Backward-Facing Man Read online

  On the wall was a photo of Chuck, in a dark business suit, wraparound sunglasses, and a tightly cropped goatee. He was smiling at the camera through clenched teeth, looking younger and meaner and more focused than he did now. Directly in front of them was a long table with four computers, each screen showing a different display. A young woman with short-cropped hair, long in the back and a row of bangs over her face, sat at one of the keyboards, reading something from a clipboard and then typing. When she finished, she turned around and smiled.

  “Chuck would like us to show our guest what we do,” Rahim said. Then he turned and disappeared into the elevator, shutting the doors with his spindly arms.

  She looked to be in her late twenties, Latina, a little heavy in the haunches, with a line of studs around the outside of her left ear. She wore a gray sweatsuit and a button with a picture of a girl giving the photographer the finger. She had a strong chin and sleepy-looking eyes that were wary, but relaxed: a city girl, sultry, in a butch kind of way. “Ovella Rodriguez,” the computer operator said, sticking out her hand.

  “I have no idea what I’m doing here,” Stardust said.

  “Who does?” Ovella said, sympathetic. She moved to one of the screens and typed in a sequence of letters, which brought up a photograph of what looked like an industrial vacuum cleaner. “About a year ago, we started fencing stuff. Nothing hot, just stuff that didn’t move in pawnshops—furs, rings, electronics, guns—stuff that was too expensive or maybe didn’t appeal to people in the neighborhood.”

  Stardust must have looked uneasy.

  “It’s not illegal or anything. We just broker it. We’re like an auction for pawnshops to put merchandise in front of people who wouldn’t be caught dead in their stores. My brother set up the software, Chuck gets the pawnshops to list their shit with us, and we take orders….”

  Stardust still looked confused.

  “I’ll show you,” Ovella said, pointing to the computer screen in front of her. “There’s a guy in North Philly who has telecommunications equipment. We don’t know where he gets it and we don’t care, but he’s selling and there’s somebody out there who needs it. We type in descriptions, upload photos if there are any, and, boom, we’re live.” Ovella sounded like anybody doing any job. If she wasn’t sitting in a windowless basement of an abandoned factory, she might have been a secretary or a paralegal having coffee and describing the intricacies of her job. There was something calming, chummy, even intimate, about her inflection, her cadence, the way she was explaining it.

  “How many people work here?” Stardust asked.

  “It’s just me, Chuck, and my brother, Rahim, full-time. Occasionally, a couple of the guys from the factory pick things up or do repairs.”

  “I thought factories made things,” Stardust said.

  “The business may be shut down,” she said, tilting her head toward a closed door, “but the bills keep on.” As Ovella talked, Stardust grew more discouraged. Above Ovella’s head, Stardust pictured an hourglass emptying. In the glass was her old life, the one with a routine, a good job, and the illusion of safety. The man she’d followed off the train may or may not have had information about her past, but she was beginning to think that he was some kind of a criminal. The computer beeped, and Ovella paused to type something. Stardust took a look at the clipboard and then the screen directly in front of her. There were three columns labeled QUANTITY, ITEM DESCRIPTION, and PRICE. Ovella appeared to be typing the names and descriptions of voice mail systems.

  “What did you do before this?” Stardust asked.

  “I’m a nurse. I used to work at Northeastern Hospital. Over on Allegheny.”

  Stardust looked at her watch. It was almost nine A.M. “You don’t have phones here, do you?” she said.

  “Only modems.”

  “You seem like you’re pretty good at this.” Stardust motioned toward the computers.

  Ovella smiled.

  “Can you make it look like I’m sending an e-mail from the hospital?”

  Ovella brought up a browser and typed something in the address line. The screen refreshed once, then again, before flickering for a few seconds and coming up crimson. There was a picture of a large brick building with Doric columns. Ovella clicked twice on the menu bar, then clicked again. A list came up and then another empty field into which she typed something. A bunch of names and two columns of long numbers came up. “Which department?” Ovella said. A second later, Stardust was sitting at the terminal composing a message.

  From: Emergency Medicine, Northeastern Hospital

  Date: March 13, 2000, 9:01AM

  To: [email protected]

  Re: Urgent

  Mr. Stretton.

  My train broke down this morning. A few of us got hurt. Nothing serious.

  See you Monday.

  S. Nadia.

  Stardust hit SEND and sat back as the message disappeared. Below the desk, she heard the CPU crunching.

  “Very clever,” Rahim said from behind them, his eyes shining, his lips barely stretching over his teeth and gums. “I like that.”

  January 2000

  The first few days after Lorraine’s death, Stardust wandered the house in a big flannel shirt and slippers, drinking tea and trying not to think. When she got hungry, she walked to the 7-Eleven and bought herself Hot Pockets and candy bars. She slept in Lorraine’s bed with the TV on, not so much to follow the news or distract herself with shows as to keep herself company. On the third day, she filled a bucket of water with Pine-Sol and wiped down the walls and ceilings, dusted the baseboards, polished the furniture, and scrubbed the bathroom. The next morning, she started in on the closets. From the basement, she pulled out empty boxes that appliances had come in and filled them with Lorraine’s sweaters, pantsuits, dresses, and underwear. Anything threadbare, shoes or clothing that her mother never wore, Stardust put in a large bag to give away. Jeans, socks, shorts, or T-shirts that Stardust liked, she carried into her own room.

  Near the back of Lorraine’s closet was a cardboard shelving unit with two of the three drawers missing. In the one that remained, Stardust found books of poetry, a hand-bound journal, empty except for a few drawings of wildflowers, a strand of mummy beads, a baby bracelet that said FERGUS in block letters, a priest’s collar, and a mason jar with a bag of weed that smelled like hay. At the bottom was a photo album with pictures of what appeared to be Lorraine’s grandparents: serious-looking immigrants posing in front of a variety store. Stardust sat on the floor and studied their broad Slavic faces, high cheekbones, and squat bodies. Near the back was a picture of Lorraine when she was nine or ten years old, dressed for parochial school—heavy-framed glasses, blonde hair held down with a barrette. Her older brother Nick stood beside her, his hair slicked down, his chest puffed out, and on his face, a big toothy grin. The space where the other two drawers should have been was empty.

  In the crawl space above the bedrooms, Stardust found boxes with composition books filled with Lorraine’s dream journals, matchbooks with the names of clubs and restaurants where she met friends with nicknames like Acid and Handjob, and a stack of yellowed magazines with psychedelic covers called The Mission. One was folded open to the following passage:

  To know yourself, forget everything you’ve learned. Forget throwing the Tarot, reading philosophy, and marching on Washington. Forget sitting at the feet of some Indian guru or some acidhead who says they’ve caught a glimpse of the ineffable. Forget blissing out on nature and helping the Negroes. Forget your lovers and your music and your drugs. The problem for most of you is that your trip isn’t really your trip. You won’t find yourself by faking humility, deprivation, or surrender. The only way to know yourself is through suffering. In the course of a lifetime, anybody who dares to live—anybody who dares to be real—betrays and is betrayed. The sooner you recognize this, the better for everyone. When it happens, be strong enough to admit it, look hard at who you fucked over and why—how you went about fixing or igno
ring it—then you’ll know who you are. When you give up trying to be perfect, then you can begin to let go.

  Stardust tugged at the neck of her flannel shirt. She pictured her mother walking off into the snow, repeating the phrase I am not perfect. What a crock of shit. Notwithstanding her hippie pedigree and her more recent spiritual escapes, Lorraine was as incapable of suspending her earthly concerns, as neurotic and burdened by guilt and regret for her choices, as the next person. Stardust had seen her mother cling to every precious moment, no matter how miserable she was, always hopeful that her life would suddenly improve.

  She lay down on Lorraine’s comforter, which still smelled like her mother’s body cream. Pulling the quilt up, Stardust tightened herself into a little ball. Whereas once she felt as though she’d been rocket-shot out of her life to impossible heights, now, miles above the earth, she orbited, disconnected, her mother’s voice breaking up like a distant radio transmission, eventually disappearing into static; her own will to live, like the pull of gravity, slowly fading. There, on her mother’s bed, strange, sad memorabilia all around her, Stardust felt only the absence of life.

  Over the next few days, she lugged a pair of bridge tables from the basement and laid out all of her mother’s stuff from her closets, the crawl space, and the basement. She worked methodically, like an archaeologist, unpacking one section of the house at a time, cleaning under beds and emptying boxes, studying the artifacts of her mother’s fractured past. She found an old turntable, and, while she worked, she listened to her mother’s albums—Buffalo Springfield, Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds. She discovered an all-festival camping pass from an Old-Time Fiddlers’ Convention and buttons that said MCGOVERN FOR PRESIDENT and SCIENTOLOGY RULES; she read letters that chronicled Lorraine’s brief career at Boston College, books her mother had read as a teenager, and poems written to her by a tubercular boy in sixth grade.

  By the end of the week, Stardust was restless and angry. In the museum of her mother’s old life, with relics from the past all around her, Stardust felt betrayed—like she’d jimmied a safe she’d been trying to open for years and found nothing. On Saturday, she called a local real estate agent whose name appeared on signs all over the neighborhood and made an appointment for him to come out. On Monday morning, Carl, Lorraine’s boss, stopped by to tell Stardust how sorry he was and to let her know that she was the named beneficiary of her mother’s retirement account, which had almost $20,000 in it. “Fully vested,” he said, touching his lapel nervously. Stardust put the documents she was supposed to sign on a pile in the kitchen, which is when she saw it—a hardback written by Patricia Hearst and a woman named Winnie Prescott. Inside was the inscription: “To Stardust. Best of luck! Winnie Prescott.” On Wednesday, Mr. Stretton, the human resource manager at Drinker & Sledge, called. The following Monday, Stardust Nadia started her new job.

  Friday, March 13, 2000

  Rahim led Stardust through a doorway into another small room. “This,” he said proudly, throwing a spindly arm toward two very urban-looking men who were sitting at folding tables loaded with appliances and bric-a-brac, “is Softpawn.” Stardust looked around at the cinder-block walls, stained linoleum floors, and low-hung fluorescent fixtures with tubes that flickered. Along the walls, shelving units supported boxes filled with extension cords, electronic gear, hand tools, and antique jewelry. The men at the table were in their forties or fifties, overweight, with frizzy gray hair. They were either very shy or completely absorbed in what appeared to be a couple of short-wave radios. Neither looked up.

  Rahim rocked back and forth, hovering over one of the tables, his dark eyes open wide, his shoulders and upper torso moving like a boxer’s, his head sticking out from his neck, birdlike, his mouth, like a sandpiper’s, pecking in a tight pattern. Stardust noticed ripples of vertebrae underneath the shirt. He rolled his shoulders in an effort to get his neck to accommodate his head. Even though it was cold in the room, Rahim glistened with sweat. “This is where it all happens, baby…the repairs, the cataloguing, the freshening up of merchandise when required….”

  “Why are you showing me this?”

  Rahim smiled. “The important thing is, you’re here. Chuck wanted that more than anything.” He said it with a dramatic flair. “There’s so much you two have to talk about, but before you do, let me show you the factory.” Rahim winked.

  He took her mug and set it on a small lacquered table and then pushed a huge steel door open. Stardust felt a rush of cold air and smelled metal, paint thinner, and stale sweat. They were standing at a side entrance to a cavernous room—a bona fide factory—dark, damp, cold, and soundless except for the echo of their footsteps on the cement and the fluttering of a pigeon thirty feet above them. Stardust understood that the more time that passes in a bad situation, the more control you lose and the worse your chance of escaping. She had applied this theory with success in the limousine. You want to stay fresh and vigilant throughout an ordeal, to fight off your fatigue, to resist any tendency to show weakness or to identify with your captor, and, most important, to stay alert for an opportunity to get away.

  On one side, dim light filtered into giant windows above scaffolding that ran alongside four huge steel vats. In the main area, huge cement columns six feet around were plastered with photos of women in bathing suits, diagrams of three-dimensional frames, and Polaroids of dark-skinned children. All around, the concrete floor was ripped up. At odd intervals, piles of concrete lay next to dark, round holes. It looked like a crew had stopped working midtask. Rahim led her to a wide-open area next to a large metal desk that was covered in dust.

  “Assembly stations,” he said, spreading his arms. “The Plexiglas came in on forklifts. We measured, cut, and assembled it right here.” He pointed to three large scissors tables with hand tools attached to spiral hoses hanging from above. Stardust imagined the overhead lights on, machines whirring, men, sweaty with concentration, calling out to one another, hammering things until the buzzer buzzed or the whistle blew.

  “At one time,” Rahim narrated, “we worked here side by side—me, Chuck, Miguel, Big Lou, and our dads.” Stardust looked above at the intersection of iron girders. Near the windows, a huge bridge crane with a gleaming steel hook dangled over the steel vats.

  “How long ago?”

  “They had a terrible time,” Rahim said, ignoring her question. “The old man was a son of a bitch. Didn’t cut anybody any slack. Especially Artie—he bore the brunt of it. ‘Shit-for-brains,’ the old man used to call him.”

  “What does this have to do—”

  “Chuck was the outside guy. Helluva salesman. The old man’s retirement plan. Worked like a dog.”

  Stardust cleared her throat. “I really have no clue—”

  “‘Eagles may soar,’ Charlie Puckman used to say, ‘but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.’ If there was a way to make a buck—no matter how sleazy, a shortcut to take, a corner to cut—the old man found it. Your uncle Artie was loco you know. Probably retarded.”

  Stardust winced. “Did you say ‘uncle’?”

  “Not till I’m ready to give up,” Rahim said, grinning. He had bad gums. “Artie was always looking for ways to bring his brother down.” Rahim had stopped about twenty-five feet from the steel tanks. To their left was a loading dock. Behind that, offices and a dark void. It was only nine thirty in the morning, but Stardust was already exhausted. She wanted a drink. Finally, she asked Rahim flat out. “Who is it you think I am?” she asked.

  Rahim looked at her as if she had amnesia. “Listen, honey, I’ve worked for this family since I was in high school. Before you were born. Before the accident. Before they shut us down.” He motioned toward the tanks. “It could have been me that day.”

  “What accident?” Stardust asked, shaking her head.

  Rahim looked at her closely. “He didn’t tell you yet.”

  She stared back at him.

  “Probably too ashamed. Over here.” Rahim led her to tank number
four. “We had no money to ventilate the welding area. Nobody denies that.” Stardust felt a wave of panic. “So we limped along as best we could. Orders were way down, and our quality wasn’t what it should have been. It was a Saturday. The kid was cleaning it out.” Rahim pointed to the steel vats against the wall. “I dragged him out.” Stardust thought of Gary Heidnick, the serial killer who dismembered young women in the basement of his Philadelphia row home. “The paramedics said it was too late. Even if he’d lived, he’d have been a vegetable. This is where he collapsed,” Rahim said, pointing to an area about ten feet away. “Right here, in your father’s arms.”

  Stardust stood absolutely still for a second, no longer listening to the thin man with the black hair and the little skullcap, no longer thinking about pawnshops or security guards or being late for work. Time slowed. She must have stopped breathing, because suddenly she felt as though she was choking. Did he say father? She needed air, so she took off, loping at first, then running, hoping to find an exit, some breach she could escape through. She remembered hearing her own footsteps and something flapping overhead. She remembered smelling metal or grease and felt herself moving through pockets of cold air, and she heard a faraway voice call after her, “Wait!” or “Watch out!” but all she could do was keep running until she heard a thwack and felt her legs crumble, and then there was nothing.

  Saturday, January 23, 1999