To Pull Off a Vanishing Act

Francis found it peculiar that the man had not moved from his spot at the bus stop. The traffic around surged in constant flux; the man sat perfectly still. Each time a bus pulled alongside the curb, the groups of waiting people would be recycled and whisked away; the man, centered on the bus-stop bench, would remain dutifully in place. He had been dropped there as a stone in water, constant ripples in the sea of movement all around, in the street and sidewalk, all seeming to emanate from the man, the inert center. His face still as a statue yet not lifeless, his arms stiff on each side, his legs trunks of rock holding steady to the ground. He wasn’t old; around thirty, yet through his blank expression and lack of movement he seemed to have the same somewhat unnerving sense of losing touch found in crazed old people during their final years.

All this Francis noticed through the window of a nearby restaurant. Each time a bus departed–leaving the man in its wake–kindled his curiosity. The man’s eyes were fixed an immeasurable distance away; this continued to occupy Francis’s mind. After lunch, he crossed the street and sat beside the man.

After a moment, a bus stopped. The door hissed open and the others at the bus stop boarded, sparing no notice for the two men left behind. The bus departed, leaving Francis and the man alone, side by side on the bus stop bench.

Francis glanced over, gently nudging the man’s arm.

“June and July; empty,” spouted the man. “April, August; wiped clean!”

“Beg pardon?” said Francis.

Onward the man spoke: “Calendar pages with each day detailed and planned out, tossed away. For life intervened, split it all in two. Now I’m left with the messy end of a messy divorce between my plans and I; I’m left in the dust, on the run, as good as dead, yet without a grave, so that I may wander the streets of the world half of what I was before!”

Francis didn’t know what to say, so stayed quiet. The man at first struck him as insane, yet that didn’t completely fit. There were undertones of hopelessness and loss in his voice and words, yet he spoke sensibly, albeit in a rambling and allegorical way.

The man continued: “First by train to San Francisco, then Lucy and I would board a ship across the pacific. Get off at Japan, then Korea, China. Tour through the middle east, to Turkey. We’d hide out there, disappear for a while. Maybe we’d see the Mediterranean, take a trip through Spain, France, Greece. See England and Germany. But all that gone, for my angel's wings were cut prematurely; leaving Lucy wingless left us–or now me–alone. We could have crossed the horizons together, but now no more; Abandoned, aborted, dropped, scrapped, thrown aside, recalled, rescinded, repealed, revoked, all gone!”

There was a hint of a tear in the corner of the man’s eyes. He wiped it aside, pausing from his speech to catch his breath and ground himself. Francis sprang upon the opportunity to try and help; the man did not seem completely insane–more depressed than anything–but sulking at a bus stop wouldn’t do him any good, and the constant traffic posed a constant threat to the man’s safety, especially in his mental state. Francis reached out, attempting to pull the man up.

The man shook his head and firmly pushed aside his hand. The resistance came as a mild surprise, though as Francis retreated his hand back into his coat pocket, he conceded to himself the strategy of gentle prodding was probably better suited for coaxing feeble old men than a person in their mid-thirties; besides, the man seemed somewhat grounded, and at the very least aware of his surroundings.

Instead, Francis resorted to words. “What’s your name?” he asked, almost wincing at his own tone; it gave the impression he was talking to a toddler.

“Elijah,” said the man, waving away the unintended insult. His expression now appeared more composed; it seemed the fit of insanity–though that seemed a harsh term–had passed. 

“Elijah,” echoed Francis. “Are you waiting for a bus?”

“Not particularly. I’m waiting on a person, actually, who told me they’d be here,” Elijah said, then at a questioning nod from Francis: “Lucy.”

“The same Lucy you would have gone on your world trip with?”

“The same.”

“And you… Broke up?”

Elijah laughed. “Oh, not that. Not that at all. It really is because she’s dead.”

Francis didn’t respond; it made sense, and in fact he had thought as much, but it was uncomfortable to hear it spoken aloud–and so casually too, though there were telltale hints of sadness in Elijah’s tone.

“I’ll bet I look insane,” Elijah said. “Waiting for a dead person, ranting on and on. But it’s hard to adjust, to adapt. It's like losing an eye. Half your perspective, severed, leaving you realizing all you have left is only half of a whole.” He smiled. “I’m probably not helping my case with the somewhat brutal eye analogy.”

Francis smiled in return.

“Though I guess it’s not entirely crazy to call a sad man insane,” Elijah said.

Francis noted an underlying vein of solemnness in his words.

“Care for lunch?” Elijah offered.

“Just had it fifteen minutes ago.”

“Coffee, then?”

“Sure.”

The pair sat in Elijah's apartment, the small space matched with equally minimalist decoration. Packed in between blank white walls was a bed, a table, two chairs, and a small kitchen. A window let in some natural sunlight, though since the apartment building had been tucked in between similarly tall and gray high-rises, whatever rays of sun made it through gave little in the way of usable light.

They sat in silence for a while, occasionally sipping their coffees. The room had been organized in such a way that the table and accompanying two chairs were framed by the window; the view was pleasant, yet not too much noise made its way upwards from street level.

Elijah seemed much more balanced, but still, an uneasy sense about his demeanor couldn’t be shaken. “Sorry about the mess,” he had said when they first entered, although besides a somewhat unkempt bed, it proved spotless. Francis had hung his coat on the seat while Elijah had grabbed coffee, then they had both sat.

A car on the street swerved violently to the curb, honking loudly. They both absently watched. 

“You’re in her seat,” Elijah said quietly, then, as Francis began to rise: “Don’t worry about it. Just remembering.”

“If you don't mind me asking,” Francis asked, “How long have you been… living alone for?”

“Lucy died two weeks ago. And please, you don’t have to dodge around it; no use in avoiding it.”

At the street level, in the wake of the swerving car, people had gotten out, and had begun shouting rapidly to each other. 

Unprompted, Elijah continued. “She had been out of town. Today we’d made plans to meet at the bus stop, and then later we’d take a cab to the airport. Get away from everything.”

“And you canceled all your trips?”

“What’s the point in going? I’d rather wait it out here. Without Lucy, there’s no purpose, no reason to run away from everything. Because what future would I be running toward?”

“Well, you have to do something with your life. Leave your past behind.”

Elijah chuckled. “Easier said than done.”

Out the window, they watched the people–the same ones who had exited the swerving car–enter the building.

Abruptly, Elijah rose. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but the small space is killing me. Care to take a walk?”

“Sure.”

Francis rose, following Elijah out the door and into the hallway. The elevator was occupied; Elijah noticed and stepped aside into a room with stairs leading to the bottom.

At the bottom stairwell, the door opened just before they reached it. One of the people that they had seen on the street level from the window pushed past Francis. Elijah quickly averted his gaze. The man passed by and rushed up the staircase.

As they left the apartment building, Francis asked, “Who was that?”

“Who?”  Elijah said, not looking back.

“The man we just passed; you clearly know him.”

Elijah shrugged. “Never seen him before.”

Probing for a good follow-up question, Francis reached down to his coat pocket to shield his hand from the crisp afternoon. But the pocket wasn’t there; it still hung on the back of the chair in Elijah’s apartment.

Francis stopped walking. Elijah slowed, hesitated, and stopped. “What happened?” he said, seemingly with a forced patience.

“My coat,” Francis said, “It’s still at your apartment; I'll run back and grab it, I’m fairly sure I saw you enter the key code.”

“We can just grab your coat once we’re back. We’ll go on a short walk, if it’s too cold.”

“Don't worry; it'll only take me a moment,” said Francis, and by now he had already begun walking back towards the apartment building.

He pushed through the glass doors and into the lobby. In truth, he didn’t care about the coat. More intriguing was the motive for Elijah’s stark change in urgency. He hadn’t any reason to rush out the building until the people from the swerving car entered, people he seemed to know–or at least knew to avoid.

He took the elevator. On the third story, he came to Elijah's door and plugged in the key code–

–only to find the entire place completely upended. The mattress had been overturned, chairs were tossed aside, the window curtains pulled down and ripped apart. The bed sheets showed signs of being thoroughly searched. The empty coffee cups from a few minutes before, still with faint steam, had been closely inspected; evident by the swabs and notes which lay beside them. There were noises of further ransacking from the kitchen, which paused upon the whine of the door opening.

Instinctively, Francis ducked to the side and began casually typing in a neighbor's key code. He stood there a moment, shell shocked, before a person–one from the swerving car–exited Elijah's apartment; evidently, the one previously occupied with searching through Elijah's apartment.

He produced a gold badge from his jacket pocket. “Police. Did you open this door?”

Francis stood dumbfounded for a moment, then, groping for words, tried to process his options: say yes, probably get taken in for questioning; the right thing to do. On the other hand, say no, and possibly protect Elijah? Of course, he had no guarantee that Elijah hadn’t strayed into the wrong. But the greater picture remained incomplete, at least from Francis’s perspective.

The police officer nodded expectantly. Panicking, Francis shook his head. a moment later, he added, “Although sometimes the doors don’t close all the way if you don’t lock them properly. At least mine do; I’d guess bad hinges.”

The police officer didn't seem utterly convinced, but also didn’t seem to regard Francis as particularly important. He continued, changing the subject. “Do you know the person who lives here?”

“I've seen him before, but never talked to him,” Francis said, shocked at his own words.

The police officer nodded. “You can go now.”

Francis, still without a coat, walked back to the elevator, stunned. It dawned on him that he had just lied to a police officer. He knew this in of itself to be against the law. Beyond that, the room was filled with evidence pointing to his involvement.

He'd have to right his wrong, he decided; go back, apologize, and explain he’d panicked.

Except there was still Elijah. Deciding in the moment, Francis stepped into the opening elevator doors.

As Francis came to where he had turned back previously, he found no sign of Elijah in the sea of people walking the sidewalk. He continued on. A few storefronts down, Elijah popped out a shop door, and immediately picked up a brisk pace away from the apartment building.

“What is going on?” Francis demanded, matching Elijah’s speed.

“Listen, were they in my room?” Elijah, speaking in a low tone, asked.

“Yes. And they were the police.”

“That they were. You see now, what Lucy and I were trying to get away from?”

“Why? What did you do?”

“Nothing. No crimes, I swear. But we were involved with people. Lucy used to have a bad habit, a habit which required under-the-table dealings–not strictly illegal, mind you–so we had to bend the rules a bit. But they got to Lucy first once we fell behind on our payments, in order to finance our trip away from here.”

A moment later, a police siren blared from a few blocks back. They both glanced back. Police cars were speeding down the street towards them.

“Look, you've been nice. When the police get to you, tell them I threatened you. Tell them you got punched by the crazy guy.” And Elijah did, square in the jaw.

Francis toppled back. It hadn’t been hard, but he made no attempt to get up. He noted that Elijah was running. Then he became aware of red and blue flashing past. A moment later, an officer helped him to his feet.

“When you have a chance,” the officer said, “we'd like you to swing by a police station for some questions.”

Francis nodded blankly. The siren slowly got further and further away.

He had done what Elijah had recommended, explaining he had been manipulated and threatened. The interrogator had been easy on him; it seemed he noticed Francis remained shaken up. More questions might follow later. For now, he sat at the same bus stop where he had first seen Elijah.

He sat back, noticing his fingers brush against something tucked inside the bench. Pulling it out, he found it to be a slip of paper. He read:

To Lucy, if you find this, somehow, after death, or maybe a friend, or someone who knows Lucy. I’m sorry we couldn’t make it out in time. I’m compromised. I’ll wait it out here. All our trips have been canceled. It’s only a matter of time before the police trace everything back to you, and from there me. I’ll wait here for you, and when you don’t come, I’ll let myself be taken. Or maybe I’ll try to escape–I don’t know really–but this is my last message. Make sure to destroy this note. Goodbye.

-E

Francis crumpled, tore, and scattered the paper in separate trash cans across the city.