Unknown - The Genius

BY THE TIME I GOT BACK to the hotel, Sam was gone. She wasn’t in her room, either. I found her in the gym, pumping away at an elliptical machine. An MP3 player was strapped to her arm. One earplug in; its partner dangled at waist-level, freeing up the side of her head to pin a cell phone to her shoulder. A copy of Fitness lay upside down and unopened on the machine’s magazine thingie. With her right hand she swigged a bottle of water, and with her left she tattooed a Palm Pilot. Every part of her seemed to be moving in a different direction, like some marvelous sweaty cubist paroxysm.

“I appreciate it,” I heard her saying as I approached. “Thank you.”

“Good morning,” I said.

“Oh my gosh. You startled me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What happened to you. I thought you were gone.”

“I couldn’t sleep. I took a walk.”

“Leave a note next time, will you … I just got off the phone with James Jarvis.”

I looked at the gym clock. It was seven fifteen.

“He called me,” she said. Something new in her voice, a new timbre. Happiness. And it made her speak a little faster, despite her huffing and puffing. “He’s teaching today but he said we could come by after four. Do you know where Somerville is?”

“Five-minute drive.”

“Then we have a day to spend together.” She slowed down and stopped, her feet still on the pedals. “I’m gross right now, but I’m going to kiss you anyway, and you’re going to have to deal with it.”

“That’s fine with me.” And it was.

SOMERVILLE, CAMBRIDGE’S POORER COUSIN, is home to many a grad student. I remembered it primarily as the location of the Basket, a lowbrow supermarket favored by Harvard students as a place to buy liquor in plastic bottles with handles. I think they do more sales in food stamps than in cash; the employees walk around with the pall of death on them; we used to call the place the Casket.

A stone’s throw away (assuming you had a very energetic throwing arm) is Knapp Street and its short run of town houses. Our buzz summoned a young man in surgical scrubs, who introduced himself as Elliot and who, upon showing us to the living room, immediately began berating us for upsetting James.

“He was crying,” said Elliot. “He didn’t even cry when our dog died and he was sobbing. I really hope you realize what you’re doing here. You just sent years of therapy down the drain. I begged him not to talk to you but he’s his own person. If it were up to me I wouldn’t have let you in the front door.”

Sam said, “He might be able to help us catch the person who did it.”

Elliot snorted. “Like that matters. Whatever. He should be home in a few minutes.” He left the room; a door slammed.

I looked at Sam. She seemed unruffled. Quietly she said, “It’s never what you expect. It’s always the father who’s freaking out, or the older brother. The women are calm when you talk to them. They can describe the most horrific stuff and it’s like they’re reading the phone book. In a way that’s worse, you know? Like I remember this girl, nine years old, raped by her grandfather. I was asking her these very specific questions and she doesn’t flinch. The only time she gets upset is at the end. All of a sudden she gets this look. She goes, ‘Don’t send him to jail, I’ll go instead.’ “

“That’s sick.”

“People are weird.” She picked up a copy of Architectural Digest and began to leaf through it. I was too tense to do anything but tap my fingers against my knees.

Jarvis had promised to be home by four thirty. At four forty-five Elliot reemerged, wearing running tights and a fleece, his bangs held back with a sweatband.

“He’s still not back?”

“No.”

He frowned and stooped to double-knot his shoes. It was obvious that he wanted to leave, wanted us to leave, as well; and everyone breathed a little easier when we heard a car pull up. Elliot ran out the front door and clomped down the steps. I heard the sound of an argument. I went to the window and pulled back the curtain. In the street he was yelling at a thin, balding man in an overcoat and bright blue galoshes. This, I presumed, was James Jarvis. He was older than his partner by at least fifteen years, with a fatherly aura, the look of someone resigned to constant ingratitude. He said nothing as Elliot ranted and gesticulated and finally turned on his heel and sprinted off. I hurried back to the couch.

“Sorry I’m late.” Jarvis set his bag down. “There was an accident on the pike.”

“Thanks for taking the time,” Sam said.

“It’s—well, I was about to say it’s my pleasure, but I think that might be overstating it a bit. Can I get a cup of coffee before we begin?”

“Of course.”

In the kitchen he loaded up an espresso maker and set out three small porcelain cups. “I’m sorry if he was nasty.”

“There’s no need to apologize.”

“He’s very protective.” Jarvis set the machine running, then crossed his arms and leaned against the counter. “He has the zeal of youth.”

Sam smiled.

“I probably shouldn’t say that,” he said. “Look at both of you. You know what my first reaction was when you called? ‘I’m so old.’ That’s what really stung.” The machine clicked, and he fiddled with it. “Here I am living my Dorian Gray fantasy, and then you come along to remind me that in 1973 I was eleven. Elliot wasn’t even born then.” He made a face like The Scream. Then he laughed gloomily and turned to pour our drinks, which he set out for us at the breakfast nook. He also pried open a tin of biscotti. “Enjoy.”

Sam thanked him. “We don’t want to inconvenience you any more than we already have, so—”

“Oh, it’s no inconvenience to me. I might get the silent treatment for a couple of days but he’ll come around.”

“Well, all the same, thank you. If it’s okay with you we’ll just get started?”

He gestured Go ahead. I took the photocopy out of my attache and put it on the table. Jarvis stared for a long time, his expression inscrutable. I looked at Sam and she looked at me and nobody said anything and I started to believe that we’d gotten it all wrong and I felt something like elation and something else like exasperation and I wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to pick Victor out; he shouldn’t rush to point a finger.

“That’s him.”

Sam said, “Are you sure?”

“I think so.” He scratched his cheek. “It’s hard to tell because it’s so grainy.”

I started to speak but Sam said, “We have a scan that’s higher-resolution. Do you have a computer we could use?”

We went to an office at the back of the house. Jarvis’s armpits were dark; his good-natured slouch gone. Violently he jerked the mouse to revive the screen. He put in the CD and clicked on the icon and the photo exploded onto the screen: much larger, shockingly crisp. Victor had a small mole on his neck that I hadn’t noticed.

“It’s him,” said Jarvis.

“You’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“All right,” she said. “All right.”

Was that it? Wasn’t there going to be something more catastrophic? Where was Victor’s spirit now? When did he come swirling out of the heating ducts, all undead vengeance? That could not be the end, not that whimper. Totem crumbling, I began to panic. I wanted to argue. Jarvis was mistaken. How much could he possibly remember? Not remember: know. We weren’t in a court of law. I had a higher standard than reasonable doubt. I wanted zero doubt. Now I saw Jarvis as the culprit, Jarvis as the antagonist, Jarvis as the liar. He had to prove to me that he wasn’t just a lonely boy vying for attention. He had to provide corroborating evidence. He had to describe the size and shape of Victor’s penis; he had to supply choice snippets of dialogue; he had to tell me the weather that day and what he’d had for lunch and what color socks he’d had on, something concrete and verifiable that would allow us to determine if his memory was as perfectly one hundred percent grade-A pristine as he claimed.