by Laird Hunt
My cranium is soft, Sport, and I’m unarmed, he said.
Are you? I said.
Actually, I could see that he was. I could see, in fact, straight through him, straight through his shoes and clothes and orange hat. I could see the black heart beating in his chest and the black brain beating in his skull. Your brain is black, Max, I said.
Ask it anything you want then have a drink, he said.
I did so.
I mean I asked then I had a drink. Then I had another then took the barrel of my gun off Max’s head.
Is the boss around tonight, Max?
Yes he is.
And John?
John is probably with the boss—he’s with him a lot these days.
With the trains?
There is only one train. Many tracks, one train. He insists on this arrangement.
I think I would like to go in and speak to him, to them.
Impossible.
Why?
We have work.
We?
The two of us. A body.
I’m on a leave of absence. I’m working on a case.
Check the board.
I did. I went back. Max grinned.
My neck hurts, I said. I was shot.
Yeah, I know, I’m sorry—it looks terrible. But it’s time to go.
I followed him out the door and we made our way off across the city to a small apartment in a medium-size building in which we found a small pretty body, Ms. Green.
It was at this point, I should say, that I began to lose hope in my abilities as an investigator, and also in my future in that line of work. You will remember, I expect, that not so many days earlier, I had been quite hopeful and had imagined that my future would be quite bright indeed. And yet, faced with my first complex case, I was already mired in uncertainties, which seemed sure to overwhelm me at any moment.
Can we just leave it here? I asked Max.
Our instructions are to take it to the river.
But I’d like to tell Ms. Green about this.
So tell her as we’re walking, he said.
I don’t mean her, I said, looking at the body.
Who do you mean then?
I had to admit I wasn’t sure. I mean, there she was. But there I was, too. Or at least I thought so. Perhaps I was elsewhere. I was elsewhere. I could see the sides of a hollowed-out turbine. Ms. Green was there. Sitting beside me.
Explain, I said.
I can’t, she said. It’s up to you.
I see.
This was the next day. I was sitting at the bar of a hotel listening to a stunning blonde, my first client, and she had several interesting things to say.
You really don’t remember, do you? she said.
No I don’t. I mean yes and no.
You don’t remember the firm’s annual dinner and being introduced to me and to my husband?
No, I said.
Wait, yes, I said.
I had suddenly caught a glimpse. An enormous banquet hall filled with round tables and flower arrangements and endless bottles of expensive cognac.
You’re married to the boss, I said.
Yes, she said.
So you had me following the boss?
My husband.
It really was your husband.
Why should I have lied?
I raised my eyebrow.
At this my former client lifted her drink to her lips, looked at me, smiled.
Nobody imagined that you would be able to continue to follow him once you had entered the green door, she said. That was a pretty trick.
A pretty trick, I said.
She smiled.
Your husband was seeing someone, wasn’t he?
He was.
Who?
You don’t remember, she said, being introduced that evening to the woman sitting on my husband’s right?
Ms. Green, I said.
My husband’s late mistress.
The woman I fell in love with, I whispered.
Who’s that? said Max.
He had the bag open and was waiting for me to pick up the body and put it in. She was lying in the bathtub, fully clothed. We had often, I had the feeling, taken baths together in this tub, and it seemed extremely unfortunate now to have to lift her up out of it and put her in a bag.
Can I have another drink first? I said.
Sure Sport, but make it snappy, the meter’s running.
He dropped the handles of the bag and began rummaging around in the bathroom cabinet. I went to the kitchen and took a flask out of a drawer next to the stove.
Tell me everything, I said.
Lyla was sitting next to me, in the turbine.
I don’t know everything, she said.
Then tell me what you know.
We were lovers.
Yes.
Then we got caught.
Yes.
Then we got killed.
You want a glass and some ice with that?
Max. Standing in the bathroom doorway looking out at me.
You had enough? he said.
What do you mean?
I mean have you had enough—dead honey in the bathtub, slug in your neck, head injury, incertitude.
What do you mean by incertitude?
About the case. You don’t quite have it yet, do you? Still got things to figure out. Not getting there.
You mean there’s more?
There’s always more.
I thought you told me it was best not to know too much about these things.
Not me.
I thought you said I shouldn’t know too much then you put this slug in my neck.
Sorry, even if I did say that I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sport.
Lyla’s dead in the other room. Is she the only one? Am I lying dead in a turbine right now?
You’re getting out of my league there, Sport.
What is your relationship to my employer?
To the boss?
To my employer. The one who is paying me to make sense of this case.
I don’t know your employer.
Does Mr. Smith?
Couldn’t say.
How many people are dead? One or two?
We got one in there Sport, dead as we’re all gonna be.
And me?
And you Sport, I don’t know. I know what they tell me. They tell me you have incertitude. They tell me you’re having trouble making headway. They tell me you’re getting distracted and taking leaves of absence and thinking about stopping work at the firm. They tell me to take you here. I take you here. We get the body. We take the body.
Help me out a second, I said.
You’ve had your second, Sport. You’ve had your second and now I need you in the bathroom.
I went to the bathroom. The attendant asked me if I was aware that I was bleeding, ever so slightly, from the neck. I asked him if he would be willing, if he could, to stop it, as I had a lady waiting for me at the bar and I didn’t know her well enough to tell if blood was her cup of tea.
Oh it might be sir, said the attendant.
Nevertheless, I said.
So he ran hot water onto a towel and began daubing my neck and placing pressure on it. While he did so I looked in the mirror. Curiously, what greeted me there was the most beautiful scene. It was a breeze-swept olive grove with an old farmhouse off in the distance. Here and there were butterflies and cypress trees.
Happy, I tipped the attendant a twenty and walked out.
Grab a handle, Max said.
We used to have dinner here, I said. After we would get off work.
I heard about that.
I looked at him.
Everyone heard about it.
From who?
Who do you think?
I don’t know.
Maybe it was her, he said. She spent her time tossing them back in the copy room.
No way, I said.
But for a second I could almost see her, laughing, belting
one back.
And it was, interestingly enough, in this image of her, troubling as it was, that I found the key I had been looking for, or part of one. This is not to say, I should hasten to add, that I was finally able to solve the case, I was not, I’ve already said that, but I was able to imagine that, having once walked into the copy room and seen her, in company, drinking, not necessarily laughing, likely not, but drinking and observing and smiling slightly and perhaps, in some way, participating, a moment of jealousy had awoken, and I had told John afterwards to make sure that he and the others kept the fuck away from her. So that, as I imagined it, it was John, perhaps out of irritation, who had let it slip in the copy room, laughing and belting one back—my buddy is getting delicate with the boss’s mistress—and John who later, out of guilt, helped me into my then-current situation as investigator, in which capacity I would investigate one case in toto, the first and second having turned out to be one and the same—the first and only—and who helped me again, when somehow it was over, to close my office, to say good-bye to my secretary, and to regain at least a glimmer of my former self.
I say maybe it was John who had let it slip. Obviously, however, I mean it was me.
It was me, I said. Maybe someone else inadvertently passed the message along, but it was me who couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut.
Never spill the beans, Sport, said Max.
Thanks for the advice, I said.
But at any rate, having in my possession something approximating a key, and a concomitant chain of images now at my disposal, that is to say, a reservoir of talking points, something to say, a hypothesis to offer my client, to close out our account, as it were, I made my way back over to the firm.
The early afternoon was quiet time at the firm, most of the transactionists were either asleep or hoping to be. So I wasn’t surprised to find it all but deserted. The dispatcher’s office was locked and the copy room was empty; even my faint footfalls echoed in those empty halls. After some minutes of trying locked doors and drifting through them into empty offices and storerooms, I began to despair of finding anyone who could direct me to the boss’s office. No doubt, it seemed to me, I had been there before, and even recently, but some aspect of my condition prevented me from calling to mind the particulars of the itinerary. Fortunately, I eventually found someone—at the documents counter. This was the documents assistant, who was in charge of preparing documents for distribution throughout the firm. I had interacted with this gentleman on several occasions, and had always found him quite helpful, and I had no reason to be disappointed this time. He was able, in fact, to provide me with a map of the building, and I soon found myself knocking at the boss’s door. Before doing so, however, the documents assistant and I had a short chat. As I’ve said, we were on very friendly terms, and it was not at all unusual for us to exchange the occasional word. He was an old individual, and he loved to keep me abreast of his latest discoveries relative to his great passion—beekeeping.
I’ve got some with me, he said on this occasion.
Some what?
Bees.
Where?
In my pocket.
What he had with him were dead bees. Several of them. He lined them up on the counter—three drones and four workers—then scooped them back up in his hand. He then spoke to me at some length about the honey stomach and the chemical makeup of its lining. This makeup, as one might readily gather, was a key factor in the eventual consistency of the honey, or at any rate this was his idea.
You’ve been shot in the neck, friend, he said.
And hit on the head. I’m actually dead at the moment. Just like your bees.
I see.
He then told me one or two things about the forelegs of the worker bee. As he spoke I let myself drift for a moment, and it seemed to me as I did so that, once again, I slipped away from myself, drifted down the many halls and straight through the boss’s door without knocking.
I’m glad you’ve come, he said. It’s good to see you again.
I’ve come to tell you what I’ve learned about the case. I’ve come very close to a solution, perhaps not all the way, but close.
Excellent. Make your report.
I did so.
He agreed that I was getting close, very close.
He suggested a couple of emendations, one or two variants, two or three different avenues to explore. Perhaps nobody at all, he said, spilled the beans in the copy room. Perhaps a syringe was, at a certain stage, involved, or a line of the miniature tracks that you see spread around you. Perhaps my wife, as you say she has described herself to you, had slightly more to do with it than you have yet envisaged. Perhaps, in fact, you weren’t set up in the alley by me. Perhaps my putative wife set you up. What you saw when you went through the green metal door you were not, perhaps, supposed to have seen. So that perhaps you can imagine that you were not murdered, as you have put it, in the alley for what you referred to as your trespass against me with Ms. Green. Or that perhaps, at that juncture, you had not yet been murdered at all.
Tell me about the syringe, I said.
I could only offer you the wildest conjecture, he said.
So is there any way to reverse my condition?
Hmmm, he said, then raised an eyebrow and shrugged.
I asked him if he wanted me to continue with my investigation.
He said he was expecting it.
When I have to report should I call on you here?
Absolutely.
And if I have nothing further to report?
My door will always be open for you.
So it seemed to me somewhat strange that when, having just a few minutes later taken my leave of the documents assistant, I presented myself at the boss’s office and knocked, and knocked and knocked, no one came to the door, not even to tell me that he wasn’t there.
AFTERWORD
I WROTE THE BULK OF THE IMPOSSIBLY DURING ENFORCED leaves of absence from the United Nations, where I spent five years working, in various related capacities, in the Department of Public Information. The absences were enforced because I was, effectively, a contract worker and had to be off the payroll for a certain amount of time each year to avoid being considered a permanent employee, with all the rather extravagant benefits that standing entailed. Given that during the eleven-odd months a year I was on the work was often quite exhausting, I welcomed these obligatory furloughs and did my best to fill them to the extent possible (life, as it tends to, often making its curious interventions) with writing. The Impossibly got started, the first day of the first of these breaks in 1997, out of the conjoined impulse to write a love story and to write something long. Taking inspiration from the three books I happened to be reading at the time (The Oulipo Compendium, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and The Great Gatsby), the thing was launched. Three years and three breaks later I had three linked novellas. Or thought I did.
On a trip to Athens, where my wife Eleni was on a Fulbright, I reread the most recent quarter and decided it didn’t work at all. I liked it, which was something, but it didn’t work with the rest of the manuscript. I mean, what did I know, I was young, I’d never published a novel or a series of long linked anythings, but this didn’t, this third section I had written, hmmm, feel right. So I drank too much ouzo and wandered the streets of Athens’ old Turkish section for a few days then decided to write something new. There was a table, which had a view of the Acropolis, on the roof of Eleni’s building. I had a notebook with me. I wrote. I ate Greek yogurt, Greek salad, grilled meats. Vast quantities of meats. We took long walks through Athens. We traveled to Delphi and on to the Peloponnese. I kept writing. By the time I went back to New York, back to my work at the UN, the draft was done.
Or probably it didn’t happen quite that way. There was ouzo. There was a table with a view of the Acropolis (not to mention of an intervening [insert some sea-like word that is not sea here] of tangled wires, dusty awnings, and concrete rooftops). There was also yogurt and meat. In
quantity. The yogurt came in little clay pots and was wonderfully aerated. But I’m not sure there was ever any conscious decision to start over. Even though I did start over. It sort of just happened. I see myself, badly blurred, starting to rewrite. I took a walk in some hills overlooking Athens while Eleni was at a Greek language class and when I came back down I had started up again. The notebook I used was a blue, quadrilinear, medium-size French Lafontaine: I know this because I still have the notebook. I had a Scheaffer fountain pen. I know that because I just know, even though the pen is now lost. Speaking of other things I know, most days during my stay I walked by a building that was completely shrouded with dark mesh. Such buildings were all over Athens, but this one took the cake. And devoured it. So that went into the new thing. As did the grilled meat and the ouzo and the Acropolis, though I didn’t call it that.
A year or so later, back in New York, I realized two things. The first was that what I had written was a novel (not an Austerian or Beckettian or Flaubertian or Steinian trilogy), and the second was that if I borrowed a bit from the end of the abandoned, original third section, the one that I rejected in Greece before eating the already overdiscussed meat and yogurt, not to mention buckets and buckets of the inevitable, inimitable Greek salad, the novel would be more and/or less complete. Which is how it remains. Perhaps now even more so since the amputated section, which long ago grew its own name and lived its own brief solo life on Amy Fusselman’s Surgery of Modern Warfare, before serving for some time as a sample text in a series of long letters called Dear Laird Hunt, Author of “The Impossibly,” has come back to sit with its confrères in uneasy company.
Readers may be charmed or not to know that for a time after I had written the first section of The Impossibly, my idea was to continue the book by writing, in the mode of Kafka’s great story “The Burrow,” the story of a clownfish who has strayed into, and cannot find his way out of again, a submerged Louvre. The clownfish, who would narrate, was to swim through the vast, watery halls, perch unhappily behind support girders in the space at the small of the back behind the Winged Victory of Samothrace, visit the still-shimmery cases of preclassical Greek statues, gaze with a longing it doesn’t understand the source of at Durer’s autoportrait, the one where he is young and holding thistles.