Man in the Empty Suit (22 page)

She nodded and took hold of the phone and the bills. She understood without being told that it was time for her to leave, that she would leave and come back only when called, that she would leave without his escort or good-bye or even acknowledgment. She left, biting her lip all the way to the street until she realized that it was not holding the flow of tears but was in fact spurring them on.

She stayed for two nights in a room on Roosevelt Island rented to her by a Romanian couple. They ignored her, and she gave them money at the start of every day. On the third day, the phone rang. She answered and heard a woman’s voice. It was Mana. “Five this afternoon. See you then?”

“Yes.”

In a whisper Mana added, “I’m glad he chose you, dear.”

“Thanks.”

She spent the day in her room, stared out onto the East
River. A few sailboats passed. The sky over the city echoed with parrot speech: declarations of love, protests, begging, mournful prayers, nursery rhymes, monologues rising and falling as they circled the building. She wondered what new details she’d have to invent about Sara’s life and tried to ignore her building panic.

That afternoon, when she entered Phil’s lobby, she heard voices above her. At the top floor, she found the door open, Mana speaking to a twenty-something man-child whose hair covered one eye. While obviously years beyond prep school, he dressed in a teenager’s school uniform. His one visible eye caught hers. He smiled, and she felt her hands flutter at her sides for something to do, something to grip or squeeze.

Mana turned around and saw her. “You’re here early. Good. Always good, remember that. Follow me.” Mana walked to a hallway connecting the living room to a cluster of bedrooms. She entered the first, the only one with an open door. White bed linens hung from hooks screwed into ceiling plaster. They separated the room into four semiprivate quarters. Mana led her to the quarter farthest from the door and drew a sheet back to reveal a stool and a clothes rack. There was one outfit on the rack, a teenage girl’s school uniform—gray pleated skirt and blue blouse. An emblem was sewn on the right breast: a bird carrying a branch in one claw, a diploma in the other.

“Change into this. If it doesn’t fit, let me know and we’ll have it tailored.” Mana glanced at her watch. “You’d better hurry.”

Sara changed quietly and quickly. The uniform fit, and when she turned to look at herself in the mirror, she started at the youth she saw before her. She headed back through the
billowing sheets and down the hall. In the dining room, she found Phil, his hair slicked down over his head, seated beside Mana and the young man.

“I’m glad you decided to join us.” Phil seemed to look through her, not at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. A lie rose to her lips. “I was talking to Mary on the phone, and she wouldn’t let me go.”

Phil’s face lifted, a smile emerged. Mana cast a warm smile and leaned toward her as she sat down. “Good girl,” she whispered, then rose and went to the kitchen. When she returned, she carried large ceramic bowls. One held mashed potatoes with gravy, the other broccoli. She placed them beside Phil, who spooned some of each onto his plate and then passed the bowls to either side. The young man served himself from the broccoli bowl and then set it down in front of him.

Phil said severely, “Joshua, give Sara the bowl. You know how to pass food.”

Joshua, hint of a smile fading from his face, lifted the bowl and held it to her. They exchanged bowls and glances. Mana returned from the kitchen again, this time with a platter of sliced turkey. This must be the meal, always and forever. Within fifteen minutes Sara realized she needn’t have worried about new lies to tell. Little conversation fell across the table, and most of it repeated what she’d shared in the audition.

Mana sat quietly except to periodically encourage Sara and Joshua to sit up straight. Sara noticed that Mana’s eyes always returned to Phil, monitored him, her glances quicker as his mood gradually darkened. Her corrections seemed like a steam valve doomed to fail, the pressure in Phil too great.

He showed little patience with Joshua, whom he chided
endlessly. “You sit like that at school? No wonder your teachers all know you’re up to no good. You don’t look like you’re paying attention.”

Joshua rode through it with his eyes on his plate. “Yeah, Pop. Right.” Sara couldn’t help but think he had the air of an actor not caring for his lines rather than a boy rebelling against the father.

Phil’s fingers shook as he watched Joshua roll and unroll a napkin. Sara could practically hear angry words bang against his teeth as he muscled his jaw closed. He put his fork down and leaned back in his chair.

“That’s enough for today.” He stood, walked to the front door. The latch snapped, and the door banged against the wall; Phil’s steps hammered the stairs. Mana and Sara stared at their plates. Joshua, unmoved, stood and left for the changing room, already removing his school jacket.

Mana hissed under her breath, just loud enough for him to hear. “That son of a bitch is going to ruin it for all of us.” She pulled a pack of cigarettes from an apron pocket. Sara slowly made her way back to the bedroom, where curtains blew in a breeze from the open window. The sky outside had turned a bruised purple between the buildings. Traffic sounded small and far away.

Sara removed the school uniform on the other side of the sheet from where she heard Joshua changing. She replaced all the items on the metal rack and straightened them, tried to remove creases that had folded themselves into the shirt, the skirt. She wondered if creases would make Phil unhappy, if he would have them cleaned, or if they would call for her dismissal.

She turned, naked except for underwear, to retrieve her clothes and found Joshua standing in a gap between the wall and the white sheet. He smiled at her. He’d changed into a pair of jeans and a dark shirt, his hair falling across his eye. He looked older, but no more comfortable. Sara didn’t know where he might look comfortable, wondered if such a place existed. He stared at her body, her face.

“Sorry, sis, couldn’t help myself.” He laughed. She told herself later that she had been too shocked to cover herself. That her standing before him unashamed had been an accident.

“That’s not funny.”

“Is where I’m coming from.”

She reached for her own clothes and began to dress. He pulled the sheet between them. Through it she could still see his shape and knew he could still see hers. She worked her shirt over her head. Eventually she heard his footfalls cross the room and become distant in the hall.

When she finished dressing, she returned to the dining room. Mana and Joshua were arguing as she counted out money.

“You’re going too far,” she said. “He’s going to end this, and that will be that. Good-bye paycheck.”

Joshua recounted the money he had just seen her count and stuffed it, folded in half, into his back pocket. “The old man needs this too bad. Not gonna end it just ’cause I go off script a little.”

Mana shook her head, noticed Sara in the doorway. Her face softened to a smile, and she came toward her, arms outstretched for a hug that Sara returned, surprised that she craved it.

“You did wonderful,” Mana said. “Next time try to keep him from taking Phil’s focus.” An accusatory thumb in Joshua’s direction. “Maybe between the two of us, we can keep him here and make sure Joshua doesn’t ruin it.” She leaned in close and whispered into Sara’s ear. “Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s been trying to sabotage this since before I started doing it.”

Joshua, already on his way out, called over his shoulder, “You can talk about me when I’m gone. If anyone is interested, I’ll be in the bar at the corner.” His heavy footfalls were oddly reminiscent of Phil’s.

Mana threw her cigarette out a window and said, “Seriously, don’t even talk to him. He’ll try to get you kicked out or make you want to quit. It’s what he does to the Saras.”

Sara nodded and followed Mana to the door. As they descended the stairs, Mana paused at one of the landings. “Also, sometimes when you come here, you’ll find other apartments open. Never go in them. Just shut the door and go upstairs.”

Sara looked up and down the stairs. There were no sounds except for her and Mana’s shoes on the steps. “Who lives in them?”

“No one. Phil has things he’s sure will be stolen. If he finds doors open, he’ll question you, and sometimes he gets paranoid about new actors stealing from him.”

Sara nodded, as if this could be normal.

The next two weeks included three performances. Sara was always paid afterward, and always by Mana. The three subsequent dinners were better than the first. Joshua kept to the script and nearly made himself look interested in playing
the part of a bored teenager. He occasionally broke to stare at Sara or wink as if they shared a secret. She was careful not to react the first few times. She later found that complaining loudly that he was making faces across the table was better; Phil and Mana could reprimand him for childish behavior, and everyone could pretend he hadn’t broken character.

“Pretty clever, aren’t you?” he said after the fourth performance. They’d eaten their meal at half past ten in the morning. It was only noon now, and Sara had the rest of the day and her money to do something with.

She said, “If I don’t react, you get what you want.” She was no longer intimidated. She looked him in the eye until he looked away. She noticed and enjoyed the flush in his cheeks.

“What I want is a drink. How about it? The bar at the corner?”

She pulled the sheet between them and returned to her own clothes. He walked away on the other side. He hadn’t tried since the first day to look at her as she changed. She was always acutely aware of where he was and always let him finish dressing before she did and leave first.

She’d collected her money and was on her way out, the sound of her steps bouncing around her in the stairwell, when Phil’s voice stopped her. The door on the second-floor landing was ajar. He was crying between words, and she couldn’t understand anything but her name, repeated. “Sara,” he said over and over again. She stood beside the door and peered inside. Phil’s lanky figure moved through a room stacked to the ceiling with junk, boxes crushing one another, broken machinery and tools piled in the corner, bundles of papers and magazines mildewed and black, plastic bags spilling old
clothes onto the floor, muting Phil’s footsteps as he shuffled through the room. “Sara, Sara, Sara.”

She left the building, her own chest heaving. The noontime sunlight blinded her. How would she escape that name she’d been given, the sound of Phil’s voice in such horror and pain? Near tears, she looked around and found herself beside Joshua’s brown-fronted bar. Through the open door, she saw figures on barstools hold drinks to lips and ignore one another in the dim light. No music, no conversation. She stepped to the doorway and waited for her eyes to adjust.

Before they had, Joshua called to her: “Hey.” She followed his voice into the bar.

“I changed my mind,” she said. “I could use a drink.”

“Know just what you mean.”

They sat in the bar and drank until the bartender told them to go. Joshua’s arm wrapped around her, his hand moving to places she normally would have protected from even his eyes. She let him steer her downtown, a long, hot walk past Bryant Park and then continuing down Sixth Avenue. They stopped at a bodega for some water. She sobered as they walked, her sweat making her shirt heavy. From the park rose the call of parrots, half-meaningful words squawked into crowds that tossed seeds and dried bread. She wasn’t certain she didn’t hear them crying “Sara” in anguish.

Sara followed Joshua to his apartment, a walkup trapped between two taller buildings. Joshua climbed the three flights without looking or speaking to her. She wondered if he’d forgotten she followed. The halls were dark. No sounds came from the other doors.

At last he said, “The lights have been iffy.” She asked if the
building was abandoned. “Not yet,” he said with a laugh. As he opened the door to his apartment, some streetlight spilled through and caught the side of his sweat-shined face. Sara reached out and touched his waist, searched the gap between his shirt and jeans to put her hands against the skin of his chest. His ribs stuck out as if he were underfed, and she thought how she had never seen him undressed, only hidden in the too-large school uniform. In the dark she sought out his mouth with her own. As he bent to kiss her, his nose caught the light and his profile for an instant was that of a great bird. She felt at his back, certain that in a moment she would find nude wings branching out from his shoulder blades, that his arms were an illusion.

His bed was a mattress. It sat on the floor beneath a window that was both open and uncovered. The light that came through did little to reveal his home, or him. She felt herself wrapped around him, but she couldn’t see him. Her hands slid over the bones of his ribs, his shoulders, his arms. He was too light and frail, she thought. When he came, she thought he might disappear, as if he weren’t really there at all but only a memory of someone who used to be there in that space, someone who had vanished long ago.

She woke the next day to find him gone. His apartment was a nest of filth with no furniture, a table of cinder-block legs and a wood-plank top beside the mattress. Clothes covered the floor from doorway to mattress. Behind a blanket curtaining an open closet was a shelf of neatly folded clothes, copies of the same outfit Joshua always wore—jeans and tees, in only two colors, repeated often enough to reduce laundry to an idea.

Her phone vibrated, and she answered it on the fifth ring. Mana’s voice at the other end. “I was afraid you wouldn’t answer. Get here as soon as possible.”

“Already?” Sara searched for a clock in the room. Her head called out every movement as if piano strings rang taut through her skull. She closed her eyes against a splash of nausea and held the floor down with her free hand.

Mana was insistent. “Get here. Right now.”

She pulled on last night’s clothes. They smelled of spilled drinks and sweat, and she thought with some relief that the school uniform she wore for Phil would be cleaner, possibly even laundered. She made her way north in a bicycle-driven hansom cab, her eyes closed, listening to the birds in the park. She arrived at Phil’s building nearly asleep.