“—Pfeiffer of Grafton, Vermont, yes.” Brian would often refer to him that way, as if somehow the full description made Scott a little less real, a bit more like a character in a comedy sketch. Scott Pfeiffer of Grafton, Vermont.
“I took a bunch of pictures of him.”
“You what?”
“Right?” he said. “I told you it was definitely stalking.”
“You said it was kinda stalking.”
“Used a zoom lens. I used to stand in front of my bathroom mirror in Providence and hold the pictures up beside my face—full-on, left profile, right profile, chin down, chin up. And, I swear, the only difference was that his forehead was maybe a tenth of an inch taller and he didn’t have this bump.”
The bump on the bridge of Brian’s nose was the result of a fifth-grade hockey injury that relocated some of the cartilage there. It was only visible in profile, never head-on, and even then one had to be looking for it.
Christmas, his sophomore year, Brian followed Scott Pfeiffer home to Grafton, Vermont.
“Your family didn’t miss you on Christmas?” she asked.
“Not that I ever heard.” He spoke in that flat tone—dead tone, would be the less charitable description—he used whenever he discussed his family.
Scott Pfeiffer of Grafton, Vermont, had the kind of life Brian probably never would have coveted if he hadn’t seen it up close. Scott was working full-time at Dom’s Pizza to put himself through Johnson & Wales, where he was majoring in restaurant management, while Brian majored in international finance at Brown, lived off a trust annuity from his grandparents, and had no idea what his tuition was, only that his parents must have paid it on time because he never heard otherwise.
Scott’s father, Bob Pfeiffer, was the butcher at the local supermarket, and his mother, Sally, was the town crossing guard. They also served as the treasurer and vice-president, respectively, of the Windham County Rotary Club. And once a year they drove two hours to Saratoga Springs, New York, and stayed in the same motel where they’d spent their honeymoon.
“How much do you know about these people?” Rachel asked.
“You learn a lot when you stalk someone.”
He used to watch the family and pray for a scandal. “Incest,” he admitted, “or for Bob to get caught grabbing some undercover cop’s Johnson in a public restroom. I would have taken embezzlement, though I don’t know what you’d embezzle from a supermarket meat locker. Steaks, I guess.”
“Why would you pray for that?”
“They were too perfect. I mean, they lived in this cute fucking colonial right on the town common. White, of course, picket fence, wraparound porch with, yes, an actual porch swing. They sat out there on Christmas Eve in their sweaters, brought out little space heaters, and sat drinking hot chocolates. Told each other stories. Laughed. At one point the daughter, she was like ten, sang a Christmas carol and they all applauded. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Sounds sweet.”
“It was hideous. Because if someone can be that happy? That perfect? What’s that say about the rest of us?”
“But there are people out there like that,” she said.
“Where?” he said. “I never met them. You?”
She opened her mouth and then closed it. Of course she hadn’t, but why did she think she had? She’d always thought of herself as a fairly skeptical, if not downright cynical, person. And after Haiti, she would have sworn she’d been stripped of the last vestiges of sentimentality or romanticism. But buried somewhere deep in her brain lay the belief that perfect, happy—and perfectly happy—people walked this earth.
No such beast, her mother had often reminded her. Happiness, her mother used to say, was an hourglass with a crack in it.
“But you said yourself,” she said to Brian, “they were happy.”
“They certainly seemed to be.”
“But then . . .”
He smiled. Triumphantly but with a whiff of despair. “Bob always stopped off at this little Scottish pub on the way home. One day I sat beside him. He gave me this huge double take, of course, and told me how much I resembled his son. I acted surprised. Acted surprised again when the bartender said the same thing. Bob bought me a drink, I bought Bob a drink, and so on. He asked me who I was, so I told him. Told him I went to school at Fordham, not Brown, but otherwise I stuck pretty close to the truth. Bob told me he wasn’t a big fan of New York City. Too much crime, too many immigrants. By the third drink, ‘immigrants’ became ‘wetbacks’ and ‘towel heads.’ By the fifth drink, he was on about the ‘niggers’ and the ‘fags.’ Oh, and the dykes. Hated lesbians, our Bob did. Said if his daughter ever turned into one he’d, lemme see if I get this quote right, superglue her cunt. Turned out Bob had fascinating ideas on corporal punishment that he’d been employing for years, first on Scott and then on Nannette, that was the daughter’s name. Once ol’ Bob got talking, he couldn’t stop. At one point, I realized that everything that had left his mouth for fifteen minutes was repulsive. Bob was a scared-shitless coward of a monster hiding behind his impeccable blandness.”
“Whatever happened to Scott?”
Brian shrugged. “He never went back to school. Probably lack of finances. Last I checked, and this was fifteen years ago, he was working at one of the Grafton B&Bs.”
“And you never introduced yourself?”
“God no.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “Once I was sure his life was no better than mine, I lost all interest.”
So, coincidence of coincidences, Rachel had just come across Scott Pfeiffer of Grafton, Vermont. Maybe he was in town for a food and beverage services conference. Maybe he’d made something of himself, owned a small chain of quality inns across New England. She wished the best for Scott, after all. Even though she’d never met him, he’d become part of the fabric of her memory and she hoped his life worked out.
But how could they both be wearing the same clothes?
That was the detail she couldn’t dismiss no matter how hard she tried. Accepting that Brian’s double or near double had happened to be in the same city of two million was easy enough, she supposed, but to swallow that both men wore a thin copper-colored raincoat over a black cotton pullover with the collar turned up, a white T-shirt, and midnight blue jeans, that required the kind of faith religions were founded on.
Wait, she asked herself as she turned up Commonwealth toward her building, how did you see the blue jeans? There was an SUV between you and his legs.