He’d been Jeremy for less than twelve hours and already it was unraveling.

It wasn’t fair.

They had bought it. They had fucking bought it. Samantha, Professor Ullman, his students, they had all bought it, but it was unraveling anyway.

Walk the mile.

He didn’t have a choice now, did he?

He’d set his course the moment he decided to step into Shackleford’s life. And someone knew. Someone knew and had taken the body before he could take care of it, before he could destroy all the evidence.

No – wrong. He’d had time to get rid of the body, but instead had kept it, afraid of doing what he’d known had to be done. Afraid that if he ditched the body somebody would find it. Well, someone had found it anyway. What had they done with it?

And who else besides Zurasky might know?

He sat down on the toilet and tried to think. It was difficult to do with a heavy dread in his gut, with panic on the verge of completely taking over his mind and doing with him what it wished.

Someone had taken the body.

Calm down. Think.

What next?

He had to do something to this situation before it did something to him. He had to calm down and think clearly. If he could only think clearly he’d be able to make a decision and then act upon it.

What next?

And then he knew.

‘Robert,’ he said aloud to the empty room.

He sat in the Saab, watching the building’s entrance in his side-view mirror. It was about time for Robert’s late-afternoon smoke break. Despite the fact that he could see dozens of cars driving along the streets and dozens of people walking along the sidewalks, he felt like he was in a completely different place. The car deadened the noise of the outside world and made him feel apart from it.

A homeless man walked to the window and knocked. Simon shook his head. The guy knocked again. Simon rolled down the window.

‘Get out of here.’

The homeless man – forty, maybe, with a thick beard and no teeth – said, ‘You gonna get out? You want some time on the meter?’

‘No.’

‘No you’re not gonna get out or no you don’t want no time on the meter?’

‘Just go.’

‘I’ll give you some time, anyhow,’ the homeless man said. He walked to the meter behind which Simon was parked, pulled out what looked like a bent paperclip, slipped it into the coin slot, jerked it up and down several times, each flip of the wrist adding fifteen minutes to the meter, stopping when the meter was at its max of two hours.

‘See?’ the homeless guy said. ‘Gimme a buck and it’s still half the price.’

‘I’m not getting out of the car.’

‘Come on, man, it’s just a buck.’

Simon gave the guy a dollar to get rid of him.

‘Now leave me alone.’

He reached into his pocket for his cigarettes, stuck one between his lips, and lighted it.

‘Are those Camels? Think I could get one? I love—’

Simon threw the pack of cigarettes at the guy. It hit him in the chest and then dropped to the sidewalk.

‘Get the fuck out of here.’

‘Thanks,’ the guy said, picking up the cigarettes. ‘Got a ligh— Never mind. Thanks.’

He held the cigarettes up close to his ear, like a kid with a seashell, and gave the pack a shake to see how many were inside.

Simon took a drag off his cigarette and glanced in the side-view mirror toward the building’s entrance. But it wasn’t Robert’s reflection he saw. It was the actual man. He had already moved past the side of the car and was walking onward. He must have been out of cigarettes himself, walking to that liquor store on Fourth Street to grab a pack.

Simon pushed open the door and stepped out and slammed it shut behind him. He followed Robert down the sidewalk, and when Robert walked past an alleyway Simon rushed him, shoved him into the stinking gray air of that narrow slice between two buildings, and slammed the man against a rusted green dumpster.

‘Was it you?’ he said as the burning cigarette bounced around in his mouth.

‘Wha—’

‘Were you the one who took it?’

‘Took what?’

‘You know what, goddamn you,’ Simon said, shaking Robert, slamming him against the dumpster a second time. ‘Did you take it or not?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talk—’

Simon grabbed him by the shirt collar and threw him left, slamming him against a red brick wall. Then he grabbed the shirt collar again and put his face inches from Robert’s face, the cherry of the cigarette in his mouth floating a mere jostle from Robert’s waiting flesh.

‘Don’t you fucking lie to me.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You don’t what?’

‘Know what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh, bullshit!’

Robert fumbled for the inside pocket of his thin suit coat. ‘I have money.’

‘Do I look like I want your money?’

‘I don’t know what—’

‘Just answer the fucking question.’

‘I didn’t, okay? I didn’t fucking take it.’

Simon let go of the man and he crumpled to the dirty ground amongst a litter of paper cups, rotting food, and other refuse.

Robert wasn’t lying. One thing Simon knew was that Robert was incapable of lying convincingly. He didn’t know what Simon was talking about despite the suspect circumstances under which he had visited Simon’s apartment. Maybe he really had simply dropped his cell phone into the toilet. Maybe his visit had been exactly what it appeared to be. It didn’t make sense to Simon – he was the only person Simon knew had seen the body, who Simon was sure knew about it – but a lot of things didn’t make sense today.

He turned away and headed back out of the alley, taking another drag from his cigarette. It tasted bad, but he smoked it anyway.

‘Fuck,’ he said.

Maybe Robert had improved as a liar. Either way, he wasn’t going to get anything out of the man himself. Coming here had been dumb, a panic move. Had he expected Robert just to crumble? ‘Okay, you caught me. I took the body. I thought I could use it for the carpool lane.’

As he walked back toward the Saab he decided to go to Robert’s apartment and see what he came up with. Maybe he had the body there – or something that would help him figure out who did have it and why they took it. Any information would be better than what he had now.

After driving toward the ocean for several miles Simon turned right onto Western and took it toward Hollywood. Bent palms jutted upwards, drooping above the houses and businesses like wind-frayed umbrellas. By the time he reached Lexington he could make out the Hollywood sign through the mist, perched crookedly on its hillside.

It didn’t rain much in Los Angeles, but he liked it when it did. The downpour cleared the sky and made it so you could see for miles in every direction. It washed the filth away. The town was due for a good cleansing.

A block or two shy of Sunset Boulevard Simon made a left and drove till he came to Robert’s pink stucco apartment building. The narrow strip of grass in front of it – what some might call a lawn – was dead and brown. A pile of dog shit sat on it near the sidewalk, buzzing with flies.

Simon stepped from the Saab and walked toward the building, and then up onto Robert’s front porch. He checked under the welcome mat and under a dead potted plant. He found a key in neither of those locations. He looked around, trying to figure out where Robert might hide a spare. He didn’t want to have to break into the place – though he would. He reached up above the door and brushed his fingers across the top of the door frame. Dust fell down into his face and he shook his head and blew out through his nostrils. His fingers bumped something and it dropped to the concrete porch, tinkling like a bell. He sneezed from the dust, wiped at his nose, then wiped the results off on his pants.

The key lay at his feet. He picked it up, unlocked the front door, and went inside.

The apartment smelled of stale beer, marijuana, and the quiet depression of a man who never opened his windows or blinds. It was a small three-room apartment with a thirty-year-old green shag carpet, a small two-burner stove, and a fridge you could maybe squeeze a six-pack of Miller Lite and a package of bologna into if you were the kind of person who happened to like Miller Lite and bologna.

Simon searched the place.

Robert could have taken the body. He could have called work and said he would be late, gone to Simon’s apartment, and taken it. He could have – but why?

That was a question for later. The question for now was did he.

After ten minutes of searching and finding nothing – nothing but a collection of pornography, a collection of comic books, a collection of stamps, and a collection of bongs all stinking of stale bong water – Simon decided the answer to that was no. Or, if he had, he hadn’t brought it back to his apartment. Of course – why would he have?

Not knowing what else to do, Simon decided to call it a day.

But before heading back to Pasadena he stopped off at his apartment for what he thought might very well be the last time. If he could walk away from all this squalor, that would be just fine by him. He grabbed Francine and her small can of food, took them down to the car, and buckled her into the passenger’s seat. The shoulder strap went right over the top of the jar, of course, but the waist strap held her in place. He wanted her safe.

He put the car into gear and headed for home.

Home?

Why not? It was his now. If he could keep it.

He parked the Saab in the driveway and killed the engine. He half-expected the police to be waiting for him inside, standing next to a weeping Samantha, and when he walked in they would all look up at him with hateful accusation in their eyes.

Handcuffs would be pulled from belts. Steps would be taken toward him. Someone would say, You’re under arrest for the murder of—

He’d run but it would be no use. Of course it wouldn’t. It never is.

He grabbed Francine and got out of the car.

The living room was empty – not a cop in sight.

He closed the front door behind him, twisting the deadbolt home, and walked to the couch. He put Francine’s Mason jar onto the coffee table, sprinkled some food onto the water, and sat there watching her eat.

‘Jeremy?’ Samantha said, walking out of the hallway.

She wore a skirt and a gray blouse with the top two buttons undone, revealing her small-breasted cleavage. She was putting earrings into the several holes in her ears.

‘Where’ve you been?’ she said. ‘Dr Zurasky called and said you ran out of his office.’

‘I’m – I did.’

‘Are you okay?’

Simon shook his head.

‘I – I’m – no.’

‘Oh, baby,’ Samantha said.

She walked to the couch and sat down next to him. She put her arms around him.

‘What is it?’

‘Everything,’ Simon said. ‘It’s just – everything.’ He exhaled through his nose. ‘My head is killing me.’

‘Want me to get you some Tylenol?’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay.’

Samantha got to her feet and disappeared into the hallway a moment. When she returned she was carrying three pills in the palm of one hand and a glass of water in the other.

Simon took the pills, closed his eyes a moment, and then opened them again.

He looked up at Samantha.

‘Does the phrase “walk the mile” mean anything to you?’

Samantha shook her head.

‘Should it?’

‘I don’t know.’

She bit her lip. ‘I should call Gil and tell him we can’t go.’

‘To your show?’

Samantha nodded.

‘No,’ Simon said. ‘I’m okay.’

‘It can go on without me.’

‘No. I want to go.’

It was true. He wanted to be Jeremy Shackleford and Jeremy Shackleford would go to his wife’s art show. He would go and he would hold her hand and smile and be supportive. That’s what husbands did. He had seen it in movies and it seemed to be true. It should be, even if it wasn’t.

‘Are you sure?’

He nodded. This was what he wanted; this was what he’d spent the last two weeks thinking about and dreaming about. He was sure.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We don’t have to leave for a couple of hours. Take a few minutes and relax.’

He nodded again.

Samantha turned away to finish getting ready, but then stopped.

‘You got a goldfish?’

‘Her name is Francine.’

Simon changed into a gray suit, which he thought would be more appropriate for the evening, which he thought was more like something Jeremy would wear to such an event. He washed his face, then dug through the closet till he found an overcoat, and then slipped into it.

‘You’re really gonna wear that?’

‘I’m cold.’

‘You look like a Griffith Park pervert.’

‘I think I’m coming down with flu or something,’ he said. ‘I got the shivers.’

Samantha shrugged.

‘Okay.’

The art show wasn’t at a gallery but a restaurant in Silverlake, on Sunset Boulevard, not too far east of the Sunset Junction. The tables had been lined up in the center of the room, where several tapas – warm seasoned almonds, spiced olives, some kind of blue-veined Spanish cheese that looked like a moldy version of brie – were laid out artistically among various bunches of flowers.

A bartender – a twenty-something actor-type that Simon thought he recognized from a bit part on one of those police procedural shows; he’d played a rapist – stood behind the bar, looking bored. He was, Simon would bet, a bartender who liked flair, and tonight he was stuck pouring free glasses of mid-grade pinot into six-ounce plastic cups, just getting people lubricated enough to maybe buy a piece of art, to part with their money.

Samantha’s paintings were hung around the room.

About forty or fifty people paced around, drinking their wine and looking at the paintings.

A moment after they walked into the restaurant a thin man with spiked hair, wearing a burgundy velvet jacket and black pants and a pair of suede platform shoes (he was short and wished he wasn’t, Simon thought), came pouring toward them, all teeth and joints and blue blue eyes.

‘Samantha!’ he said as he arrived, kissing both of her cheeks.

‘Hi, Gil,’ Samantha said.

‘Jeremy! Nice overcoat. Headed to a schoolyard later? Just kidding. Give it.’

Gil held his arms out to be hugged.

Simon hugged him uncomfortably.

‘What happened to your face?’

‘Dog bit me.’

‘Oh.’ Gil seemed lost for only a second. Then: ‘Do you guys want some wine? Tapas?’

‘Oh,’ Samantha said, ‘we’ll make our way to the bar. No hurry.’

Gil spun around.

‘Look everybody!’ he shouted to the room. ‘The lady of honor has arrived, the fabulous Samantha Kepler-Shackleford!’ He swept his arms toward her.

She blushed and did a little curtsy.

Gil clapped for her and everybody followed his example, and then, when the clapping subsided, he said, ‘Her beautiful paintings are all for sale, and worth every penny, I assure you. In sixty years when she’s dead and famous, your grandchildren will be so glad of your present good taste.’

Several people chuckled.

‘We’ve sold about half already,’ Gil said in what Simon thought was an intentionally too-loud whisper.

He headed over to the bar.

An hour later he was on his third glass of wine. His head was throbbing. He was standing in a corner with Samantha. She’d circled the room smiling and shaking hands while he stood in the corner and drank, but the room was fully reconnoitered now, good prospects charmed, and they were together again. They watched the crowd. Gil was putting red stickers on the wall next to two more paintings – the last two – which meant they had now sold out.

‘You don’t look so good,’ Samantha said.

‘My head still.’

‘Maybe you should—’

‘Samantha?’

Simon looked up at the sound of the voice.

It belonged to a brunette with a boy’s haircut and a woman’s body. She had red lipstick smeared across her full lips making her look like she’d been punched in the mouth and liked it. She was wearing a short skirt and black stockings and a Pere Ubu T-shirt that said

‘Marlene Biskind with the East Sider. Can I get a picture of you and your husband?’

‘Of course,’ Samantha said, slipping a hand through Simon’s arm.

Marlene Biskind held up a Nikon camera with a lens like the barrel of Dirty Harry’s gun.

Simon tried to smile but his eyes felt dull in his head.

A flash of light exploded in front of him and everything disappeared behind it. He blinked and people became out-of-focus silhouettes. Then a second flash. Then a third.

Simon dropped his wine, blinking, trying to regain his vision.

The wine splashed across Samantha’s shoes and legs.

‘Oh, shit.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right.’

Gil came rushing over with a wad of napkins like he’d been standing in the corner just waiting for it to happen and started wiping at Samantha’s legs and shoes and then the floor.

‘My God,’ he said. ‘Some people just can’t hold their liquor.’ He stood up. ‘You do it like this.’ He made a cupping gesture with his empty right hand. ‘Not like this.’ He flattened his palm.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m just kidding.’

‘I’m—’

‘It’s a party. There’s more wine.’ And then he was off.

Marlene looked from Simon to Samantha.

‘Should we try again?’

Samantha laughed. ‘I think we’d better.’

She put her arm through Simon’s again.

Another flash of light exploded.

Simon fell backwards. He hit the wall behind him and then slid down it. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. Maybe just the day. Dogs and people coming back to life. Corpses disappearing. Impersonating a dead man. And now he was standing here pretending to smile while a woman from the East Sider snapped his photograph. It was all too much.

He looked up and saw Samantha and Marlene looking down at him, both with concern in their eyes. They looked incredibly tall.

‘Are you okay?’ Marlene said.

‘Baby?’

Simon worked his way to his feet with Samantha’s help.

‘I’m okay. Just a little tired. It’s been a long day.’

Several people had stopped their conversations and were looking at him – wine glasses or toast smeared with cheese paused halfway to or from their mouths, sentences half caught in their throats. It was obvious by the disapproving but amused looks on their faces that they thought he was drunk. He was not. He was trying to get drunk, but he felt sober as a newborn.

‘We should go,’ Samantha said.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Marlene said. ‘You really took a spill.’

‘You stay for the rest of your night, honey. This is a big deal for you. Enjoy it. I’ll take a cab home.’

‘Are you sure?’

Simon nodded.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m sure.’

The ride home took thirty minutes – thirty minutes in a blue and yellow cab that smelled vaguely of vomit and ammonia. It did nothing to improve his mental state.

He sat in the back with the window cracked.

The cab driver was not one of those guys who felt the need to fill silence with the sound of his own voice, and Simon was grateful for that at least. He just sat silently in the front seat and drove while Simon sat in the back, watching the cost of the cab ride go from its two-dollar beginnings to its thirty-six-dollar total.

The car pulled to a stop in front of Simon’s – it’s mine now, goddamn it – front yard. The house was silent and dark but for a lamp in the living room whose light was shining yellow through a crack in orange striped curtains. Simon gave the cab driver two twenties – keep the change; hey, thanks, buddy – and stepped from the vehicle.

He was halfway up the concrete path that bisected the lawn, watching his feet move one in front of the other, when he saw her. She had been sitting on one of the steps that led up to the front door, and as he approached she got to her feet.

‘I thought you’d never get here.’

She wrapped her arms around his neck.

He had forgotten all about Kate Wilhelm.

‘Hi,’ he said.

He shut the door behind him and put his back against it. Kate stood only a couple of feet away. He could smell soap on her skin and lotion and perfume. Her eyes had been painted black, her lips red.

She dragged a finger across the scar on his face.

‘It really is sexy,’ she said.

‘Thank – thank you.’

Kate laughed.

‘You seem a little tense.’

She stepped to him until he could feel her breath on his neck, warm and wet.

She ran her hand down his chest. It made his skin tingle. This felt like a dream. The entire day did – it felt unreal and wrong and like a dream. But he knew it wasn’t.

Kate ran the flat of her palm over the front of Simon’s pants. He heard a small gasp escape his own throat and felt his heartbeat thumping in his chest.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You seem really tense down here.’

Simon shoved Kate’s skirt up around her waist and pulled down her panties, hearing them tear as he did. There was nothing intimate about what followed. He pushed her down on the bed, licked his fingers and rubbed them over her mound, which was smooth and recently waxed or shaved. The scent was strong and erotic. He grabbed his penis at the base and put himself inside her. She spasmed tight around him. He thrust as deep as he could, getting out everything he had in him, getting out all the frustration and fear and turmoil he was feeling inside. He ran the palms of his hands over her breasts, unbuttoned her blouse and reached inside. Her nipples were hard and she groaned. He pinched them. She reached up and scratched at his chest. He put a thumb into her mouth and she sucked on it. She grabbed his hips and pulled him even deeper into her, again and again and again.

In three minutes it was over.

Afterwards Simon put his pants back on. He felt guilty about what had happened. He felt guilty about everything. A constant cloud of guilt hung over him.

He sat on the couch, Kate beside him, and played with his Zippo lighter, lighting it and snuffing the flame repeatedly.

‘How long have we known each other?’

‘What?’

‘How long have we known each other?’ he asked again.

‘Since last spring.’

Simon nodded.

‘What’s bothering you?’ Kate asked.

‘My conscience.’

Kate smiled, licked her lips.

‘Simon,’ she said, ‘nobody has a clear conscience – except maybe sociopaths. Everybody’s done something they’d rather not have done.’

He nodded. But then he found himself very bothered by what she had just said. For a long moment he couldn’t figure out what it was. He replayed the sentence in his head and examined each word – something wasn’t right about what she had said – and then, after a minute, he knew.

‘Why did you just call me Simon?’

‘I didn’t.’ She got to her feet. ‘Anyway, I should get out of here before your wife comes home. That’s a kind of awkwardness I’d rather not experience.’

She looked down at herself, smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt, and headed for the door.

Before she reached it – her arm outstretched, extended toward the knob – Simon got to his feet and cut her off, blocking her path.

‘You did. You called me Simon. I heard you. What do you know?’

Kate’s eyes went scared.

‘This isn’t funny.’

‘I’m not laughing. What do you know?’

‘Jeremy, please.’

‘Does the phrase “walk the mile” mean anything to you?’

She took a step back.

‘My God, you are crazy.’

‘Who said I’m crazy?’

‘Just let me go.’

Simon grabbed a handful of Kate’s hair and pulled her toward him.

‘You’re in on it, aren’t you? Aren’t you?’

Kate pried his hand away from her hair, the fear suddenly gone from her eyes, replaced by anger, and once she was free of his grip she pulled back and slapped him hard across the face.

‘What the hell is the matter with you?’

Simon touched his fingers to his cheek and felt the skin rising in a welt and he felt moisture at the corner of his mouth. When he looked at his fingers he saw blood on them. He wiped the blood off onto his pants.

‘Someone is trying to ruin me. I think it might be Zurasky and I think you’re in on it. It’s not gonna work.’

‘I don’t know who Zurasky is.’

‘A lie.’

‘Jeremy, I—’

‘It’s not gonna work.’

‘I think it is working, Jeremy. You’re acting crazy. You’re not acting like yourself at all.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘What?’

‘I’m not acting like myself. First you call me by another name and then you suggest – what?’

‘I don’t know—’

‘What is this?’

‘What is what?’

‘Who’s doing this to me?’

‘Would you please just let me go? I don’t – I don’t—’

The fear had returned. Tears were welling in her eyes. It was Simon’s day for making people’s eyes well with tears.

‘You don’t what?’

‘I just want to go. You need help and I don’t know what to do and I just want to go.’

‘You called me Simon.’ But as time passed he was becoming less and less sure of that. Perhaps he had misheard. Hadn’t he thought for a moment that Professor Ullman had threatened to rip out his heart? Hadn’t he misheard that? He thought so – unless Professor Ullman was in on it too.

‘I didn’t, Jeremy. I don’t even know anyone named Simon. Can I please just go?’

He licked his lips, wiped at the corners of his mouth. After a moment he stepped aside.

He followed her outside, and as she walked across the street to her yellow 1967 Chevy Nova he padded barefoot down the steps and watched her. His hands were in his pockets. The night air was cool and the thin sliver of the crescent moon hung like a fish-hook in the sky. Simon wondered what God was fishing for. If there was a God.

If God existed, and if He paid any attention, He was surely laughing at those who would drop to their knees and pray for the sick and the injured and the poor whom He had sickened and hurt and dropped into squalor to begin with. Laughing and dangling that fish-hook moon, making sure He caught anyone who thought they might escape and throwing them back down to Earth to face what they had coming.

Maybe Jesus had gotten away, floated into the heavens, but nobody else would. And Simon suspected Jesus’s ascent was just a story that people told themselves anyway, a story passed down through the generations that made it possible for people to live with the world they saw around them: at least escape was possible. But Simon knew something about spheres. And even if you managed to get off this planet, even if you found a way to get up and away from this low life, to float toward the heavens, there was that fish-hook moon there to catch you before you’d made a full escape.

He tongued the inside of his mouth, plucked one of the hairs out, and watched Kate get into her car.

The engine sputtered to life and the headlights shot yellow beams out into the street. Then the driver’s side window rolled down and Kate turned to look at him.

‘One thing before I go.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You might want to ask yourself why you can’t remember anything that happened during the month of May last year.’

She then put the car into gear and drove away before Simon could respond.

He stood in the bathroom. The light was off, but enough splashed in from the master bedroom for him to see clearly his reflection in the mirror. He tongued the inside of his cheek and looked at himself. He touched his cheek where Kate had slapped him. The welt had already gone down. He ran his finger down the scar on his cheek.

What was he missing? There was something big and obvious that he wasn’t seeing, and if he could just make himself see it, all of this would make some kind of sense. What was he missing? He had to figure it out. This was turning him into a monster. Everywhere he looked he saw conspiracy; in every face someone conspiring against him. Every voice he heard was someone whispering about him. Every siren was a cop coming to collect him.

But that didn’t make sense. Everyone couldn’t be plotting against him.

Kate had mentioned last May and she was right. It was blank. How could she know that? What did she know about last May that he didn’t? What had been erased from his mind? What happened last May?

It had been in April – seventeen or so months ago – that he had last seen Zurasky. Was there a connection there, a reason that after the blank month he had stopped seeing his psychiatrist? Had Zurasky done something to him in that blank space?

What was he missing?

He had only wanted to know why Shackleford broke into his apartment, why Shackleford had wanted him dead, and instead he was tangled up in something that grew more and more confusing. He felt like a man trying to untie a knot whose every movement only tangled things further.

What was he missing?

Goddamn it – what the fuck was he missing?

‘Figure it out, you stupid fuck!’

He punched his reflection and glass shattered around him, breaking him into hundreds of sharp pieces. Shards fell into the basin and onto the tile floor. The noise of the glass falling was incredibly loud in his ears – and then it was over and there was only silence.