Chaos, Desire & a Kick-Ass Cupcake Read online

  And then, like a reprieve from God, there was a knock on the door. A giant grin spread slowly across my face. “Think our client’s early?” Before Anatoly could respond, I was out of my seat, across the room and flinging open the door.

  Before me, stood a fifty-something-year-old man only three inches taller than me. His blond, white streaked hair was unkempt and hung limply around his hollowed cheeked face. Everything he was wearing from his slightly-too-big Brooks Brothers chinos to his Tom Ford horned rimmed glasses implied a certain degree of wealth even as the missing shirt button and coffee stains that decorated the slightly frayed designer fabric projected something very different.

  “I’m looking for Anatoly Darinsky?” he said, somewhat uncertainly.

  “That would be the guy behind me. I’m Sophie Katz, his assistant.” I caught a glimpse of Anatoly’s expression over my shoulder and quickly amended. “Administrative assistant. Please come in!”

  “I’m early.” He stepped forward, hesitantly. Anatoly moved to shake his hand but the man rejected the gesture.

  “My hands are sweaty,” he said, his voice shaking slightly. “Is there somewhere I can wash them?”

  “Right through here.” Anatoly opened the door to the bathroom for him and the man excused himself briefly. We both listened while the water ran. I went over to Anatoly’s desk and found a notepad and pen. Anatoly shot me a look and mouthed You’re unbelievable. To which I responded by mouthing, I know. Although to be fair, this was the first time in, like, a year that I had done anything that was even remotely unbelievable.

  But this wraith of a man in Anatoly’s new, cutesy bathroom had me feeling oddly hopeful. Like I was perversely elevated by the promise of sharing in another’s turmoil. I smiled broadly at Anatoly as he frowned, knowing I was pressing his buttons. Hoping that maybe, just maybe, this would be the first step to becoming truly unbelievable again.

  When you hear hoof-beats it’s usually horses. Occasionally it’s zebras. But every once in a while it’s some terrifying, previously unknown creature that will completely change the way you think about hoof-beats.

  --Dying to Laugh

  I sat next to our guest, Aaron London, as Anatoly examined him from behind his desk. Mr. London was polite but jittery and had already requested to see our drivers’ licenses to prove our identities. But when we handed them over he seemed to have a tough time reading the words, holding them up this way and that in order to bring them into focus. My eyes kept wandering to his lips. They were so chapped they didn’t even look fully human. A drop of blood rested behind a flap of dry skin near the corner of his mouth.

  I offered him the Fiji water I had been hauling around with me in my purse along with an encouraging smile. He accepted both, taking a long drink before placing the bottle on the floor by his feet. I held my pen over the notepad in anticipation. “I’m sorry I’m so early,” he said for about the fifth time.

  “It’s not a problem.” Anatoly’s thin smile didn’t hide his irritation at being forced to repeat the reassurance.

  “I believe it might throw them off if I don’t show up where I’m expected when I’m expected.”

  “Who exactly are you trying to throw off?” Anatoly asked.

  “The people tracking me,” he replied after an uncomfortably long pause. “There are people trying to kill me.”

  I made a quick note: homicidal tracking experts (bad guys).

  “Tell me about them,” Anatoly requested, his voice was calm and even, “Why are they going to such extreme measures?”

  London shook his head, a few strands of his hair moved with him, but it was too thin to really be whipped around. “I know things,” he explained. “Things I’m not supposed to know.” His eyes locked on me again and this time the anxiety there was so intense I found myself pulling back as if it might be contagious. Yes, I sought a degree of turmoil, but there was something off about this man. “What do you know about the pharmaceutical industry?” he asked.

  I looked over at Anatoly who rewarded me with a barely perceptible shrug. “It’s safe to assume neither one of us are experts,” I admitted.

  “I used to be in pharmaceuticals,” London rubbed his hands against his wrinkled pants. “The way the business is run…it’s not good, not good at all.”

  “I’m not sure I’m following,” Anatoly said as I wrote pharmaceutical industry: bad!

  “The amount of money spent on developing a drug, you have no idea. And when you spend all that money only to discover that your drug can have dangerous side effects, well the companies don’t want to cop to that. They want to get their product to market even if it kills. And they want to kill me because I know that.”

  “What pharmaceutical company are we talking about, specifically?” I asked as I furiously scribbled away.

  “Nolan-Volz is the worst of them, but there’s a lot of collusion between these organizations. Anti-trust laws are being broken right and left. We just keep seeing the same story play out over and over again. Rispolex prescribed off label! Thalidomide! Doctors on the take! A medical ethics professor at NYU exposed how corrupt the testing system for drugs is but her reports were completely ignored! The whole medical establishment is in on it!”

  “The whole medical establishment?” I asked, giving him the opportunity to pull back on the hyperbole. I would ask what the hell he was talking about in regards to the rest of it in a moment.

  But rather than correct himself he nodded sagely and leaned forward, and urgently whispered. “The government is in on it too.”

  I looked down at my notepad and considered writing government: Bad! But these days that went without saying.

  “They want me dead too! Our own government!” London continued.

  Anatoly shifted his head toward the window as a siren briefly disrupted the more benign background noises of the streets. “I find that unlikely, Mr. London.”

  “Do you?” London retorted sarcastically. “Why is that? You think our government doesn’t kill its own citizens? The death penalty! Covert operations! How many do you think they drove to suicide while testing LSD on unsuspecting Americans? What about eugenics? Where do you think the Nazis got that idea, huh?”

  Following London’s train of thought was getting harder by the second. My notes had become a jumbled mash up of conspiracy theory catch phrases. I was seeking turmoil, not incoherence. “Maybe we can put the drugs and Nazis aside for a moment and focus on what’s going on with you in the here and now?”

  He looked at me blankly and then fell back in his chair as if exhausted from his own ranting. “Of course. I’m sorry,” he said, hoarsely. “I’ve been under such stress. It’s not just that they’re following me.” With a slow purposeful movement, he ran his hand through his hair, then held up his flattened palm. It was covered with dozens of strands, apparently dislodged from his scalp with only the lightest touch. “I think they’re poisoning me too,” he whispered. “I’m not thinking straight. I’m weak and…” he looked down at the loose hairs, allowing the disturbing visual to complete his sentence. “I don’t know how it’s being done, how it’s transmitted…I’ve taken to washing my hands immediately before touching another person. There could be toxins in my sweat. You know, Putin isn’t the only government leader who poisons those who cross him. It can happen anywhere, to any of us.”

  “Maybe we can start with the evidence that you’re being followed,” Anatoly suggested. “Do you still have the tracking device they put on your car?”

  I could tell by the way Anatoly said the word “they,” that he was dubious of the pronoun’s accuracy.

  London looked up at Anatoly, surprised. “It’s still on my car.”

  Anatoly’s stare chilled me and clearly shamed London who began fiddling with his glasses, pulling them down and then pushing them back up on the bridge of his nose. “Don’t you think it’s a good idea to take the device off?” Anatoly asked. “So they can’t follow you anymore?”

  “Of course it is,” Lon
don conceded. “But I can’t find it. I’ve taken it to a mechanic but they said they’d have to take apart the whole car to locate it. I took it to the police and they couldn’t find it either and they weren’t even sure if they had the legal authority to arrest anyone even if they did find it. Our legal system hasn’t caught up with our technology! There are no laws against putting GPS tracking devices on anything. The politicians don’t understand all the horrible ways technology can be applied! There’s no regulation, no protections, no--”

  “Evidence,” Anatoly interrupted. “There is no evidence that there ever was a tracking device on your car. Maybe that’s because there isn’t one.”

  “No, no, it’s there! I’ll be driving around and no one will be on my tail. And then suddenly there’s a Zipcar!”

  “A Zipcar,” Anatoly repeated.

  “Yes! And it will follow me at a distance. Too much of a distance for me to make out the driver. Then if I do a U-turn or pull over, the Zipcar will drive off, in the opposite direction of course, so I can’t see who’s in it! And then maybe an hour later, maybe two, the Zipcar will be back! Sometimes it’s the same one. Sometimes a different one. I know it wasn’t following me all that time so how did it find me? It was tracking me!”

  “There are a lot of Zipcars in the city.” I was doing my level best to point out the obvious without sounding patronizing. “Maybe that’s the reason they keep popping up. Especially since you’re not always seeing the same car.”

  “No, that’s not how it works!” London said, imploringly. “The driver must have a computer with them. A laptop maybe. And they bring it from Zipcar to Zipcar--” but he wasn’t able to finish due to a coughing fit. It was a wet, ugly cough and I found myself torn between wanting to pat him on the back and desperately searching my bag for my bottle of Purell.

  “Have you gone to a doctor?” Anatoly asked. “To get tested for poison or…anything else?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? The medical establishment can’t be trusted! Doctors are taking bribes from drug companies, performing needless procedures on homeless people!” He broke into another short coughing fit but then managed to continue. “Did you know that right now, as we speak, people are forming a New World Order? Oligarchs and their bought and paid for politicians are going to try to take over everything!”

  “Wait,” I asked, “are you talking about Super Pacs?”

  “No! Or yes, but no! It’s going to get so much worse than it is now! We can’t trust anyone. No one has our interests at heart. Not the little guy, not blacks!” He jabbed his finger at me with an almost desperate zeal. “They don’t care about what happens to the blacks!”

  “Fucking Zipcar driving racists,” I replied, managing to keep a straight face.

  “Mr. London, I think maybe we have to start again,” Anatoly suggested. “Do you or do you not, have the names of any individuals who might want to do you harm and do you have any concrete evidence that someone is actively trying to?”

  “They’re poisoning me,” he said, weakly. “Look at me. Use your eyes and see me dying. You’re witnessing my murder.”

  Anatoly studied him for a moment and I could see the cocktail of pity and disappointment pouring out of him. “I’m afraid I can’t take your case.”

  “But I’ve nowhere else to go,” London whispered, blushing. The little bit of color actually made him seem less crazed and more, well, vulnerable. “You’re the only P.I. of good repute who would agree to even see me.”

  “I’m sure others would take a meeting,” Anatoly replied, perhaps a little too curtly.

  I felt shame creep down my throat, settling in my gut. I had been attracted to the idea of a nefarious stalker that could be tracked down and held accountable. I had loved this stranger for the turbulence I assumed surrounded him. But the turbulence was within him. The demons stalking him could never be caught. This wasn’t an adventure, it was a tragedy.

  “It took me so long to work up the courage to come here,,” London said, softly. “You’ve listened to me explain why I need help. Now all you have to do is see.”

  Anatoly had listened but with thinly veiled impatience. To be fair, that was the best this man could ever realistically hope for given the insanity of his story. And yet he had hoped for more.

  Quietly I put the pad and pen on Anatoly’s desk. There was no longer a need for note taking. Anatoly’s silence in the face of this man’s pleas was both firm and deafening.

  “What will I do?” London whispered.

  “I strongly recommend you speak with a doctor,” Anatoly suggested and rose from his chair. “But that’s up to you. Regardless, we should wrap things up here. I don’t want to waste your time.”

  “No,” London agreed. “After all, I may not have much left to waste.”

  There was an awkward silence as we all remained in our places, Anatoly and I both waiting for London to get up. But London seemed unaware that this was the logical next step. Sullenly meditative, he picked idly at loose hairs on his pant leg. Most looked like they were his, but I noted that others were short and black.

  “Maybe I could walk you to your car?” I offered.

  He stared at me blankly for what seemed like an eternity.

  “It wouldn’t be an inconvenience,” I added. “I have to head out to make a lunch thing anyway.”

  Again nothing and then finally a nod. I mouthed I’ll call you to Anatoly as London got to his feet. When he walked with me toward the door his movements seemed labored, like every step was a small challenge. Was he moving like that when he came into the office or was it just the mass of disillusionment that he was struggling under?

  We left the office and took the stairs slowly. When he seemed to falter, I linked my arm through his, offering him support but masking it in companionship to spare whatever remained of his pride. The gesture stopped him in his tracks.

  “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “Of what?” I asked.

  “Of touching me. Even people who don’t believe me, they don’t want to touch me or be close to me. They see something’s wrong with me and it scares them.”

  My mind automatically traveled back to my childhood when everyone was afraid to so much as shake hands with all the people in this city who were diagnosed with AIDS. We isolated them, made them feel like pariahs doomed to die alone. “I’m not afraid,” I said, definitively.

  I thought I saw the glimmer of a tear in his eye and I looked away, urging him forward. “Anatoly just moved into that office space today,” I said in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  “It’s cute,” London replied, absently.

  “Right? I think there are apartments on the third floor. I’m sure they’re lovely but I don’t know if I’d want to live directly over a shopping district.”

  “You live in Ashbury Heights,” he noted as I pushed open the heavy glass door that brought us to the street.

  I turned and stared at him. “How?”

  “Your driver’s license.”

  The cool air touched my face and I found myself smiling at London as the shoppers streamed around us. “You’re an observant man.”

  “Observant, yes,” he started to lead me down the sidewalk, “but I’m beginning to question if I can still confidently call myself a man.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, lightly. “You’re just going through a rough patch, that’s all.”

  “You mistake me,” he said so softly I had to lean in to hear him. “What I mean is that there’s so little left of the man I used to be it’s as if I’m not fully here anymore. When I look in the mirror I don’t see a person. I see a ghost, a corpse that doesn’t have the sense to stop breathing.”

  Alllrighty then. That’s not creepy at all.

  He then went quiet for a few minutes as we continued to walk past a parallel-parked lineup of Prius and Teslas, Christmas wreaths hanging on each and every lamppost. I was about to ask him exactly where he parked his car when he piped up again. “Have you ever convinced yo
urself of something? Something that was unlikely?”

  I exhaled in relief. I’m not sure it’s such a horrible thing to occasionally be delusional but if your delusions are as dark as London’s it’s much better to come back to more mundane realities. “We all do that,” I assured him. “Human nature.”

  “That’s true,” he agreed, thoughtfully. “After all, what is God but something we’ve convinced ourselves of with no evidence to support? What is the American dream but a fallacy to give the poor false hope? We’re all convinced that we’re going to be the exception to the rule.”

  Okay, so not exactly the direction I was hoping for. “What unlikely thing have you convinced yourself of specifically?”

  He sighed as we walked by San Francisco’s latest farm-to-table restaurant. “I convinced myself that you would help me.”

  Now it was me who abruptly stopped walking, pulling him to a stop with me before removing my arm from his. “I want to,” I said, sincerely. “But I think the kind of help you need is different than the kind of help you think you need.”

  “You mean--” but before he could finish he started coughing. He lurched forward as the spasms violently wrenched away his physical control, causing the tip of his shoe to catch on a piece of uneven pavement. As he fell, his hands found the sidewalk in time to keep him from cracking open his skull. People around us stopped as I kneeled next to him, helpless as I watched his body shake and his face contort.

  “Is he okay?” I heard a woman ask. Now on his hands and knees, London’s coughs were getting worse. His glasses slipped from his face and dropped uselessly to the ground. He couldn’t seem to stop. Whooping cough maybe?

  “London? Should I call a doctor?” I asked. It was a stupid question. The man couldn’t even talk. He looked up at me, his eyes fearful and milky, the convulsions racking through his delicate frame. “Call 911!” I cried out to the gathering crowd. But before I could fully get the words out he had fallen into unconsciousness, his glasses cracking beneath him. The coughs were now just gasps for breath and the time between each gasp kept getting a little longer. I looked up to see about five people on their cell phones, all calling for help. I reached into the pockets of London’s jacket to see if there was anything useful there. An inhaler maybe? Could he have asthma? Maybe an EpiPen? But all I found was a crumpled up failed-payment notification from his car insurance provider and his phone in a camouflage patterned case. The phone was displaying one new text message from a number apparently not in his contacts.