Shadow Man: A Novel by Jeffrey Fleishman Page A

village in the Balkans, A BOY’S JOURNEY THROUGH WAR TO MANHOOD AND, FINALLY, DEATH . I try to imagine beyond the words, like when you read a book and you sense another world happening that doesn’t exist on the page but exists because of the page, and that makes it true and part of the story.
    James’s story is my secret. I almost told it to the owner of the corner market, Earl, who watches me in the aisles and knows I prefer paper to plastic. He has a nasal voice and a lazy eye but he alerts me to specials on pastrami, pickles, toilet paper, and milk. The big chains, says Earl, are killing the small grocer; he may sell out one day to a dry cleaner or a tattoo parlor. Earl’s had offers. We chat about family. Earl’s quite open about such things; he’s the kind of misbegotten soul they invite on afternoon talk shows, earnest and giving of details most would prefer to keep private: Vietnam flashbacks, estranged wives, a son’s suicide, a stint in jail, a recidivist 12-Stepper. He mixes highs and lows like a brawler in a Tom Waits song and sometimes I imagine him sitting in a small apartment andweeping through the night until dawn. But there is something about Earl. With his white smock and pocket of pens, his slow rhythm of ringing up prices on an ancient cash register, Earl has a tenderness I find rare in this world.
    “What’s your brother do?” he asked the other day.
    “He was a famous journalist. He’s retired now.”
    “You see him much?”
    “Every day.”
    “I wish I was that close to my sister.”
    I left it at that. It was a pretty thought.
    I go to James’s window and point my face toward the moon, feeling its crystal, cool light and studying my reflection in the glass: a mirage dressed in white, the circle of my stethoscope shining, my face as faint as fog, my hair pulled back, my deep-set eyes, James’s eyes, shadowed like caves at the forest’s edge. I seem a girl at a dance, a picture in a locket, an image, frozen. I run my fingers over my name tag, tracing the letters and looking out over the city, James’s boyhood city, the city my mother, the “enchanting” Vera, escaped to on a summer night of rainstorms and lightning.

seven
    “Vera, what’s your story?”
    I yelled into the dark wind of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. Kurt accelerated and the bay pressed down in its arc over us. We raced toward the square of light at the tunnel’s end, the Impala roaring back into the day. I squinted in the sun; a spit of beach in the distance, the gray hulks of navy ships sailing heavy and low toward Norfolk. Vera stood up in the car like a lady general, holding on to the windshield, her black hair blowing as if painted against the sky. She screamed something into the wind, but I couldn’t hear what it was. She sat down and held my hand. Kurt reached for the radio, but Vera slapped him away and laughed and said let the day and the wind and the bay and the birds speak for themselves. Kurt shook his head and I sat between them on the front seat as we came off the bridge and the Impala, gas dropping toward E and temperature leaning toward H , rolled onto the sandy plains of Virginia.
    “My story is a long one, Jim.”
    That was all she said. She opened her purse and pulled the rearview mirror toward her, shading on lipstick and eyeliner, smoothing her hair, and disappearing behind her sunglasses like someone incognito. We drove a stretch of highway and came to a road of traffic lights leading toward Virginia Beach. You could smell summer: cotton candy, popcorn, french fries, snow cones, tanning oil, all mingling, metastasizing (a good dictionary word) around us like we were in another place, a new planet. The Jersey Shore near Philly was similar in summer, but it was more exotic in the South; it seemed summer was more at home here, more relaxed and welcoming. Kurtpulled into a 7-Eleven and bought us Slurpees, cola for me, cherry for Vera, and a lime for him. I listened to the people going in and