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The Woman Without A Shadow

John Paul Younes

    Isabelle watched the man in the dark blue suit, with his black hair slicked back and his face strong and chiseled. People who didn’t appear to know him were buying him drinks everywhere he went in the Iceberg. Women followed and clamored around him. It was a transparent, exciting sight. He wanted to buy weapons. He’d come from his skyscraper to meet with the owner. He’d looked in the owner’s eyes and demanded a fair price. Obeying the instincts of an arms dealer, the owner took the man to Lawton’s table.
    It was so blatant of the man in the suit. Isabelle couldn’t remember the last time she met anybody so arrogant they would commit a crime so obviously. As for Lawton, he was a known hired gun.
    The club had been Lawton’s refuge till now, hiding him like a terminal disease. Isabelle hated him for being able to hide in the shadows, while she had to hide without protection, in the limelight. She was also frightened that somebody as corrupt as Lawton would need shelter from someone so badly—the same person she was hiding from—that he wouldn’t even brag to her about it.
    One week ago, she paid Lawton her last few thousand to find her kidnapped children. He kept it and did nothing, saying if she trusted him enough to give him so much money, her “animal instinct” was off. She was still angry about that. No one else could help. She couldn’t go to the police. And Lawton stole her money during the same week she was homeless, looking for a place to live in the hardest city to find decent living.
    So she almost felt sorry for Lawton when she saw the man reach across the table and slam his head down on it.
    Isabelle looked over the length of the Iceberg. It was a dark, sweaty place, like a meatpacking plant that was old. The dancing bodies all shouted from inside the music—she could tell no one had noticed. She walked directly to the man at the table. Maybe he could help her. Lawton wasn’t moving.
    “Leave,” the man said, without looking up.
    “I saw what you did. Why did you do that?”
    “I got what I needed.” The man looked up at her, and she wished she had the same strength.
    “Which was?”
    “A name.” He turned and lifted one of Lawton’s arms, putting it under his head as if he were asleep.
    The Iceberg was new every night. Some of the worst moments of her life had happened there. But, just like everyone else, it kept pulling her back.
    And with each step she swallowed tears for the children she couldn’t find, the orphans she took in. And then she’d remember how they looked at the last moment, or later how their kidnapper laughed and she was terrified, or later that she might find someone twisted enough to help her find them. But every time she looked around the club she saw shadow faces full of promise until the lights swung around to show the hollow, the lost, staring blankly at her and in need of the same hope.
    Until tonight, she thought as she sat down across from the man. His hands were scarred, reminding her of the small scar that looked like a dimple on her left cheek. She had the feeling he might suddenly flip the table over and bolt. But he didn’t. He stared calmly at her. He was in command. She treasured people like that, because she was either in command or locked in a mood swing. Sitting across from him, it was easy for her to contemplate being loyal, but hardly faithful.
    She told him everything. How she found the orphans and adopted them. How they were kidnapped by a man named Sionis. “I only allowed myself twenty-four hours of madness,” she said in a high voice. Then she frowned and said more calmly, “I cried, I screamed, took a lot of Xanax, made myself sick,” and then lighthearted, in her high voice: “Now I’m done. I need your help, because I don’t have anyone else to ask, and he took all my money, Lawton did, please. I don’t know what to do.” She lit a cigarette. She twirled her hair around a finger because it would just never stay put.
    The man nodded. “The first night is always the worst.”
    “Did you lose someone?”
    There was a pause.
    “Sionis took his daughter, too,” the man said, making a gesture toward Lawton. The man explained how he tracked Lawton down, using a bullet casing, to the club. How Lawton confessed he was doing kills for Sionis, who held his daughter captive. Isabelle tried to listen closely despite the electronic music.
    And then, as if to twist her life even more, she realized she was relaxed for the first time in a week, and it was because of the man in the suit. She felt safe. She had spent many hours terrified of herself, not comfortable, never enjoying it. Just acting out a role and always stiff. She had a huge complex about the kidnapping and everyone assuming she invited the harm because of her crimes. She believed it would all end in isolation. But not anymore.
    There were many moments like this in the Iceberg—when someone came into her life to change something, to tell her something, and so forth. Through these experiences, she learned she always had hope; it’s not something anyone can acquire. She just needed to discover it. And like most things with her, being an avid Pandora’s box, once it was out in the open there would be no going back. Never. She loved being in touch with her power like this, it was an incredible feeling to own.
    “I can help you,” she said.
    The man narrowed his eyes. “How?”
    “Sionis. I know things.”
    The man paused again. Then he spoke slowly, his voice low.
    “Don’t try it.”
    “I swear on my children. I’ll help you.”
    The man’s eyes relaxed again.
    “But,” she said, “if I’m going to trust you, I need to know who you are.”
    He considered for a moment, then replied: “Someone who wants to get your children back.”
    Years later, she would long to be sitting at that table again with him, creating something together, out of God’s sight.
    She could tell something forced him to trust her. He had blue shadows under his eyes like she did. Now they matched each other stare for stare until the man spoke again.
    He knew of a park where kids made drum circles at night, providing adequate cover for them to meet. She knew the place. She’d been stealing from a nearby charity every month for the past year, always for abused women she knew, always savoring the steal for a few days before paying it forward, always thinking she’d help the women take their lives back, always believing the women wanted to take their lives back, always savoring the steal because she was afraid how little good it would actually do.
    The man requested she write down all information and meet him the following night. She assigned a time and offered to bring a gun, if he didn’t have one, so that he could kill Sionis. He refused because he never killed. Lawton groaned. Isabelle took a long pull on her cigarette and nodded at the man.
    Then he stood up and walked away, into the music and dancing bodies. She watched him go, flicked some ashes on Lawton, and went home.
    But she was in a bad state—depressed, with a week of little to no sleep. As soon as she lay down, she had nightmares. First they were about the children.
     Then they shifted to her pegged on the ground in an open field with crows attacking her, roaches crawling all over her and into the cuts from the crows. Isabelle opened her eyes, and her roommate was shaking her, doing what she could to wake her up.
    Isabelle stayed in her friend’s tiny, broken apartment. When she understood how bad the dream was and how trapped inside it she’d been, the dirty home seemed to glitter like a dirty diamond. The only time Isabelle ever came close to defining what it all meant for herself was during times of abuse. There was no chance for the impossible, no chance that—and, hopefully, she wasn’t the only one—she would ever compromise her potential if it meant dimming her shine, fading out. So this nightmare was a moment of glory. She was sure she was a heroine because she refused to be the victim in the dream.
    As for the man in the suit, who spoke from inside a cage like her and must carry just as much guilt, but who didn’t have a focus for his rage, because he couldn’t locate Sionis: she would help him with everything she had. He needed to redeem himself, and it was her golden opportunity to find her children.
    Isabelle ransacked the apartment, found a paper and pen, scribbled down every rumor, known associate, and statement made by or about Sionis in detail, providing her personal memories of how she felt during each encounter with him, rather than just describing the factual. She wrote for two hours. When she finished, she stared at her handgun on the dresser. She put it in her purse.
    Then she cried.

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