Backward-Facing Man (4 page)

The following day and the day after that, she took the train into Center City for more interviews, and by late afternoon she had planted herself in the lobby of the Warwick or the Four Seasons with a slender black folder and a small purse. Stardust drew the attention of business travelers—articulate, well-groomed married men who wore after-shave lotion, held doors open, and invited her, albeit briefly, into their worlds. She understood the effect of fetching looks, clever banter, and sarcasm—of sighs, swallows, and looking up at just the right angle. It was extravagant, provocative, and fun—a wonderful contrast to hanging out at the garage with Mick or working retail—and a fitting finish to a day dropping off résumés, taking typing tests, and answering questions from people who weren't really listening.

As the evenings progressed, she came to understand how important undressing slowly was, how delicate the relationship between mystery and money, a man's nearness to orgasm and his moral weakening. Whether she had a good time or not was less about the men—most of whom were polite, boring, and self-centered—and more about what she was learning: how powerful men could feel so trapped in their lives as to risk everything for one honest moment, the quickening from the touching of fingers, the mysterious calculation between sips of wine and banter when they'd ask for the check, escort her to the elevators, and take the long, slow ride upstairs. She tingled with nervous energy as they straightened their rooms, closed their laptops, poured cocktails from the minibar, and whispered
Daddy loves you
into the bathroom phone. She experimented with back rubs, adoring looks, sharp words, and glancing blows, playing the predator, hungry for risk. By the end of her second week of job hunting, she was bored.

On Christmas Day, Stardust stayed home, made an omelet, and watched a parade on TV. On the kitchen table, she came across a brochure Lorraine had left behind. During their time in the Alps, it said, the group would spend only four days indoors. There were tips for staying warm and advice on clothing to bring—wool and polypropylene, not cotton. Stardust leafed through a book about ice climbing, which looked perilous and unforgiving. She marveled at her mother's nerve.

New Year's Eve day was unseasonably warm. Late in the afternoon, she put on a low-cut red-sequined top, black stockings, and a tight black skirt with a black belt around her waist. On her way to the door, she grabbed a lightweight leather jacket, which she carried to the train. Downtown, she passed the antique stores along Arch Street, the galleries on Second and Third, the Middle Eastern restaurant on Race. She spent a few minutes surveying the line in front of the Troc, but the crowd looked too Goth, so she walked a few blocks to one of the martini bars she'd read about.

The men there were local, a little older than Stardust, but for the most part polite, clean, and well off. Conversation, which was abbreviated on account of the loud music, was limited to acknowledgments—yes or no to certain predictable questions—amazing place, cool lighting, great night. After a few failed pickup attempts, Stardust joined a well-heeled man in a fancy suit at his table. It was just before midnight, and she was pleased to have settled with someone to her liking.

He wore a gray designer suit and a thin red tie that, when she let her eyes unfocus, looked like a gash of blood dripping down his chest. He put two cell phones and a pager on the table, all of which lit up right away. Covering the mouthpiece, he explained that he ran a transportation business from a nearby high-rise, complaining he was so busy he'd had little time for romance. He alternated between looking at her blouse and checking his watch. As Stardust drank, she relaxed, tossing her head back, laughing, happy to be engaged and socially comfortable on New Year's Eve—the millennium—such a momentous night. She let her second and third drinks run their course and smiled when the man in the gray suit asked her if she'd ever been laid in a limousine. She was curious, and he was very attractive.

He led her out of the bar toward a long white stretch limousine that was parked across the street. On her way, Stardust felt queasy, perhaps from the drinks, or maybe the boldness of his suggestion. Before she had a chance to change her mind, he opened the rear door of the car and pressed against her with his body. She fell across a fold-up table and onto a bench seat, bracing herself with her forearms.

Tiny lights illuminated the perimeter. Inside, on the seats facing her, were two men in their late fifties who smelled of cologne and high-quality weed. One of them lifted a carafe of champagne and poured her a glass. “Nice,” he said to the man in the suit, who pulled the door shut. “Well, well,” the other one said, holding his chin against his chest and arching his eyebrows as he inhaled. The limo accelerated.

“Hey, guys,” Stardust said, suddenly sober. She understood that she had only a few seconds to establish an alternative agenda before she became their entertainment for the evening. “Can I have a hit?” she said, motioning to the reefer. One of the guys—heavyset, straight black hair, bushy mustache—laughed and extended the joint. She took it between her fingers and made a sucking sound. “How about we go someplace where we can get comfortable?” she said, letting her breath out in an exaggerated squeeze. The man in the suit pressed a button on the console as Stardust passed the joint to a wiry, nervous-looking man with bad skin. The limo headed south and then turned right onto Market. The man in the gray suit pressed another button, and Dean Martin began singing. Stardust dropped to her knees and swung her arms in time with the music to avoid being groped. When the reefer came around again, she turned to face the man in the gray suit who was whispering in his cell phone. Behind her, the men filled their glasses and passed the joint back and forth. One of them kept turning the music up. She continued her dance, trying to see whether the door handles were reachable. The smoke thickened, and one of the men behind her opened his pants while the other tried to help her out of her jacket. The man in the gray suit folded his cell phone shut and smiled. Something strange passed behind his eyes.

As they circled City Hall, Stardust felt a hand lift her shirt from behind. The heavyset man who'd opened his pants was pressing against her back. He gathered her hair in his fist and began turning her, forcing her around. As much to slow things down as to ease the pain, she took him in her hand. The limo made a sharper-than-expected turn, and she squeezed him hard as all three of them slid sideways. The others laughed as he yelped in pain. “Easy,” the man in the suit called out to the driver. The car turned left and then stopped in the middle of a block. Knowing she was in deep trouble, Stardust leaned forward and whispered to the man who'd brought her here. “Let's go inside, where we can do this right.”

The man nodded and unlocked the door, pushing it open with his foot. Stardust calculated. If she let him get out first, the three of them would overtake her, forcing her inside. At the very least, she'd be dragged upstairs, knocked around, and fucked, at least once, if not all night. She fought an impulse to beg for mercy and then, planting her right foot, pushed herself forward, giving the men behind her an eyeful of ass and kissing the man in the gray suit full on the mouth. As he yielded, she bit his lip as hard as she could and stuck her leg outside the car. The man in the gray suit covered his face. Stardust twisted her body around and swung her purse as hard as she could at him. As she stood, she found herself staring at a handgun. A long, whooping groan rose in her chest in volume and pitch until it became a scream and stayed there, while her mouth and her eyes froze open. A silver-haired man swung a large pistol around toward the men emerging from the limousine. What should have had a calming effect on Stardust, didn't. The pistol prevented any of the men from moving or doing anything else—good or bad—but stare.

“FBI,” the silver-haired man finally said, flashing a badge. “Put your hands on the car.”

The man in the gray suit was holding a white handkerchief to his lip. Stardust stumbled from the limo to the curb, where she vomited, then touched the hood of the taxi that was idling behind them, indicating to the driver to let her in. As they drove away, she watched the man with the silver hair pin the three men against the limo. It reminded her of something she'd seen on TV.

 

Back home, in the shower, Stardust wondered if the episode was a harbinger of the new year—or worse, the new millennium—and whether his bloody lip resulted in an exchange of fluids. Had she given anything to the man in the gray suit that was traceable—her name, her phone number? She stood for a long time under the hot water, which was probably why she didn't hear the phone ringing. When she got out, she ran the towel over her forearms, which were bruised where she'd banged the table, and examined her body in the light. There were red blotches on her neck, big circles under her eyes. She wrapped herself in her mother's robe.

In the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator and took out a lemon yogurt. She was thinking about the guy with the gun, wondering who he was and what he was doing beside the car, when she noticed the light on her answering machine. She put the yogurt down and pressed play. There were three messages. The first was from the human resource manager at the law firm where she'd interviewed a few weeks ago. Stardust copied the date they wanted her to come back onto a little scrap of paper. The next message was from Elizabeth. “And what are
you
doing New Year's Eve?” her friend sang in a suggestive tone. Since Elizabeth had her baby, anything besides watching television seemed scintillating to her. Stardust winced. So thick was the third caller's accent that Stardust almost deleted it as a prank call or a wrong number.

“Der haas bin a baad storm,” the accented voice said, “unt vee had some concern veder she vas okay.” Stardust listened all the way through once, and then halfway through again, before realizing the call had something to do with her mother. The voice recited a list of numbers. She scribbled them down. It was New Year's Day in Switzerland, the man on the phone was explaining. In the event she couldn't reach him, she shouldn't “vorry yet.”

Stardust dialed and waited, cradling the phone between her shoulder and her ear. Her heart raced. She riffled through the papers her mother left behind. Why didn't anyone answer? She hung up and dialed again. Nothing. Shit. She pressed zero, and an operator told her to hang up and press zero twice for overseas. Finally, there was a far-off ring, strange and mechanical-sounding. For the second time in six hours, Stardust mumbled sounds a religious person might have confused for prayer. When the ringing stopped, there was fumbling on the other end of the line and, after that, a long silence. A woman came on, her voice heavily accented like the one on the machine.

“Hallow?”

Stardust said her name and explained why she was calling. There was a pause and then the same voice again. “Hallow?” The woman hadn't understood a word. Stardust repeated her mother's name. “Nadi-uh. It's urgent.”

She could hear the receiver changing hands and then a man's voice, the one from the machine. “Ah, yes…yes, my dear,” he said, “goot of you to call. Der is a terrible storm up der…missing from the rest of the party…vee been searching all day.” Reflexively, Stardust shoveled a spoonful of yogurt into her mouth and then spit it into the sink. Her hands shook. What had her mother told her about this trip? What was she doing out there anyway? Stardust asked if there was anyone from the group she could speak to. Anyone who spoke English. “Please. Vee know nothing yet. Vee vill call you as soon as vee know something.”

Out the kitchen window, behind her house, she could see a row of brick houses illuminated by the early-morning sun. Stardust held the receiver away from her ear as if that could prevent her from hearing bad news. The refrigerator buzz grew louder and every few seconds she had to remind herself to breathe. She thought of calling Mick, but what would
he
say? That he had a premonition? Either Lorraine was safe or she wasn't. Stardust hung up the phone and went over what she knew. There had been a bad storm. There'd been no contact with the expedition. Nobody knew anything yet. There was nothing she could do from here. She picked up the phone. “My mother is lost somewhere in a blizzard in the Alps,” she said to the dial tone. Frantic, she picked up the brochures on the counter again.

Hope exists on a sliding scale, and Stardust drew it down over the next twenty-four hours the way a terminal patient uses morphine. She kept calling the number in Zurich, the proprietor of the lodge, throughout the afternoon on New Year's Day and into the evening. By midnight, after only three short conversations, she'd gotten few new details. Lorraine's survival, Stardust thought to herself, was now dependent on these muddy-thinking people, one of whom could barely string together enough words in English to form a sentence. The man on the phone told her that they'd lost radio contact, and that the group's exact location was unknown. He'd rattled off latitudes and longitudes, and talked about snowmobiles and avalanche beacons that he wished “all hikers vould vare.” Of all the gear Lorraine bought, Stardust remembered, why hadn't she purchased one of them? Instead, she was out there in the freezing cold, with little or no visibility and a storm that showed no signs of letting up.

Stardust slept fitfully. She alternated between worst-case and best-case scenarios, trying to keep her own misadventure and the image of the silver-haired man with the gun out of her mind. By the following morning, she'd begun surfing the Internet, searching for news under “tourism,” “Swiss,” and “weather.” This led her to avalanche warnings, which led to local ski patrol reports, which led to a listing of accidents. It appeared as a blue link on the left-hand side of an international weather site connected to a ski report. Under notices about an avalanche in northern Italy, a chair lift that got stuck in Colorado, and a pair of elderly German cross-country skiers who had been found eating chocolate from badly frostbitten fingers. The headline made her heart stop. “American Hiker Found Frozen.”