Agyar

by Steven Brust

  It occurred to me, then, that the car was unattended.

  There were curses behind me, and “Where the Hell did this come from?”

  Was it worth taking the chance?

  I kept walking, hurrying as much as I could but remaining silent; I began to head back the way I’d come. I’d have to move quickly, if at all. A brief moment of dizziness hit me, leaving behind it a sense of weakness in all my limbs; but this was to be expected.

  In the midst of a fog (if I may) I came to the car, which was not locked. There were sirens coming toward us and the radio was squawking angrily; someone was reciting numbers with great conviction. I stuck my head into the car and glanced in at the mass of electronic gear, artillery, and Hostess cupcake wrappers.

  I was rewarded, if you can call it that, by seeing an unflattering but not too unfaithful sketch of myself, stuck to a clipboard attached to the dashboard. Even as I looked at it, I did not forget what I was about. The fog grew thicker, and seemed to pour into the car; it did not obscure my vision.

  The sketch was on a clean, white piece of paper, with today’s date written in the upper left corner. There was a number (4-282-6315) hand-lettered in the upper right. Below the sketch were some notes to the effect that I was five eight (I’m actually five six, but I dress to look tall), weigh about a hundred and twenty (more like a hundred and thirty, friend, but thanks), had black hair, black eyes, should be considered armed and dangerous (I’m never armed, but I’m never unarmed either) and that I was a suspect in a homicide investigation at

  Damn it to Hell. I just now realized why that address was familiar, which means I know how they must have gotten my description: that fat man who had let me into Young Don’s place. But never mind that now.

  I read more of what I was supposed to look like until I heard rapidly approaching footsteps on the street behind me.

  There is, as many have noted before me, a strength that comes with anger. I felt it then, overcoming my weakness. As the policeman’s face became clear in the fog, I had the sudden impression of pale blue eyes and a light-colored mustache, and I know that he had something in his hand, though whether it was a stick, a gun, a radio, or something else entirely I do not know.

  But I backed out of the car and faced him faster, I think, than he expected me to; and I know he did not expect me to be on him before he had time to do anything. With one hand I took his arm and with the other his leg. I think I was going to dash him to the street, which would certainly have crushed the life out of him, but in the end I merely threw him as far from me as I could. He gave a cry as he flew, then he hit the ground with a thud and a tinkle of gear, as if I’d thrown a tin soldier.

  I stopped and listened carefully. I could hear moaning from the policeman I had thrown, and, even as all of this was happening I was relieved that I had not killed him, but I could hear more sounds—people running, purposefully, in my direction. They were closing in around me.

  Even as I noticed that, I saw spotlights attempt to pierce the winter fog. A wild notion came upon me to get into the car and attempt to drive it (were the keys even in it? I never looked, nor did the question cross my mind until now), but my skills with such machines are poor at best, and this would leave me limited, and fighting on their terms.

  So I would fight on mine.

  I knew they could not yet be completely organized, and they certainly couldn’t know what was going on, so, with no hesitation, I charged out at them with all the speed I could manage. I got a glimpse of a couple of confused faces, and I ran into one policeman who had a drawn pistol in his hand and was in the act of leveling it at me; in fact, I leveled him and continued.

  There were shouts of “There he goes,” and “Call for more backup,” but it was, to my ears, more like the bleating of sheep than the baying of hounds. The fog still protected me as I crossed the street and climbed up onto the second story porch of a tall old house; a house that, now that I think of it, is not too dissimilar to Jim’s.

  I scrabbled up onto the roof (I wonder if anyone in the house heard my footfalls, and, if they did, what they thought was happening) and from there managed, just barely, to reach the roof of the house next to it. I’m glad the houses are close together in that part of the city, and insert same parenthetical remark as above.

  There was, by now, a great deal of activity below me; I could make out the flashing lights of several police cars, and I could see where their headlights cut the fog; but they would not look at the rooftops. I took the time to catch my breath, wanting suddenly to laugh aloud at them scurrying around down there like so many ants whose overworked simile has been disturbed.

  I didn’t laugh, however. After a few moments to recover I made my way home. I was as careful as I could be in my state of anxiety, exhaustion, and weakness; at all events I made it safely into the house without any other incidents.

  Jim took one look at me and I think he almost swore. “What happened?” he said.

  I closed the window and sank down into the bloodstained gray chair. “The police know what I did—at least some of it—and know what I look like.”

  He whistled. “Do they know where you live?”

  “I don’t think so, although, now that you mention it, there are neighbors who know what I look like, and the police are already suspicious of this house, so they might put things together.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. That is, I don’t know in the long run.”

  “What about the short run?”

  “For one thing, I’m going to visit Jill first thing tomorrow.”

  “I would imagine. What else?”

  I didn’t answer, but I suppose I must have looked disgusted, because Jim said, “What is it?”

  “It’s how they identified me, curse them. I wouldn’t mind all the rest, but …”

  When I didn’t go on, he said, “But what?”

  “They know what my coat looks like. I’m going to have to stop wearing it, damn it to Hell.”

  Predictably, Jim looked disapproving at the profanity, but he also laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” I said.

  “Some guys sure got it rough,” he said.

  “Go suck astral eggs,” I told him, and came up to the typing machine to set it all down.

  ELEVEN

  abyss n. 1.a. The primeval chaos. b. The bottomless pit; hell. 2. An unfathomable chasm; a yawning gulf. 3. Any immeasurably profound depth or void.

  AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY

  A sense of perspective would be helpful now. It is not the end of the world that the police know what I look like. If I can’t evade a few cops, I don’t deserve to. Can they see in the dark? Can they peer through walls? Hell, I can see them coming well before they see me, if I stay at all alert.

  They don’t know where I live. They don’t where Susan lives. They don’t know where I play cards. They don’t know the street corners where I pick up hookers; or even that I do so. They know I have a really nice coat, and that means I won’t be able to wear it any more. A shame, but I’ve lived through worse.

  Once Laura and I had to hide out in a Paris sewer for three nights and three hellish days; I thought I was going to die. She never told me from whom or what we were hiding. The rats would come and do tricks for us, and moths would fly down and arrange themselves in pretty aerial patterns for us, Laura would tell me stories, and I would make up poems for her, and that was the sum total of our entertainment.

  Come to think of it, that was when she told me I ought to be a poet, and after that she made me write every day, which I continued to do until she left me, after which I stopped until just recently.

  But that is neither here nor there. What I remember most clearly is that each day I would get weaker, and hungrier; and by the end of the third day, when she decided it was safe again, I couldn’t move at all; I just lay there and moaned. She had to carry me out, and she was in scarcely better shape than I was. I remember her warning me on the first da
y that a knife wound, or even a beating, could be fatal during the hours of daylight, and I thought that it hardly needed any sort of injury at all. She brought us up, somewhere, in an alley, and we lay there together until a drunk stumbled over us, cursing, and that was how we survived.

  If I could live through that, I should not be unduly afraid of a couple of police officers who don’t even know what they’re looking for.

  I really do wonder what had happened, though, that sent Kellem and me into hiding in the sewers.

  I found a clothing store and I have bought a winter parka. It is hideously ugly, but warm. I’m still annoyed that I can’t wear my coat any more, but at least I won’t freeze; that is, I won’t freeze more than I did going to get the coat. I doubt there will be more than another week or two of winter, but I can afford it, so why not?

  As I write this, I am feeling even more worn out and fatigued; exposure will do that.

  Why couldn’t Kellem have had the courtesy to want to kill me in California? Or, if she was going to insist on Ohio, she could have at least waited until summer.

  For that matter, what is it about this city that has so taken her? It is too small to get lost in, yet too big to relax in. It has neither a climate nor atmosphere such as I would have thought appealed to her. Why not Yellow Springs, if she wanted a coffee-house atmosphere and to live in Ohio? Or, better yet, San Francisco, where she could hop over to Oakland any time she wanted to kill someone; no one cares who dies in Oakland.

  I’m feeling angry and frustrated, mostly at Kellem. No, that isn’t right; now that I think of it, it is mostly that I am mortally weary.

  Well, that is a problem I can solve. A visit with Jill ought to be just the thing. I feel that she is awake, and she awaits me.

  I’m back from seeing Jill. It is late and there is a light but chilly breeze coming through the slats covering the window. Jill still seemed pale and listless; I was afraid to tax her strength too much. I feel better for the visit, but not enough, not enough.

  I left her sleeping and found Susan, who was in the living room, reading French. For some reason, this set off a chain of fantasies of the two of us in Paris, the way Kellem and I had visited together. But I would never do to Susan what Kellem is doing to me.

  Susan remarked that I didn’t look well; I said I seemed to have picked up some sort of virus, and she ought not to come too close to me. She blew me a kiss from across the room, and I returned home, watching for the police and taking my time so I wouldn’t wear myself out any more than I had to.

  I wish I understood more of the process by which these things happen—that is, why some things leave me exhausted, and other things are as easy as falling over. Well, actually, it’s not easy to fall over; I have a deeply rooted instinct to catch myself, but the point remains.

  There are many things I have learned that I can do—things that I think Laura ought to have told me about; instead I discover them by accident. This goes for limitations as well. There are times I have found that I could not do something I wanted to; a peculiar feeling, as if my will to take some action were being diverted from outside of myself. Why should this be? And why am I wondering about it now, when I never have before?

  But leave all that; it doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that I am bone-weary and exhausted from all that I did escaping from the police. Seeing Jill helped, but I have not come close to recovering from yesterday’s exertions.

  I will rest well, and see what tomorrow brings.

  Life is a thing of give-and-take, of trading something not so good for something a little better; of exchanging a slight loss for a slight gain.

  I am still feeling weak and shaken, but it could have been much, much worse.

  Bah.

  I cannot deceive myself. I am still enraged. I tell myself that it was a reasonable thing for her to do, and I’d have done the same thing in her position, and it is all true, but it amounts to nothing. I don’t know how I resisted destroying her utterly, and, if I continue to feel this way, she will not live to see the snow melt. There are times when I can be rational, and times when I cannot. In this case, she not only betrayed me, but she did so when I was as weak as I’ve been in a very long time indeed. I require rest, I must recover my strength; I do not need the sort of games she chose, no, dared to play with me.

  In any case, there is no time to do anything about it tonight.

  Shall I describe it in detail? Why? It is not the sort of thing I am likely to forget. On the other hand, why not? It might help settle me down, to concentrate on striking the right key, and on recalling everything as well as possible, and working to get it all in order, even as it happened.

  Besides, I am certain that Jim will want to know about it all, and I’d rather he read this than asked me to tell him; if I try to talk I’ll probably

  Yes. I will set it down.

  My intention, then, was to visit Little Philly, and I even did so, resplendent in my ugly new coat. The idea—ha!—was to attempt to spare Jill as much as I could. I spent a few minutes talking to Jim and gathering what strength remained to me, then I walked out the door. I took my time getting to the area, watching carefully for police cars.

  Even after arriving there I continued to be careful. I spent several hours observing the scene outside the strip bars and the “adult” bookstores—those ugly, windowless brick buildings looking like prisons to house the trapped desire—until I found what I wanted. She was small and artificially blond, and could not have been more than sixteen years old. She wore a white kneelength coat with imitation fur trim, and slung over her back was a tiny black purse with a long strap. She stood near the curb in front of the door of Lorenzo’s Night Club with a cigarette that appeared to be permanently fixed to the corner of her mouth. She was carrying on a conversation with someone in a white Thunderbird, who drove off as I watched. I came up behind her. She turned around and eyed me with false coyness.

  “Whatcha up to?” she said. She should have been chewing gum as well as smoking.

  “Good evening,” I said.

  “Looking for a date?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “You a cop?”

  “No. You?”

  She laughed. “Not likely. Wanna blow job?”

  I explained that I wanted something more substantial—a word that seemed to puzzle her. She said something about charging extra if I wanted anything “kinky.” I suggested fifty dollars. She agreed, but still seemed worried, and wanted details. I promised that I wouldn’t hurt her, and she reluctantly agreed, and said she knew a hotel nearby. Her name was Doris.

  I offered her my arm. She seemed to think that was funny, but she threw her cigarette away and linked arms with me. The old world charm and fifty dollars; it never fails.

  It was shortly after midnight when I led her into the lobby of the Midtown Hotel. I took a room for the evening at twenty dollars. From the look of the place, I’d have thought they were overcharging by a factor of at least two, but I didn’t find out what the rooms were like, because at that moment I felt something I’d never felt before. I can say it no more clearly than that something took hold of my mind and pulled. It was disorienting, and in a way I had not thought I could be disoriented, and uncomfortable, not unlike the vertigo I felt when Young Don shot me, and again when Susan said she loved me.

  Reflexes associated with panic woke up; not strong enough to interfere with me, but there, nevertheless, telling me something inexplicable was happening in my brain, where one never wants the inexplicable happening.

  I was dizzy for just a moment, and my first thought was, Kellem. But, on reflection, it didn’t feel like her. In any event, something was happening, and I was a part of it. I felt a clear sense of direction and a great sense of urgency. I took out a roll of bills and threw them at Doris, saying, “Sorry, honey, change of plans. I’ll see you another time,” and dashed out of the hotel. I think I remember the desk clerk laughing, and Doris swearing loudly, though whether at me or at the cle
rk I cannot say.

  At that moment, someone said, “You are Jack Agyar.” It was so strong that, for a moment, I thought it was really said into my ear and I stopped running and turned around. No, there was no one there. It had been Jill’s voice, which was clearly impossible. I didn’t know what this meant, but I knew that I didn’t like it.

  Weakness, I thought, be damned; I needed speed.

  I sent myself like an arrow through the night, troubled by visions of ropes surrounding me, tying me up; at one point I was unable to move my arms, although I was able to break this without much effort. I could still hear Jill’s voice, though I did not know what she was saying. I stumbled a couple of times, as if something were trying to wrap itself around my legs. At another point I stopped, realizing that, somehow, I had forgotten the way. I stood, trembling from weakness and rage, and made myself recall how I had gotten there before, and eventually I reached the correct neighborhood.

  Whatever it was, it was still going on, and it was not without a certain fear that I entered the house. There was no one on the main floor, but I could smell cloth burning upstairs, and so I dashed up to Jill’s room and threw open the door. She stood, naked, facing the north wall, which looked toward Susan’s room and the street. Before her were small bits of cloth and yarn, a black candle, and an ashtray, in which something was burning.

  She did not seem to notice me.

  I rushed forward, but was stopped, as if by a wall, although there was nothing tangible in front of me. Or, more accurately, it was as if I knew I could go forward if I could make myself, and simultaneously knew I couldn’t make myself. If, years from now, I am baffled when I read this, I will remind myself that I was even more baffled when it happened; I still don’t understand it. She said, “So I am free,” as if speaking to someone who wasn’t there, and, as she spoke, I felt a tearing sensation somewhere within me, as if a piece of myself were being ripped away.

  “So I am free.”