William Lashner - Falls The Shadow

“Now,” said Sunshine after we sat, “how can I help my good friend François?”

I took out the picture of Velma, passed it over. “Do you recognize this woman?”

He looked at it, squinted his beady eyes, looked at it again. I didn’t remember ever meeting him before, but something about his sneer of a personality struck a chord of memory.

“It might be Velma,” he said, “but she looks different somehow.”

“I think she had some surgery.”

“Well then, definitely Velma.” He sucked at his cigar. “Velma Wykowski, one of the famous Wykowski sisters.”

“I didn’t know she had a sister.”

“Leesa Cullen, I’m talking about,” he said. “That’s what we called them when they were both single, the famous Wykowski sisters. They didn’t look anything alike, and that was the joke. They used to hang out at the bar when I was just starting. They were often the evening’s entertainment.”

“Karaoke?”

“More like carry out the door. They drank too much, flirted too much.” His eyebrows rose obscenely. “They did everything too much. This was before they met up with François. He broke up the sister act. Marriage seems to take the fun out of people, don’t you think? Still, it was a tragedy what happened to Leesa.”

“Yes it was.”

“Whatever happened to Velma?”

“She got married,” I said. “You know, Mr. Sunshine, you look familiar.”

“Call me Geoffrey.”

“Sure, Geoffrey. Do I know you somehow?”

He sniffed loudly, rubbed his pointy nose. “I don’t think so.”

“Where’d you go to college?”

“Temple,” he said.

“Where’d you go to high school?”

“Abington.”

“What year?”

He stuck his cigar in his mouth, rolled it around with his tongue. “So you’re that Victor Carl.”

I snapped my finger. “Jerry Sonenshein. Son of a bitch, I knew I knew you.”

We each gave a couple loud “Hey”s and slapped each other on the shoulder and pretended we had been the best of friends in high school and could be the best of friends still.

“You’ve done all right by yourself, Jerry,” I said as we calmed down.

“And you became a lawyer,” he said, chuckling, as if by passing the bar I had fallen through an open manhole.

“Why’d you change your name?”

“In this business it helps to have a bright moniker. What could be brighter than Sunshine?”

“You were an AV guy, I remember, pushing projectors around the halls like you owned the place.”

“And you wrote those stupid editorials for the newspaper. What was it?”

“ The Abingtonian, ” I said. “And they were supposed to be funny.”

“They were stupid, Victor. Not funny. Stupid. All the AV guys were laughing at you.”

“And you were all so full of yourselves, as if you were on some higher plane because you could run the film projector.”

“We ruled the school.”

“Except when the greasers were flushing your heads down the toilet.”

“I don’t recall you being on the football team yourself.”

“You know what I also remember, Jerry?”

“The name’s Geoffrey, Vic.”

“I remember that I never liked you.”

We stared at each other for a long moment, two high-schoolers again, murder in our eyes, facing off in dodgeball. And then we gave each other a couple more loud “Hey”s and a couple “Ho”s and slapped each other again on the shoulder, maybe a little harder this time, and pretended that our high-school animosity had disappeared over the years.

“Cigar?” said Sunshine.

“Sure,” I said.

“Sean,” said Sunshine, “bring us a selection.”

It wasn’t long before we were sitting back in our seats, the three of us, puffing away, a noxious cloud of smoke obscuring our features as Sunshine talked about François Dubé and the famous Wykowski sisters. Beth had opted for an Arturo Fuente panatela, thin and spicy with the delicate scent of nuts and sweet woods. I went with a Joya Antano Gran Consul from Davidoff, the King Farouk of cigars, I was told, short, fat, and potent. Beth seemed to be enjoying herself. I tried to keep a smile on my face, but King Farouk was doing calisthenics in my stomach.

“How’d you meet my client, Jerry?” I said.

“Geoffrey,” said Sunshine.

“Whatever.”

He glared at me, then calmed, looked at his cigar as he spoke. “I heard from my saucier that François, then sous chef at Le Bec Fin, was planning to resign to head his own kitchen. I was having trouble in the restaurant and was looking for a new executive chef. François would have been perfect. So I invited him up to see if we could work out a business arrangement.”

Sunshine leaned over a small side table between chair and couch, tapped his cigar gently, and a roll of ash tipped into an ashtray. He looked absently at the single rose sitting in a black glass vase and then leaned back again.

“The famous Wykowski sisters were hanging around then, the absolute queens of the bar, scoring coke, flirting like mad, having sex in the bathrooms when it suited them, which it often did. They were out of control, but lovely, too, and frankly, they gave the place the kind of reputation that draws in a high-paying crowd. It was good to have them around. Fun, too.” He puffed, he leered, I tried not to throw up. “So when François was due to arrive, I asked them to be nice to my new friend. I thought once he tasted the charms of the Wykowski sisters, saw how much fun this place could be, we’d be able to work something out. It didn’t quite turn out as I had expected.”

“What happened?” said Beth.

“The end of an era, that’s what happened,” said Sunshine. “First I caught my very popular bartender pulling cash from the till. When I sacked him, a large part of my clientele went with him. Not good. Then the famous Wykowski sisters just disappeared.”

“Why?”

“They were a trio for a time, Leesa, Velma, and François. Then word was Velma got bored and she gave François to Leesa.”

“Gave him to her?”

“Something like that. And right after, all three simply disappeared from the club. I heard Leesa was marrying François. I heard François was starting his own place, with his name on the window. I heard Velma had found other fields to plow. That was the end of everything. Without my bartender or the two girls, suddenly my club wasn’t so hot. The nut on this place was killing me already, I had borrowed more for a redesign, and now I had a club that wasn’t making the kind of money it had before. It took me three years to climb out of the hole.”

“But it looks like you did,” I said.

He grinned, his cigar pinned in his teeth. “Oh, yes.”

“You ever see that Velma again?” I said. “She ever come back here?”

“No,” he said as his eyes shifted back to that flower. “Leesa neither. I figured they were sort of embarrassed the way they behaved. What happened to Leesa I could follow in the paper, but Velma Wykowski, it was like she fell off the face of the earth. Who’d she marry anyway?”

“You don’t know?”

“No. I never learned.”

“Just some guy,” I said. “Thanks for your help, Jerry.”

“Whatever I can do for François, you let me know. He was a great chef. And I was serious about having a place for him.”

“Thanks,” I said. I took another puff, and suddenly I felt my stomach flip. One too many Sea Breezes, one too many cigars.

“What’s the matter with your face there, Victor?” said Geoffrey Sunshine. “Suddenly, pal, you don’t look so good.”

I held my Joya Antano Gran Consul in front of me as the nausea sliced like a dull knife into my brain. “If you’ll excuse me,” I said as I smashed my cigar in the ashtray and stood weakly. “I need to find the bathroom.”