by Laird Hunt
One was asked to take off one’s shoes and to lie on a mat fully clothed. Then one was asked to relax insofar as one was capable of doing so. Next, one was told that one would not have to do anything except follow simple instructions, which did, in fact, prove to be very simple, although I worried about carrying them out a little. I have a poor track record with simple instructions. But I did just fine, she said when I asked her, with these, which were of the roll over gently onto your stomach kind. It was the “gently” part that troubled me. And also the question of direction (which way to roll). Once or twice I had, so to speak, and with consequences—in one case a dull burbling sound—rolled the wrong way. And as for the interpretation of “gently,” I’ll just say that I was told, once, to handle someone “gently” and upon beginning, as I thought, to do so, was instructed that I had gotten it wrong. You’ve done everything right, now pay me and you can leave, she told me after I had lain wrapped in blankets for several minutes. I did leave. I felt much better. Then the three weeks were up.
Or almost. Because as I lay there wrapped in blankets, my body realigned, my blood enjoying better circulation, my attention oscillating pleasantly between my highly capable manipulator, who sat in the corner drinking a beer, and a blood vessel that had recently burst in my eye, my thoughts turned to another occasion, some years before, when I had lain wrapped not in blankets but in towels, following a swim. I really didn’t think much about this, likely it would be more accurate to say I remembered, not thought, or to say it came to mind. It also came to mind, and I don’t say it did so accurately, that as I lay there, a woman came in and sat down beside me. This woman, if she was there, and if it was her, was beautiful, but also terrible, like something that should not have been, at least not in my company, and despite my exhaustion, I made an effort to sit up. Don’t, she said. Thank you, I said. It was very pleasant and very frightening to lie, exhausted and wrapped in towels, with her, my love, if it was her, sitting completely naked beside me. Part of the mechanism of this memory is that I was never certain. Afterward they told me that no one had come in and sat down beside me, although I had spoken about someone in my sleep. I believed them until a few months later when I thought I saw her again. Which shouldn’t matter to anyone besides me. Or should it? Clearly now I am thinking again.
But I did feel better and did for several days afterward. So much so that I even went out and took in some nightlife. In this city, apparently, much is done in the old quarries, which can be found in the oddest places—in the backs of government structures, behind a department store facade, beneath the vaulted roof of a magnificent structure into which, during the daytime, groups of individuals go to stand among the blasted rocks and, heads bowed, intone and sing. It was into something like this last that I went late one evening to witness, and in a small way to participate in, an event. It was not a nice event—there was a lot of white rock and then the white rock became splashed with red—but it was diverting. At one point, after I had, more or less symbolically, taken a turn with the mallet, I remarked to another individual that what the event lacked in subtlety it made up for in vigor. Yes, it’s colorful, the individual said. I feel like I’ve gotten some exercise. Yes, definitely, I think the upper portion of my forehead is damp. Yes, mine too. I won’t dream at all tonight. Or if you do it will be pleasant. Why is that? No one knows.
I also, in my freshly realigned state, contemplated taking a trip. The islands near this city are apparently very beautiful. Even at night. Perhaps, the travel agent told me, especially at night. She recommended some islands. On one of them an important battle had been fought. On another there had once been centaurs. They have found skeletons, she told me. One was obliged to travel by jet-foil to get to these islands if one wanted to leave at an hour of one’s choosing. Traveling by jet-foil was slightly, but only slightly expensive. I told her I would have to do some research. She suggested a book shop in the vicinity. None of the books I found, however, had much to say beyond the quality of the nightlife and the possibility of starlit strolls. Against which, I explained to the travel agent when I returned, I have nothing, in fact I enjoy looking up at the stars as I walk, though I have become accustomed to regarding them through a haze of light and suspended particles. There is very little of either of those on the islands I have recommended, the travel agent told me. Little or very little? I asked. I used the adverb for a reason, she said. Oh yes, I said. I also said, you look like someone I once knew. I think it’s disgusting, she said, when people say that. Disgusting? Yes. Would you like to go out with me? Yes. We went out. No we didn’t. Who am I kidding? She was definitely very pretty, and definitely not interested. Maybe this is why I then, completely changing the register of my voice, blurted out, someone is going to kill me. What? she said. Yes, that’s why I’m here, in this city, I said. I got my letter, I’ve been retired, they’re going to deactivate me. I’m not even sure I should be asking about starlit excursions. She seemed interested, perhaps even sympathetic. I quickly entertained certain relatively unadorned fantasies about escape mechanisms involving her. Can you swim? I asked. Of course, she said. Encouraged, I took out the tiny silver dagger and showed it to her. I’ve been given this, I said. Don’t cut yourself with that thing, she said. In the meantime I’m undertaking an investigation. So far, all I have to go on is a photograph and a tip. The photograph is blurred and the tip’s a little vague, but I have high hopes. Oh, she said. Or I said. I suddenly realized I was speaking rather loudly and shaking the knife in her face.
I thought it best for a time, the investigation notwithstanding, and still within this three-week time frame, to limit my contacts after that. I restricted myself to the old men in the park and, when they were out and about, to the old women in the little streets at the base of the rocky eminence. Also, once or twice, I saw the young woman with the limp and the high cheekbones. I’m waiting, I told her. We all know that, she said. She had come to change all the lightbulbs in the apartment. One evening, somewhat late, I had begun to be concerned that the bulbs in the various lights might burn out and that I might be left in the dark. I’d rather not take up the question of whether, given my earlier comments on the matter, there is some kind of contradiction involved in that admission. In fact, see above, there isn’t. It’s just that one night I got it into my head that my security might be seriously compromised if all the bulbs, for whatever reason, were to simultaneously burn out. So I put a note on the fridge. Why, exactly, am I doing this? she said. Start with the floor lamp, I said. She set to work and I followed her, both because I liked the way she worked—slowly, carefully—and because I wanted to make sure all the bulbs got changed. They did. I switched them all back on. Would you like a drink? I said. No, but I’m hungry. So have a snack. I can’t remember exactly what she had this time, but I can remember the sound of her lips smacking softly together, or (I’ve just tried it) pulling softly apart. That last may be my imagination—my hearing is actually quite bad. No doubt in watching her eat I was put in mind of other meals I had shared. I was young once too you know, I said. You’re not all that old now, she said. She then continued biting and chewing, making or not making the concomitant sounds. You’re actually, you know, rather remarkably beautiful, I said. And I couldn’t care less what you think, but thanks, she said. After a little more of this, she raised an eyebrow. You know the power could go out. I’ve thought of that. Or it could be shut off. Are you trying to scare me? Are you scared? Not now that the bulbs have been changed. Somehow, the prospect of having what I had envisaged happening because of the lightbulbs all burning out happen because the power had been extinguished didn’t particularly trouble me. It interested me, which was problematic enough, but didn’t cause that familiar feeling to radiate from my stomach around to my back—the one I experienced when I thought of the lightbulbs all going out in a simultaneous snapping of filament and the house being thrown into darkness and an individual moving forward (i.e., toward me) with, say, infrared equipment. You’re right, I said, that s
omeone could turn the power off, but that doesn’t bother me. And anyway, it’s too easy. How so? I mean it’s too logical, in an easy sort of way. What do you mean by logical? I mean it’s boring. Define boring. You’re not one of these smart people are you? I’m extremely smart. So why are you the one they send to fill my refrigerator? I’ve already made it clear to you that I don’t do that. You mean by not answering my question when I asked you before? Exactly. What would be wrong with filling my refrigerator? Nothing, except that I don’t do it. Why not? you’re the one they sent to change my lightbulbs. Are you looking to get smacked? Can you smack hard? She came over and smacked me. It was hard. While my ears rang I thought about high intelligence and simple tasks. The most intelligent individual I had met in recent years—or so it seemed to me, a poor judge, but she could carry off stunning calculations and do those curious and unnecessary gymnastics with the number pi—had the position of polishing the shoes of the dead, if the dead were in fact wearing shoes. Clearly, I don’t mean just any dead. I mean those who, through dealings with our organization, had become dead, or almost. The latter fell into the category of the near-dead and their shoes were polished too. Once, admittedly in one of my more casual moments, I held up the leg of a member of this category so that I could look at something about my hair in the reflection I hoped might be produced. Extra to the fact that the reflection wasn’t much good, it was at that moment, as I was peering at the shoe, that the individual died. I know this because the shoe polisher, still present, said, at that moment, 74 * 57 = 4,218, there he / she goes. Suddenly it struck me, really struck me, that I was going to go. I’m sorry for being rude, I said to the young woman with the limp and the high cheekbones. I’m not sorry for smacking you, she said.
The old men, for their part, fell to telling me their dreams. Their dreams were not so bad, but I would have to seriously doctor them up to make them interesting enough to include here. Instead I will tell you one of my own. Because of its narrative elements and the fact that it crossed detective and ghost story genres, it was something of a success when, at my insistence that I have a turn, I told it to the old men. It helped that we were sitting on one or two barely lit benches and that the park around us, with its winding paths and heavy foliage, was lit everywhere with small round lights, so that, as one of the old men said, you never knew whether wolf or lamb or some unpleasant combination of the two was going to step out of it. Actually, I said that. And the response I got was not so positive. Shut up and tell your dream, they said. I cleared my throat and did so.
I am an inspector in an almost silent black-and-white world working to track down a noted member of “the resistance.” Not for the first time, I catch up with him and unload my handgun. The bullets fly out in long thin slivers of shining lead that the wind distorts. I tell my colleagues, when they arrive, that I’m sure I hit him. They shake their heads. This scene repeats itself. One evening everyone is out making a sweep for him in a warehouse across town. On a hunch I go back to his place of work, a book shop where he hasn’t been seen for weeks. And sure enough, he’s there. I see him through the window, puttering around the shop—a tall man in yellow light. I call my colleagues then pull my gun and close in. Just as I am about to enter, however, I register that he keeps repeating the same movements. And then I know. My colleagues arrive and we go in. I touch one of the books. He vanishes. He’s been keeping us busy chasing him, I say. He’s been dead the whole time.
When I finished there was a silence, or a relative one—a couple of the old men suffered from that condition which makes one’s teeth, it is unfortunate, clack together. I am happy to say that I was not one of them. Although I’m not too proud to confess that my lips sometimes make movements I don’t command them to and that my hands, on occasion, shake a little. Also, my skin, from when I was fat, hangs somewhat inharmoniously and is very rough in places, and I am prone to considerable stiffness in the lower back, which makes me, at times, very slow and decrepit seeming indeed. Furthermore, I look old. In and of itself this would not be a bad thing. I actually like the look of the old, and not just the pretty, if slightly watery, eyes. For instance, I am inclined to think that the somewhat overpronounced veins on the backs of my hands are quite beautiful, and that the blunt, crooked aspect of my fingers is not without a certain charm. Sad to say that most don’t share my opinion. And even if they do, even if they call you sir or madam and pay you compliments, they are still usually inclined to think you are, by dint of being old, somewhat bonkers. But my dream. Someone came up with, not bad. Another said, yeah, yeah. Someone else said, you could make a movie out of that. The discussion turned to movies. One old guy brought up a movie where a man goes out west, is given a paper flower, gets shot, and spends the rest of the movie dying. Some of those who had seen it claimed he was dead before the movie started. There was a general murmur of assent. I like cowboys, I said. Well this guy wasn’t a cowboy, he was just some dead guy who got shot. There was a brief argument. Then a silence. Then someone asked me how my investigation was coming along. What investigation? I said. We’ve all heard about it, another said. I looked around. Everyone I could see was nodding. Because of the travel agent? I asked. And the restaurant. I heard it from my wife, she’s one of the old women. How do they know about it? Oh, they all know about it. Well, do any of you have any tips? Yeah, don’t speculate. How am I supposed to do that? I don’t know. Great, thanks, what else? Consider the evidence. What evidence? I mean the clues. I’ve hardly got any. Isn’t your three weeks about up? They were. In fact, the next night I stood waiting by the garden’s southwest gates.
But in the meantime—it was still early—I went up into the old city to see if I could find any old women to talk to. I used the walk to think some more about my dream and about what the old men had said about it. The fact that they were all aware of my investigation, seemed somehow tied to my dream, as if the dream of an investigation had merged with the speculation surrounding the real one. I wasn’t entirely sure, having formulated this last, what I had meant by it, but was strangely pleased for a moment, as in some small way I’d made a breakthrough. As soon as I was over that feeling, I went back to the dream itself. Upon waking from it I’d been very interested by the notion that the whole thing had hinged on a hunch, largely unexplained, and I had lain in my bed thinking about how, in my real investigation, I could turn this to my advantage. As I lay there thinking about it, calling to mind bits and pieces of the dream, no doubt adding patches and embroidering connective elements onto it, I remembered or created the phrase, he’s been dead for weeks, and this too seemed to have some resonance. It also occurred to me to wonder whether my character, as it were, when supposedly acting on his hunch, had known all along how it would end. I don’t know, I thought. And still don’t. I can assure you, however, that at that point I didn’t know (or was unaware that I knew) how my investigation would end and, properly speaking, still don’t—I am waiting. I wait here. With all the fresh bulbs in the apartment burning. The tiny dagger on the table in front of me. Waiting for the man in the photograph to arrive.