The Blot

by Jonathan Lethem

  “A gambler?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Falk’s question, though, was really no different from Bruno’s: What was a man looking like Keith Stolarsky doing here? The Smoker’s Club wasn’t merely a VIP lounge; it was a secret one, unlisted in guidebooks or in the Marina Bay Sands Casino’s own brochures. One didn’t merely wander in. One learned of the place in an aside or whisper, and was invited. The club eschewed the sterile gloss of the complex’s malls, hotel, and casino in favor of a suggestion of old-worldly glamour: burnished wood panels, brass fixtures, beveled mirrors. A cloud of cigar fume marked an alcove featuring a never-ending poker game, in which men worked to fulfill the fantasy by loosening their ties and draping jackets over the backs of chairs, revealing suspenders, even sweat-patchy shirts, the sleeves of which they rolled to mid-forearm, framing Swiss watches. In another quadrant a snooker table was more lightly employed by a couple of chubby Englishmen indulging their own quaint fetish with pints of ale. Yet the club was no less antiseptic, finally, than the casino. Tricky up-lighting at the tables made faces appear like roast meat laid out at a swank buffet.

  In Falk and Bruno’s case, they’d come to the Smoker’s Club to meet Billy Yik Tho Lim, the former director of the ISD, Singapore’s secret police. Yik Tho Lim had gotten involved in a long-term investment of Falk’s, the fixing of a Korean football match—a matter outside Bruno’s scope of involvement. But in the process, the former director had told Falk that he hoped to test himself against the backgammon wizard Falk had been bragging of.

  This assignation, Falk had been engineering for weeks. It wasn’t Falk’s first visit to the suite, nor Bruno’s; he’d played in these rooms, and in fact had his backgammon set on the chair beside him, though serious contests were ordinarily taken elsewhere. He doubted a man like Yik Tho Lim would play in view of gawkers and bystanders. An apparition like Keith Stolarsky might spook him completely.

  Stolarsky hadn’t come in alone. He was accompanied by a woman, dark-haired and robustly handsome, at least forty when you examined the lines around her mouth, but healthier than Stolarsky by a mile. The woman was dressed in black too, only to a different effect. A tight sweater and pegged jeans gave the appearance of a film actress dressed slightly down for a part as a jazz musician’s or Beat poet’s girlfriend. The sweater was tucked above a wide, silver-buckled belt; the refusal to conceal her thick waist was itself brazenly attractive. Her expression both quizzical and commanding, Stolarsky’s companion made the best evidence that Bruno’s old acquaintance wasn’t a street person.

  “Invite them over,” suggested Falk.

  “Why should I do that?”

  “For amusement.”

  “He doesn’t recognize me. He probably won’t remember me.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I haven’t seen him since we were children.” Bruno knew it was the wrong word for who he’d been when he last saw Stolarsky, at the point when he’d departed Berkeley for good. As if catching this thought, Falk said, with luxuriant irony, “You were never a child.” Then he added, “That fellow recognizes you, he just hasn’t noticed it yet.”

  Possibly this was what had first made Bruno comfortable in Edgar Falk’s company: Falk read all minds, not Bruno’s in particular. He made it unimportant, a prerequisite to deeper pursuits. The nature of Falk’s deeper pursuits, however, remained after much time permanently opaque.

  Bruno’s decision was made for him. He and Falk sat near enough to the path between the entrance and the bar that Keith Stolarsky and his companion passed their table.

  “No fucking way.”

  “Hello, Keith,” said Bruno, as airily as he could manage.

  “Alexander Bruno,” said Stolarsky. “Figures you’d turn up in a place like this.” Stolarsky turned to the woman. “I once told you about this guy, we were eating at Chez Panisse, remember? That there was a kid in my high school who worked as a waiter there, who all the moms were in love with? Then he just floated away? This is that guy.”

  “I’m Edgar Falk,” said Falk, holding out his hand. Stolarsky gazed at it for a crucial second, as if unsure. His hands had been shoved into his pockets, and he drew out just one. Though it was Falk who took it, Bruno at that moment recalled the creepy, ratlike feebleness of Stolarsky’s clasp.

  “Keith,” he said. “This is Tira.”

  She stuck out her own hand, and Bruno stood a little in accepting it, warm and strong, into his. “Tira Harpaz,” she said. Was adding her last name a rebuke to Stolarsky’s manners?

  If so, Stolarsky wasn’t chastened. “What a fucking scenario this is, huh?” he said to Bruno.

  “The Smoker’s Club?”

  “Sure, and Marina Bay Sands, and Singapore, the whole kit and caboodle.”

  “I suppose so.” Bruno released Tira Harpaz’s hand, even as he came fully up from his chair. “Please sit. What would you like to drink?” He was conscious of wishing to live up to any legend he’d left in his wake at Berkeley High. Stolarsky and Falk were witnesses, at either end, of the construction of Bruno’s sole life accomplishment: his personality. There was nothing to threaten him in any comparison of notes between them, since he’d been perfectly consistent. It was the woman for whom Bruno would perform, a new, blank screen onto which he’d project himself.

  “Nah, you sit, let me buy you a round. I want to take a look at this joint. What are you having?”

  “Another of these—a Tiger Beer, it’s called. But I’ll go to the bar with you. Ms. Harpaz, please …” Bruno pulled out a chair.

  Falk waved his hand across the top of his glass, which Bruno knew contained only cranberry juice and soda.

  “I’ll have a Tiger Beer too,” said Tira Harpaz, slipping into the seat.

  “Are you staying at the Sands?” Bruno asked, applying mild pressure on Stolarsky and the woman to clarify their relation. If there was daylight between them, they might reveal it in their response. I remember the man you are with before he could grow hair anywhere but on his head, he told Tira Harpaz with his eyes. I’d wager he’s grown it in far too many places now.

  “Not a fucking chance,” said Stolarsky. “I’d feel like a rat in a psych experiment.” At the word rat, Bruno stiffened. Was Stolarsky reading Bruno’s thoughts? Stolarsky went on, apparently oblivious. “We’re at Raffles. After some of the joints in Thailand and Sri Lanka we were ready for a little five-star action. The place is a trip, it’s got that total Kipling vibe.”

  “Naturally,” said Falk. “He lodged there.”

  Again, Stolarsky paused, to measure Falk. Bruno could sympathize. He recalled his first impression of Falk, at White’s, in London. Bruno had been there at the whim of an English peer from whom he’d removed upward of thirty thousand pounds, and who plainly regarded seeing Bruno do similarly to a number of his friends as adequate compensation for his losses. To the great amusement of the callow swells in the peer’s circle, Falk had been presented to Bruno as “the other American.” With his dyed, seemingly lacquered hair and rouged cheeks, Falk had first struck Bruno as much older than sixty, an aging queen with everything to conceal.

  Now, a decade later, Falk looked not a day older. Bruno understood Falk’s Kabuki mask as his true face, and never sought a glimpse underneath. The longer Bruno knew Falk, the less the first impression mattered: Falk seemingly wasn’t aging, might not be a queen. Yet Bruno knew Falk struck others this way. Falk relied upon it.

  “Yeah, naturally,” said Stolarsky. He seemed to swallow another thought. Instead, he and Bruno went to the bar, leaving Falk and Tira Harpaz at the glowing table.

  “Shit, that’s no better than a Budweiser,” said Stolarsky, when he’d slurped off the top inch of Tira Harpaz’s Tiger. He’d done it right at the bar, without regard for how it affronted the bartender, and showing no signs of hurry to deliver his companion or girlfriend her drink. He’d ordered a Grey Goose Magnum, a double, for himself, and now he winced down a mouthful, chasing off his disappointment in the beer, whi
ch had left a foam trace on his grizzled upper lip.

  “Every nation needs its Budweiser,” said Bruno.

  “Okay, okay, but listen now, Flashman,” said Stolarsky. He spoke as if they’d been delaying some negotiation for long enough already, for years. “We’re gonna have to fill in some missing chapters here.”

  “Flashman?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t remember you put me on to those books in high school. George MacDonald Fraser? Flashman the coward, the asshole, the heel? You’ve obviously based your whole life on him. Hell, it was obvious by eleventh grade.”

  Bruno remembered the books, barely. He was more interested, however, that this shambles, this heap of a man, appeared so immune to embarrassment.

  “I’ve got the whole sequence in first editions, man. I think of you every time I open one. So who’d you murder for that tuxedo, Alex? Please don’t tell me you’re that old weirdo’s significant other.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Should I translate? His, whatchamacallit, his catamite, Alex.”

  “What a word!”

  “Give it over, yes or no: Are you or are you not Liberace’s protégé?”

  “No,” said Bruno, without any shame of his own. It was hardly the first time it had been suggested. If Stolarsky didn’t believe him it wouldn’t be the first time for that, either.

  “So he’s your CIA handler? Are you about to bust in on some big operation here?” Stolarsky’s tone was sardonic, but it wanted an answer. It had been sardonic, but urgent too, when at twelve or thirteen a virginal Stolarsky had interrogated Bruno on Bruno’s experiences with girls. In this manner, by a series of associations, these ruins that called themselves Keith Stolarsky leveraged Bruno back into the unwelcome past.

  Still, there was something beguiling in Stolarsky’s attentions, which made Bruno willing to carry on teasing him. “No,” Bruno said. “Not that, either.”

  “I get it, I’m blowing your cover, huh?”

  “Impossible to do, since I’m utterly uncovered.”

  “Just our man in a tux in a secret club in the Singapore Sands? Did you know this pile of gleaming shit and infinity waterfalls is human history’s most expensive building?”

  “I hadn’t heard.”

  “If you’re not sick of me guessing I can try to come up with more insults. You’re the waiter, right? Nah, you’re the janitor.”

  “I do clean up from time to time.”

  “Fuck you. You’re a gigolo, obviously. I could buy you for Tira for five hundred of these Singapore dollars, right? You’re holding up okay. You’re no Dorian Gray, but you’re not quite the portrait, either. It’s been a good life, and so long as you’ve still got your hair you can run out the string a while longer. You work hard for the money. Just like this building, you put every fucking cent on the screen.”

  “You think you’ve guessed it this time?”

  “Sure, of course I did. I even guessed your nickname in the trade. They call you Infinity Pool. Because a woman can gaze into your eyes and feel like she’s drowning, plus you’re really fucking expensive.”

  “Would you really buy me for Tira?”

  “Sure, but I’d have to be allowed to watch. She gets whatever she wants.”

  “Like that beer?”

  “I’m glad to know you’ll be working that Goofus and Gallant routine into the grave, I’d be disappointed if you dropped it. But you’ve got a point, let’s go. I bet she’s pumped that old character actor for your vital statistics, probably got your social security number and passwords while I’m still here trying to get in the door, conversational-wise.”

  “Are you telling me the two of you are some sort of grifters?” At this, the balance turned. Bruno laughed in his heart, though his face was still. Stolarsky had no power over him. Bruno’s high-school acquaintance was a barely viable man who’d saved his entire life for Southeast Asia on a package tour, likely not even a competent sex tourist but a wannabe, a talker, who’d blundered his way into this room by the act of overtipping some concierge.

  “Yeah, sure, Alex, that’s great, Boris and Natasha Badenov, you caught me.”

  “I doubt she’ll find my associate an easy mark.”

  “Your associate? You’re fucking killing me.”

  “I’m a professional gambler, Keith. I relieve wealthy men of the delusion that they’re any good at backgammon.”

  “You hustle board games? For real?”

  “For real.” It was suddenly possible, Bruno felt, to speak to Stolarsky not merely as though he were still the pesky, craven, retarded adolescent Bruno recalled but as if to a child. “Now, let’s bring Tira her indigenous Budweiser, and let’s enjoy ourselves conversational-wise for a minute or two, and then I’d appreciate it if you’d make yourselves scarce.” Bruno had realized he simply wasn’t interested in spending time watching Stolarsky and Falk try to fathom each other, or listening to them comparing fatuous characterizations of Bruno’s temperament.

  He remained curious about Tira Harpaz, but that could wait.

  “You’re blowing me off?”

  “Go play poker, or do whatever you were hoping to do in this place. You see, I wasn’t being completely truthful when I said you couldn’t blow my cover. In fact, my associate has arranged a meeting with a very dangerous and corrupt public official, one with an appetite for expensive contests of chance. He’s a rare quarry, and I don’t want to scare him off.”

  “Holy fuck, Flashman, you’re the complete package.”

  “Then, if you like, I’ll pick you and Tira up at your hotel tomorrow at noon, and show you some parts of Singapore that are a little more—textural. And then you’ll tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself.”

  “Because you really don’t give a shit.”

  “On the contrary, I’m dying to know.”

  “Riiiight.”

  II

  As he came in out of the glare off Beach Road into the Raffles lobby, Bruno didn’t know if he was in the mood for more of Keith Stolarsky’s banter or not. He’d suspended judgment, waiting to let the sight of Stolarsky decide for him. The morning after, his schoolmate’s presence at the Smoker’s Club seemed apparitional; Bruno had kept the promise to visit Stolarsky at his hotel as much to confirm its reality as out of any desire for Stolarsky and his girlfriend’s company, or for any other.

  Since the apparition declined to reappear, Bruno was left to wonder. Tira Harpaz came alone, hailing Bruno where he’d been corralled by a female butler. He was stuck on the far side of the “residents only” barrier, despite having been careful to wear a jacket to meet the hotel’s dress code, despite the day’s heat. Raffles exemplified the dull rigidity of Singapore’s old colonial fantasies about itself. He wondered how the staff felt about Stolarsky’s disheveled presence, but of course Stolarsky must have applied the universal solvent of money to the problem.

  Tira Harpaz had prepared for the noonday sun in a suitably wide-brimmed straw hat, so Bruno led her out onto the avenue rather than suggesting the hotel’s restaurant or bar, or a cab. It seemed to be what she wanted, anyhow. He himself wore a Borsalino, shade enough, though he already felt humidity cleaving shirt to ribs beneath the unnecessary jacket. When Bruno offered an inquiring glance back at the hotel’s upper stories, she shrugged. “My cell works here,” she said. “Keith’ll find us, if he ever wakes up …”

  “Fair enough. We can easily walk to Lau Pa Sat for some food from the market stalls. Or in the other direction, to Orchard Road, if you like.”

  “He said you’d promised the underground tour, whatever that consists of.”

  “I hope I wasn’t misleading. To be blunt, by comparison to Thailand and Sri Lanka, you’ll be awfully unimpressed with the underground scene here.”

  “No dens of iniquity?” she teased. “Chewing-gum orgies, nothing?”

  “Orchard Plaza does feature one very brightly colored condom store. We’ve got the usual massage parlors, but you can’t have come all this distance ju
st for a happy ending now, can you?”

  “Hey, who doesn’t like a happy ending?” Her tone was cryptic, but cheery.

  Bruno again twitched his head behind them, at Raffles. “Late night?”

  “He moaned something about seeing the sun come up and stuck the pillow over his head.”

  “So you got started on the dens of iniquity without me, then? Or Keith did.”

  “It’s not like you think. He spent all night drinking Red Bulls from the minibar. He went online and started playing backgammon against machines and people, and then arguing strategy on these forums with all these international night-owl backgammon assholes. He, like, built this whole new backgammon persona for himself in eight or nine hours, which, if you know Keith, is weirdly typical. He woke me up at two and tried to get me to play him, said he’d figured it all out. Of course I told him to fuck off. He’s hoping to pit himself against you, obviously.”

  “You can learn everything about backgammon online in eight or nine hours, with the precise exception of how to beat someone like me.”

  “He’ll be eager to hear it.”

  “I don’t sit down for less than five hundred Singapore dollars a point.” Bruno wasn’t sure why he’d exaggerated. He’d been in games for lower stakes recently enough. Five hundred, it occurred to him, was the price Stolarsky had suggested it would take to purchase Bruno for Tira Harpaz for the night.

  “Yeah, well, he can afford you.” Now she was sardonic—toward whom, Bruno wasn’t sure. “Is that what you played for last night? Keith said you had a date with the Asian J. Edgar Hoover?”

  “My game last night didn’t materialize.” Whether spooked by sight of the anomalous Americans, or for some other, unknown reason, Yik Tho Lim had sent an emissary with an apology to Falk, deferring the contest.

  “Sorry to hear it. Christ, this heat. This is, like, our fifteenth country, and I’ve pretty well exhausted my curiosity for meandering around in the blazing sunlight. I’d love some iced coffee, though.”

  He’d read her wrong, despite her eagerness to put the hotel behind her. Perhaps she’d expected him to have come in a car. “We’ll jump in a taxi,” he said. “I’ll take you to the market, if only just to look.” They’d crossed Bras Basah Road, but other hotels approached and finding a taxicab wouldn’t be difficult.