Sliver Of Truth

Of course, Max always had a staff of people following him around, cleaning up after him, but he held those people to such exacting standards that turnover was always high. Personal assistants, maids, cooks, came and went, a parade of polite and distant strangers, always nervous around Max, always replaced in a matter of weeks or months. Only Clara, who acted as maid and part-time cook and sometimes babysitter for me and Ace, stayed through the years, never seemed rattled by Max or his demands. What did this say about Max? I didn’t know. It was just something that came to mind as I sifted through the apartment. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe nothing did.

After a while, frustrated and unsatisfied, I sat on Max’s bed, a gigantic king swathed in 1,000-count Egyptian cotton sheets and a rich chocolate-brown raw silk comforter, piled high with coordinating shams and throw pillows. I leaned back against the plush surface and tried to think about what I was doing there, what I was looking for, and what I intended to do once I found it.

After a minute, I got up again and walked over to the recessed shelving in the opposite wall that held a large flat-screen television, another legion of photographs (mainly of me), objects he’d collected in his travels around the world-a jade elephant, a large Buddha, some tall giraffes carved delicately in a deep black wood. My eyes fell on a familiar object, a hideous pottery ashtray formed by a child’s fingers-a pinch pot, I think we called them in kindergarten. It was painted in a medley of colors-purple, hot pink, evergreen, orange. In the center, I had painted, I LOVE MY UNCEL MAX, and my name was carved on the underside. I didn’t remember making it but I did remember it always being on Max’s desk in his study. I wondered how it had wound up in here. I lifted the piece of pottery and held it in my hand, felt a wave of intense sadness. As I was about to put it back down, I saw that it had sat on top of a small keyhole. I quickly searched the shelving for a drawer or some clue as to what might open if a key was inserted, but it seemed to be a keyhole to nothing. I resisted the urge to hurl the little piece of pottery against the wall.

I walked back over to the bed and flopped myself down on it.

That’s when I smelled it. The lightest scent of male cologne. Not a sense memory of Max but an actual scent in the air, or possibly in the sheets. It made my heart thump. I got up quickly from the bed, my eyes scanning the room for something out of place. The small clock beside the bed suddenly seemed very loud, the street noise a distant thrum.

A haunting is a subtle thing. It’s not flying dishes and bleeding walls. It’s not a mournful moaning down a dark, stone hallway. It’s odors and shades of light, a nebulously familiar form in a photograph, the glimpse of a face in a crowd. These nuances, these moments are no less horrifying. They strike the same blow to the solar plexus, trace the same cold finger down your spine.

As I stood there, my nose to the air, my limbs frozen, I took in the scent of him. Max. Whatever the alchemy of his skin and his cologne, it could be no one else. Like my father, rainwater and Old Spice, or my mother, Nivea cream and something like vinegar…unmistakable, unforgettable. I listened hard to the silence. A sound, soft and rhythmic, called me from where I stood. I walked over the carpet and into the master bath. Another huge space, embarrassingly opulent with granite floors and walls, brushed chrome fixtures, a Jacuzzi tub and steam-room shower. I paused in the doorway and noticed that the shower door and the mirrors were lightly misted. I walked over and opened the glass door to the shower. The giant waterfall showerhead that hung centered from the ceiling held tiny beads of water in each pore, coalescing in the center and forming one enormous tear that dripped into the drain below. My mind flipped through a catalog of reasons why this shower might have been recently used. This was a secure, doorman-guarded building. My parents, the only other people with access, were both away. I reached in and closed the tap; the dripping ceased.

My breathing was deep and there was a slight shake to my hands from adrenaline. Once a month, I knew, a service came in to clean. But I was sure they’d already been here this month, and I’d never known them to leave a faucet to run or surfaces wet.

I went to the cordless phone by Max’s bed to dial the doorman.

“Yes, Ms. Jones,” said Dutch, the eternal doorman, whom I’d passed on my way in.

“Has someone been in this apartment today?”

“Not on my watch. I’ve been here since five A.M.,” he said. I heard him flipping through pages. “No visitors last night or all day yesterday. Not in the log.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Something wrong?”

“No. Nothing. Thanks, Dutch,” I said. I pressed the button to end the call before he could ask me any more questions.

The phone rang while it was still in my hand. I answered without thinking.

“Hello?”