Apparitions

By Robert N. Chan

Jed Caplan, a lawyer who has written a stack of unpublished novels, is unnerved when he encounters one of his fictional characters in the flesh. Then his most fascinating creation, a brilliant and seductive thrill-killer, takes a romantic interest in him. Intoxicated by their kinky sex, Jed stops caring whether she is a figment of his imagination or a living psychopath. Then she vanishes along with all evidence that she ever existed. Have the pressures of divorce, fatherhood, and his cutthroat law practice driven Jed crazy? Or is he the target of a vengeful conspiracy? He runs from one false lead to another until he discovers the horrifying truth, and realizes he must bend it to his own advantage. By slaying his own demons, Jed reveals the dark underside of the glittering world of the New York legal elite and comes to understand true love.

Apparitions may be the funniest thriller of the millennium, or it might merely be the wisest, sexiest and most provocative book of the century. The critics are split. You decide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 30, 2004
• ISBN: 9780595769483

Robert N. Chan

Robert N. Chan, a founder of the New York City boutique law firm, Ferber Chan Essner & Coller, LLP has been litigating for thirty-five years with appalling success. His six prior novels—Apparitions, Axe of God,, Science Fiction, Bad Memory, and Painting A Burning House—have been hailed as transformative underground classics of unparalleled brilliance…and people actually enjoyed them. Visit www.robertnchan.com

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

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At five-forty-five on Saturday morning, I, as usual, let myself into my old apartment. My lawyer had told me it was rare for an ex to have keys to his former spouse’s abode, and that I should view it as a testament to Suzanne’s respect for my integrity. But all it demonstrated to me was that she liked to sleep late and couldn’t get a babysitter that early.

Will woke around six. After our cuddle, story and breakfast, he insisted we play backgammon and bet.

We can enjoy the game without playing for money, I said.

Mommy’s right. You’re the cheapest man in the world.

As if on cue, Suzanne emerged from her bedroom, looking irritat-ingly beautiful. Like the star of an old movie, lit more brightly than the supporting players, she appeared to be larger and brighter than life and strutting across a stage set created just for her.

Isn’t he, Mommy?

I glared at her. Well? While I might have been stingy with myself, I was generous with others, her and him in particular.

She turned on the TV, the Today Show. I shut it off. She’d had the damn television on almost continually since we’d returned from our honeymoon, and by mid-marriage, she couldn’t fall asleep without it blaring. I now didn’t own a television.

I’m going back to sleep, she said. You two have to work out your problems on your own. She walked away. If only one of you was mature enough to work them out without waking me.

The effort to disguise from Will how angry I was caused my lower back to spasm.

Excuse me a second, Will, I said, getting up to follow her.

What are you doing? She whispered loudly enough for him to hear and think what she was saying was really important. "You spend so little time with him already. I would’ve thought you’d want at least to be with him when you’re here. Instead you leave him alone so you can chat with me. All he wants is to play a game with his daddy. Is that so terrible?"

So little time? I screamed.

Daddy, please stop it. Will came running in, tripping on the uncuffed legs of his flannel pajamas. We don’t have to play for money if you don’t want to.

Set up yet again. She had the inside track with Will, and I could never win, because Suzanne didn’t care if Will lost. My only option was to absorb her blows and rationalize it as ‘taking the moral high ground,’ a position I found to be tediously unscenic.

How ‘bout if we play Nok-Hockey? I asked, tousling his Suzanne-like blonde hair.

He slid out from under my hand. Sure.

We played terribly. As usual, I tried to keep it close but still let him win. However, I came to the crushing realization that, sensing that I was still upset, he was trying to do the same for me. My relationship with him—not my deteriorating law practice or my feeble attempts to write a publishable novel—needed to be my first priority. My frustration with Suzanne was knocking around my mind like a belt buckle in an otherwise empty dryer.

Will, taking a difficult side shot, scored a goal. Did you see that? he shouted. The puck went like this. He ran into a wall, spun, ricocheted into the couch, then dove under a chair, which presumably represented the goal. We both laughed. My laughter sounded odd to me. Then I realized it had been some time since I’d heard it. That might have been a crushing realization, if I hadn’t already been pulverized into a fine sand. My divorce and deteriorating law practice had taken a toll on me. I’d reached the age where one doesn’t bounce back so quickly, but I was due for an upturn soon.

You guys need to get ready to leave, Suzanne said from the bedroom as if both Will and I were seven years old. We still had over an hour before his soccer game, but hearing us having fun compelled her to make a pre-emptive strike.

Will sprang to his feet and pulled on his jersey. I helped him with his shin guards, then packed some pretzels and Gatorade. How, I wondered, had Gatorade become the drink of choice among young boys? Will and his friends drank it not just during breaks from playing sports but as often as their parents would let them. It was served at parties instead of juice and soda.

Bye, Mommy, he called.

Will, Suzanne said as if his name had three i’s and three l’s.

He walked into the bedroom for their good-bye ritual, which—with its alternating waves, hugs and kisses—had become as detailed and stylized as a Japanese tea ceremony. I considered it a way for her to hold on to him. She rationalized it as a way to help him ‘separate’ from her. However, he hadn’t had separation problems since the third week of pre-school. Except for a reprise the middle of his second year, when our divorce threw him into a six-month funk.

Whose view was true? Both and neither. Astrophysicists claim there are ten dimensions in the universe. There are at least as many in interpersonal relationships, but men are equipped to comprehend only three and women only five. I learned, from my experience as a litigator, that both sides always believe themselves to be right. Humans have an extraordinary capacity for self-righteousness. While the generally accepted view is that the ‘truth’ lies somewhere between the extremes,

I’d come to realize that often there was either no such thing as ‘The Truth’ or, even more disconcerting, there were multiple truths.

My cellphone rang. Peg Stone, one of my two best friends. What are you guys up to after soccer today?

A Columbia football game, I said, trying for an upbeat tone.

What’s the matter? She had the unnerving ability to read my moods and even my thoughts. Although lately that was something bothering me was a pretty easy call.

Suzanne got on my case, but really it’s nothing.

What, Peg’s having another romantic crisis, and you need to rush over to take care of her? Suzanne screamed from the bedroom, as if I were in the habit of abandoning Will for Peg. How she even knew it was Peg on the phone was beyond me. Perhaps she’d perceived it in one of the other dimensions.

You’ve got to do something about this blue period of yours, Peg said.

Hey, good idea. Wish I’d thought of that.

Jed, it’s been what, two years since you so much as kissed a woman?

Don’t know. I’m not keeping score. Actually she was quite wrong. It had only been 711 days, but maybe a closed-mouthed kiss didn’t count.

And like a year and a half since you’ve written anything? At least writing gave you an emotional life even if it all just took place in your head.

Will came into the living room and picked up his Game Boy. Peg, I’ve got to go. Will’s acting up. I pointed to him, and he started jumping around and reciting choice phrases from Sponge Bob at high volume.

Call me later.

Later. After hanging up, I said to Will, Come on. Let’s go.

Jed, before you leave come in a sec, Suzanne said.

Recognizing Suzanne’s too casual tone, I knew I was in for another one of her lectures. Will, put your shoes on. I’ll be right back.

Look, I’m sorry about pouncing on you before, she said. It’s just that you’ve been so damn frustrating lately.

Me? I pointed to my chest.

You don’t do anything but work and hang out with Will.

Seeing that you’re the prime beneficiary of both—

You’re making me feel guilty about our… Do to her Catholic upbringing, she had trouble saying divorce, although doing it had come all too easy to her, in my view.

Don’t feel guilty. I do plenty of stuff. I had dinner with Lonny just a few weeks ago. Lonny Fiedler was my other best friend.

Christ, that’s worse than nothing.

She had a point there.

You need to move out of that mausoleum, start dating.

You’re starting to sound like Peg.

What about her? You could do a lot worse.

I did do a lot worse. I regretted saying that as soon as the words were out of my mouth, so I smiled as if I were joking.

Maybe so, but you can’t go on as you’ve been. It’s starting to affect Will.

She’d used her weapon of mass destruction, and I was unable to respond. I pointed to the door and said, Will and I have to go find a level playing field.

* * * *

After soccer and a healthy McDonalds lunch, we took the subway to the northern tip of Manhattan. We got off the train and followed the crowd, what there was of it. There were enough bare-midriffed college girls to meet my aesthetic standards. Not that I’d ever consider doing anything with them, and not that what I’d consider would make any difference. At some point during the previous decade, I had become invisible to women under thirty. It was as if we were different species, incapable of mating by definition.

Go, Princeton, Will said.

At long last, sir, can it be that there is not a single ray of hope for you? I asked.

He parroted my words with an equally dramatic intensity. I wasn’t much of a sports fan, but Will’s enthusiasm for it had reawakened my own, and mine had then further inspired his.

The Columbia Lions are going to eat up your little Princeton Tigers, I said, although I hadn’t cared enough to go to a Columbia game the entire time I attended its law school.

Yeah, right. The Tigers will cut their manes. He smiled, deservedly proud of that one.

Columbia’s Wein Stadium had about fifteen percent of the seating capacity of the hundred-and-seven thousand seat University of Michigan’s Big House, where neither I, Peg nor Lonny had ever missed a game. Even at its puny size, however, it hadn’t sold out in years. Seen through Will’s eyes, though, it was impressive. He scanned the place, taking in the bands, the cheerleaders, the TV cameras and the electronic scoreboard.

The game had already started, so we had to settle for seats on the forty yard-line. Will was so transfixed by the spectacle that I was able to grab several kernels of his popcorn without the normal howl of protest.

There was a stirring to my left, as two people, balancing cups of beer and hot dogs on cardboard trays, took seats next to me. I turned toward them and froze. It wasn’t that there was anything intrinsically frightening about the middle-aged man with the goatee and bad toupee or the decades-younger striking redhead with midnight-blue eyes, but I had an eerie feeling that I knew who they were.

I laughed at myself. Peg’s theory that I’d created an inner fantasy world during my writing period, had apparently resonated in my mind and emerged as a bizarre delusion. I directed my attention to the game, where the Columbia quarterback was sacked, to Will’s vociferous approval. I looked back at the newcomers. The man drew an annoyed look from his companion, when he sat and arranged his refreshments without bothering to help her with hers first. She stuck her tray in his face. He took it. She sat.

Did you see that, Daddy? A thirty-three-yard punt-return. Will cupped his hands around his mouth. Go, Tigers! Boo, Lions. He looked over to gauge my reaction, then did it again.

My new neighbor said to his companion, Columbia’s already down by two touchdowns. With all the upheaval in the world, it’s nice to see there are still some concrete eternals on which the basic order of things can comfortably repose.

His formal, almost scripted, manner of speaking was disconcertingly familiar. I was becoming concerned.

It’s early yet, she said with an apparent lack of interest.

The redhead said, Gideon, that little boy looks just like Jeff s son Adam.

There was a muted cheer from the Columbia fans, and, in its aftermath, I decided that I hadn’t heard her right.

Her companion, checking the screen on his cellphone, didn’t respond.

And him, she pointed to me. He looks a little like Jeff.

Gideon looked. Come on, Lorraine. This one’s shorter, thinner and balder. Jeff was a champion shot-putter. A sixteen-pound shot could put that guy.

I must have heard him wrong. Jeff Cahn, the star litigator who gave up the law to write fiction in my unpublished novel, The Law Is A Jealous Mistress, was an idealized version of me. His son, Adam, was Will dead-on. Perhaps that was why it hurt so much when the one agent I had persuaded to read it rejected my manuscript because she found the characters to be ‘unappealing.’

I said to them, Excuse me, but you look like lawyers at Fein Phillips & Cahn, which was the fictional firm in Jealous Mistress.

The woman tilted her head and squinted as if trying to place me. Then she gave me a tight smile and extended her hand. Lorraine Schultz.

Jed Caplan, I said.

The man quaffed his beer. Having established the relative importance of his refreshment and me, he said, You look like an emaciated and syncopated version of a friend of mine. It’s as if he’d fallen into a trash compactor in his formative years.

Hearing him use the vocabulary and phraseology of the Gideon I’d created, I realized I might have been guilty of overwriting. No. It’s hardly unusual for a lawyer to be a pompous windbag.

Lorraine rested her hand possessively on Gideon’s thigh. If they actually were my creations—which, in spite of the startling similarities, I knew they couldn’t be—they’d already begun their affair. That meant I’d caught them approximately mid-book, because by the end they weren’t speaking, and in the beginning their relationship was strictly professional.

Just curious, I asked the guy, which client you charging the tickets to, McIntosh or Zuckerman? Gideon, based loosely on my friend Lonny, was a thoroughly corrupt divorce lawyer who rarely paid for anything with his own money.

That’s your business? he asked, a response that was perfectly in character; he wasn’t the least bit thrown or offended by the question.

Everything’s my business; I created you, I said, playing along.

Well, you did one helluva job. I’ll say that for you.

Who are you talking to, Daddy? Will asked without taking his eyes off the field.

Some lawyers I know.

Why didn’t you introduce me?

You hate it when I introduce you to strangers.

I hate it more when you don’t. Mommy says you have to pay attention to me, not lawyers. What if someone kidnapped me while you were talking? Would that make you happy? What would you tell Mommy?

Okay—

Oh, no! Will screamed. Can you believe he dropped that pass? He glanced at me. "I could’ve caught it. Like, duh, even you could’ve caught it." A cloud passed across his face.

What?

Who were you talking to?

I told you—

Daddy, no one’s there. His eyes were wide with concern.

I looked over. Lorraine and Gideon had left, if they were ever there. My gut clenched. I forced a smile. Columbia’s about to come back.

Yeah, right, Will said.

I buried my head in my hands, as if dismayed by Will. A sheen of sweat had formed on my forehead, and my temples throbbed. There could have been many rational explanations, but as I struggled to come up with one, my head hurt and anxiety fluttered in my gut. My body was telling me that it wasn’t about to be persuaded no matter how clever my mind was.

I scanned the stadium. I saw them leaving. That explained why Will hadn’t seen them. I took a deep breath and told myself that their freaky similarity to characters of mine was an isolated occurrence that didn’t need an explanation. If it happened again, I’d have a problem. Pretending that nothing was wrong, other than that my law school alma mater was getting trounced, gave me stomach cramps. I already had a problem, and my gut knew it.

CHAPTER 2

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Sensing her enter the restaurant, I spun around on my bar stool. She was elegant, dazzling and sexy. However, those qualities alone, admirable though they were, wouldn’t have drawn my attention away from my Bushmill’s and my melancholy reverie. What focused my concentration was that she was a dead ringer for Tanya Raskolnikov.

I had created Tanya to embody my erotic fantasies and to be turned on to my particular qualities and peculiar quirks. Well, not my traits exactly. Technically speaking, they were those of Jake Cain, Making The Cut’s main character, but Jake was as close to the real me as I was. As I stared at this woman, the feeling grew that she was my creation come to life to rescue me from my doldrums. Rationally, of course, I knew she wasn’t one of my fictional characters any more than the Gideon and Lorraine look-alikes had been, but I was intrigued. So much so that I wanted to meet her. I hadn’t been that excited in months.

I speculated that the reason I’d never before seen anyone who looked quite like her was that I didn’t get out much. It could have been that New York was chock full of six-foot-tall, green-eyed, copper-haired Eurasians who moved like snow leopards and who, except for their exquisite breasts, had the bodies of principal dancers in the Saint Petersburg Ballet. And why wouldn’t such women frequent restaurants as unfashionable as Terry’s, which Zagat’s New York City Restaurants had described as so non-descript that there is some question about whether it’s even there at all?

I caught her eye, motioned for her to come over, then patted the cracked vinyl covering of the stool next to mine. It wasn’t the smoothest of pick-up moves, but maybe she had stopped into Terry’s for the express purpose of meeting a short, balding, middle-aged man wearing an off-the-rack business suit. If so, it was just the right move at just the right time. Theoretical physicists, of the string theory persuasion, postulate that there are an infinite number of universes. Infinity is so unimaginably huge that there could reasonably be five or even six universes where fictional characters come alive to rescue their creators.

The Gideon and Lorraine pretenders had unsettled me, but it didn’t truly matter to me if they existed or not. I wanted Tanya to be real. She strutted over to me, and every eye, regardless of whether it contained XX or XY chromosomes, was riveted on her.

Tanya Raskolnikov, I said, extending my hand, it’s great to meet you. While there might have been many women matching her physical description, it did seem improbable that more than one of them was named Tanya Raskolnikov. And if so, vive la similarité.

She didn’t so much shake my hand as caress and massage it.

I got the bartender’s attention by sticking my head in front of Tanya’s. Please bring my friend a double Bushmill’s and a side of ice water.

I deserve a better opening line, Tanya said, not the least bit taken aback that I knew her name and what she drank.

Playing it out just to see where it took me, I said, I’m your creator. I fixed her with a stare from my ice blue eyes, the way Jake Cain would have. I don’t need to perform for you.

She tilted her head, then crinkled her nose and razor-thin eyebrows. Creator? Hmm. Better, but you need a strong follow-up. Turn the bartender into a pillar of salt, toss off a thunderbolt or two. At least cure a cripple or something.

The bartender, staring at her as if possessed, brought over her drink. She over-tipped him with a cornea-burning smile.

I’m a writer. You’re one of my characters, I said, looking at her straight on. I know all there is to know about you.

Everything? She licked her lips. I doubt that. There’s new stuff all the time.

The one literary agent I’d managed to cajole into reading Making The Cut told me that Tanya was ‘cartoonish and one-dimensional.’ But as single dimensions go hers was a pretty damn good one.

You were born in Siberia, about four hundred miles northwest of Vladivostok. Your father, an alcoholic former Olympic boxer, had been sent there for trying to defect. Your mother was an Inuit mine worker. Shortly after you were born, he killed her in a drunken fit and escaped with you in a small boat across the Bering Sea to Alaska. After putting yourself through college, working on the R-rated fringes of the sex-industry; you now design computer guidance systems for McDonald-Douglas—something you initially got into so no one could say that you were no rocket scientist. It sounded over-the-top to me as I rattled it off, but it had worked in Making The Cut. Or perhaps there had been a reason other than bad luck why I couldn’t get it published.

Lately, I’ve been telling people I grew up in Brighton Beach. She knocked back about a quarter of her drink in one gulp. Anyway, that’s all superficial stuff. Her emerald green eyes grew with interest. If you really are who you claim to be, and on that I’m agnostic tending toward atheistic, you should be able to come up with more intimate and entertaining details. She leaned her lithe torso toward me so our shoulders touched.

To regain control after the dizzying thrill of that contact, I poured water into my Bushmill’s, swirled it and took a sip. My having created her should have been enough to capture her interest. Who among us would turn down our creator? Had endowing her with free will been a mistake? No, the object of my erotic desire had to be intelligent and witty, and I had to appeal to her on that level as well.

You do know that you find short, bald, smart Jewish guys to be amazingly sexy? I said.

For the same reason that prostitutes in seventeenth-century Paris used to walk around with monkeys on their shoulders? You know, to look better by comparison.

I smiled. I loved the way she put words together. Some guys are breast men, others leg men, but I was a word man. The physical stuff, while important particularly when perfectly presented as in Tanya’s case, was never enough to stupefy me into infatuation. Oh sure, I wanted to find a good person who loved and cared for me and whom I loved and cared for. In spite of