The Blot

by Jonathan Lethem

  •

  In fogged dawn, he’d suffered a bus ride to Oakland for arraignment and bail hearing. Tira Harpaz had paid his bail and waited at the courthouse door as Bruno stumbled into grainy, headache-inducing daylight, a humbling rescue. Her Volvo’s passenger seat was no cleaner, though perhaps more than ever he felt suited to its squalor.

  She drove in silence. It wasn’t the reunion he’d dreamed of, their puppets traveling aligned but quiescent on the car seats. Bruno’s powers were bankrupt, dissolved in Stolarsky’s mockery, his energies spent in arson and bicycle spills. He thought secret cyst, he thought eat or be eaten, he thought let’s double resign, but the messages floated off like banners untethered from the aircraft that had hoisted them, they furled and tumbled from the sky of his mind.

  Bruno didn’t ask where they were going. Her route made it obvious. This time there was no pit stop at Zuni for oysters and roast chicken. Tira veered off the bridge southward, over Potrero, to run the gauntlet of billboards, the sun-glinting hills studded with houses like little pink boxes—it was June who’d always called them that. Bruno had spent the night in jail thinking of her—not Tira but June. He’d recalled walks home from Berkeley High while he’d still needed those, up MLK, then past the University Avenue Indian groceries and sari shops, into the flats, to the Chestnut Street apartment before she’d been evicted from it.

  Tira surprised him, however, pulling into the airport’s cell-phone lot, a desolate sunny asphalt island opposite the ancient United hangar.

  “Are we picking someone up?” he half joked. She only glared.

  “You can change your clothes. Your stuff’s in the trunk, pick out what you like.” She groped beneath the steering wheel to pop the trunk’s latch.

  He bumbled out to see what she meant. A piece of soft luggage lay centered inside, one he didn’t recognize.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  Bruno unzipped it to find the contents of his Charlottenburg hotel-room closet, long since abandoned as ballast in his escape from the unpaid bill. He handled the shirts, the sharp-pressed trousers, in wonder. In the nylon compartment opposite the hanging clothes he found clean tube socks, still-tagged underwear, sweatpants, T-shirts.

  “All your favorites.” Tira laughed bitterly. She’d gotten out of the car to stand with him at the trunk. Now she gestured at his passenger seat. “Get dressed, I’ll avert my eyes, I promise.”

  He selected a sharkskin two-piece suit, deep mustard brown, an oddity he’d cherished and had believed lost. Underneath it, not a button shirt but ABIDE. His two selves spliced into one. Assuming the correct number was two, rather than a hundred, or zero. He changed in the passenger seat, slipping out of the shredded tuxedo pants and shirt, rolled the pants gingerly over his crusted knees, and helped himself into the fresh costume. Tira leaned her back against the car, smoking a joint, her customary two drags before tossing it aside.

  “Here, I almost forgot.” She opened his door and reached into the glove compartment to hand Bruno two items: his Berlin stone and a neat paper folder, imprinted with the same travel agent’s emblem that had decorated the e-ticket paperwork which got Beth Dennis fired. Did everyone in Berkeley use the same travel agency? Or perhaps Beth and Alicia, too, had unwittingly followed a script authored by Stolarsky. Or was it someone else who’d moved the checkers around? Bruno felt the answer lay before him, in the raw circle of understanding from which the blot had been lifted, like a garden stone.

  Maybe it wasn’t important to know. The ticket inside was in the name Alexander B. Flashman. The stiff new passport tucked into the paper jacket opposite the ticket and receipt featured the same name. The photo showed Bruno’s current face—the picture Keith Stolarsky had snapped in his office, that day he’d awarded Bruno the burlap mask.

  Bruno put the ticket into his interior breast pocket and balanced the stone in his palm. He looked at Tira.

  “Keith claimed that thing was yours,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “He said you could make soup with it, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean.”

  “Tira.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t leave until I know Madchen is safe.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve got one more surprise for you.” She slid back into the driver’s seat, checked her phone to confirm a text, then shoved it into her purse.

  “Yes?”

  She pointed across the lot. Bruno followed the line of her finger and discovered Stolarsky’s Jaguar, just now scooting up parallel to their position, aimed at the exit. Madchen peered at him through the passenger window. She raised her hand, looking intact and chastened. Stolarsky’s Toad-in-motorcar shadow was visible at the wheel, but for once he seemed willing to play the silent caddy.

  “The German said the same thing as you,” said Tira. “She demanded proof you were safe. It’s nauseatingly cute.”

  The arrangement was like a cold war exchange of spies in a neutral zone, or some sulky prom-night-chaperone standoff between aggrieved families. Had Madchen been there waiting, to see him exit the car and browse his luggage at the Volvo’s trunk? He supposed she’d had a suitcase packed for her as well, by the same unseen hand.

  Now the Jaguar began to move in the direction of the lot’s exit.

  “Tell them to stop. I want to talk to her.”

  “There’s no time. Her flight leaves before yours, I think.”

  “He’s bored with her already.”

  “He’s bored with everything.” Tira’s voice was flat. “She made a good alibi, though. Proof he was up the hill when the blaze started. He’s wanted the insurance on that firetrap for twenty years—everyone knew except you, apparently.”

  “What about you?” he asked. “Are you bored, too?”

  “I’m bored with seeing him get every fucking thing he wants, if that’s what you’re asking. I thought you might do better, Alexander.”

  “You’re saying I gave him what he wants?”

  “You served a few purposes.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “It came cheap enough.”

  These were the last words between them.

  In the international terminal, once he was checked in and freed of his bag and through security—no one wanted to detain poor A. B. Flashman, a scarred man with a scarred passport photo, and limping slightly besides—Bruno found a Lufthansa nonstop to Frankfurt on the big board. But by the time he’d threaded his way to the distant gate, Madchen had boarded and was gone.

  The name on the receipt for Bruno’s ticket was Edgar Falk.

  Backgammon

  I

  It was their fifth consecutive night visiting the Smoker’s Club, at the top of the hotel beside the casino, and the Brazilian was growing tired of the American asking when he was going to get him into the game with the Mummy. The Brazilian, Tiago Alves, had been playing at the high-stakes table with the American, Dale Thurber (Thurber had an idiotic nickname, which he’d insisted Alves call him; Alves had refused), each of the previous nights. They’d had a run together at a table before, in a private game in Guadalajara. In both instances they’d largely avoided going head-to-head, only skirmished, taken each other’s measure and in the process aroused a great deal of suspicion. Here in Singapore the two had each taken money from various men who’d come and stayed just for one evening at the table, Thurber often with hands he’d ostentatiously revealed to Alves as foolish bluffs or cruel beats on hands he ought to have folded, gut-shot straights filled on the river card, last-minute boats on atrocious paper.

  Thurber had, in this manner, been steadily feeding Alves the outlines of his game. For Alves, the romance was over. He told himself that tonight he would take Thurber for a great deal of money. Either that or excuse himself from the table and go fuck the American’s extremely young and extremely unhappy wife. She’d been petitioning Alves for this courtesy, it seemed to Alves, since Guadalajara. To do so would redeem this pointless waiting, waiting to return to the strange game in the private home of the Sing
aporean fascist. Alves, who’d played the Mummy months earlier, had told his tale to Thurber in Guadalajara; Thurber’s desire to test himself had driven the plan to meet here. In that previous visit Alves had lost against the Mummy, badly, and had no intention of doing it again. But he had thought he might be willing to see the American do it. Now he felt ready to extract the price for such irritation personally.

  “You have to wait for the old man,” Alves had explained to Thurber more than once. “He takes you there.”

  Tonight, they’d rehearsed it again. “It’s at the home of this Billy the Kim, right?” asked Thurber.

  “Billy Yik Tho Lim, yes.”

  “So why don’t we just call him direct?”

  “It doesn’t work like that. When Lim and the Mummy are ready for a game, the old man comes.”

  “Well, shit. It’s really worth all this hoopla? I been at a hundred-thou buy-in game before.”

  “It is not a game like you’ve been in before.”

  “He beat you bad, huh?”

  “He will do the same to you. You can acquire a big mountain of Singapore dollars from Director Lim and his comrades, if you are diligent. But if you do not tread lightly you will give it all back, and much more of your own besides, to the Mummy.”

  “Got into your head, Tiago?” said Thurber.

  “Yes,” said Alves. “He got into my head.”

  II

  The atmosphere wasn’t precisely what Dale “Titanic” Thurber had been anticipating, but it was one he could swing with, and shit, who knew what he’d been expecting to begin with? They’d been driven from the hotel on the docks a short distance to Sentosa Cove, on the water again, still in sight of all the signature skyscrapers, on a rooftop patio with sliding doors that could have been shut, the whole thing refrigerated as it ought to have been, as anything should be in this clime, but instead Billy Lim and his crowd kept them slid open, screened, so the players drowned in the humidity and the chirping of some damn South Asian cricket or shore frog, Titanic wasn’t sure which. The patio was jammed to its edges with immense potted ferns, squat palm trees—the chirping could even have been coming from inside. The old man, who’d finally consented to summon them from the Smoker’s Club, was a horror, could have passed for a mummy himself, and didn’t play cards, just lurked around fishily, hairy-eyeballing the game and Billy Lim’s servants. But the drinks were fresh and cold and the company, apart from Tiago Alves, who’d the past few evenings gone a bit fishy, too—and seemed to be playing Titanic for keeps, and fuck the Brazilian for that, he hadn’t more than maybe a thousand of Titanic’s dollars in his pocket, counting cumulatively from Guadalajara, and believe it, Titanic was counting—the company was jolly. Billy the Lim and his boys, three of them besides Billy, were like a bunch of retired Pentagon types, more or less, and they bet hard and held no grudges, and were full of dirty jokes even if Titanic only understood about a third of what was said in their so-called English. The hands they played were just a warm-up, apparently, which didn’t keep Titanic—and Alves too, it didn’t escape Titanic’s notice—from laying some early waste to the Singaporeans’ reserves.

  “So where’s this Mummy, anyhow?”

  “He’ll be along,” said the old man, smiling like a lizard.

  The Mummy did come along. He wasn’t precisely what Titanic was expecting, either, from the weird nickname and rep, not a creature in bandages but a tall man in a white linen suit and a pale blue shirt, wearing sunglasses over a soft white mask that was tucked into his shirt like an ascot, and tailored to fit around his ears and to leave room at the top for a shock of sandy hair. He bore himself gracefully though with a slight limp to the empty seat at the table and Billy Lim and his cohort did nothing special to lower the mood to his spooky-ass level, went on chuckling and drinking and shuffling the cards, but the mood was nonetheless drawn down somehow, as though the evening had been organized around the Mummy’s presence, his arrival here, and the servant who’d delivered each of their stacks of chips, the hundreds and the five hundreds and the thousands and the ten thousands that so wonderfully quickened your attention, gave you such a blast of goddamn adrenaline each time one was so much as touched, Titanic supposed that it was exactly true that it had been. And Titanic thought: It’s Lawrence of Arabia under there, why didn’t they tell me? It was Titanic’s favorite goddamn movie, and now here he was, come all the way to Singapore for the legendary game and facing not a monster at the card table but Lawrence of goddamn Arabia hidden behind a bridal veil. Well, what the fuck?

  “You can call me Titanic,” he said, and stuck out his hand.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said the Mummy softly. But he didn’t reach across the table for Titanic’s hand. Instead he reached into his pocket and withdrew a gray, irregular cube of stone, which he positioned on the table behind his chips.

  “What’s that?” said Titanic. “Your lucky charm?”

  “Yes, that’s right.” The Mummy’s tone was merely pleasant, giving away no embarrassment, nor impatience, nor hostility.

  Billy Lim dealt cards. And so it was on.

  III

  When the sun began to come up across the water you had to admit it was kind of beautiful, it gave the whole Sentosa Cove rooftop-patio thing its reason for being though Titanic was well sick of breathing the humid ocean air laced with the gray biting haze of smoke, the scent of burning that Billy Lim had explained to Titanic when he groused was the fault not of Singapore but of Malaysia, to which Singapore was so unfortunately shackled, and who were burning their rain forests for palm oil, wasn’t it a pity? Yes, and it was a pity and really pretty shitty that Titanic at dawn found himself not only a hundred and sixty thousand Singapore dollars in the hole but also sensing that there were not many more hands to be dealt before Billy Lim woke again—he’d been dozing in his seat—and finally asked his guests to excuse him, bringing an end to the game. The warning signs were there. The servants who’d brought at three a.m. the kind of snack men used to fuel play—roast pork sandwiches and black coffee and ice-cold vodka—now came again with elegant little plates of breakfast, eggs and bacon, mini-croissants, and Titanic sensed it was the kiss-off in the making.

  “Don’t you eat?” he said to the Mummy. “You got a mouth under there?”

  “I’m a vegetarian,” the Mummy said lightly. He’d been away from the table only once or twice all night, to piss or shoot up heroin or vape or tap a Ouija board, whatever it was that fucking Mummies did on their breaks between ten-thousand-dollar poker hands. Alves, the Brazilian turncoat, was long gone. Alves had only lost a little, to Titanic and to Billy Lim. He’d taken a few hands here and there, too, but for the most part had played tight, folding the instant the Mummy raised on a hand. That, Titanic had noticed, was Billy Lim’s practice too, and that of his buddies, a cute little number they were running, boxing Titanic into being the only sucker at the table willing to go into it head-to-head. Which hadn’t worked out too wonderfully. Death Valley had come at about three thirty, just after the coffee and meat and vodka had got Titanic brightened up and he’d seen a sweet little flush come together right on the flop and had tried to take back in one big haul what the Mummy had been accumulating from him, and the Mummy had gone for it, called the crazy raises, and then turned over a picayune boat, twos over four for insult’s sake. Alves had been right, the Mummy was unbeatable, it was so uncanny it was pretty much even fucking stupid, even fucking boring, except for one thing, the thing Alves hadn’t warned him about at all: The sensation of losing a hand to the Mummy was almost as good as winning. Titanic was in a trance. Without knowing it he’d waited his whole life to meet the gambler—the ghost? the creature?—who would do this to him, and now that it had happened he felt hypnotized by losing. He felt addicted to it. The old man had asked him politely to convey his bank details after the hand at three thirty, and he hadn’t even kicked the old man’s face in for it. And now the sun was coming up and he didn’t want to leave, not yet.

  Alves is
with Lisa, you dumb monkey.

  The thought came unbidden, one of his hunches, in his own voice as if he was sitting on the shoulder of his own jacket, whispering into his own ear. Titanic knew the voice. It came to him frequently, had come all through the long night of losing with the same urgency: He’s bluffing this time, or You’ll fill the straight on the river. The voice had let him down this night, but he still believed it, he felt the facts in the case arrive like an illness in his lungs or stomach. The audacious fucking Brazilian was fucking his wife. Alves had gone back to the hotel and straight to her room, or her to his. If he left now he could catch them, it was the true last hand of his night, played not in cards but in bodies.

  “I gotta go.”

  Now, only now, did the Mummy reach across the table. His handshake felt as real as a man’s. And then he collected his stone.

  IV

  “What made him leave so fast?” asked Falk, smoothing his face with cold cream at the sink, removing his foundation and blush. “Is he out of money?”

  “Nothing to do with money. He has more than enough, as you well know.”

  Falk shrugged. “There can be surprises.”

  “Not this time.”

  “So what spooked him?”

  “I was too tired to continue. I gave him knowledge concerning his wife. Something from the other one—Alves.”

  “Interesting,” said Falk, turning.

  “Not really.” He’d only been a temporary occupant of the American, but long enough to find the matter putrid, nothing to revisit.

  “If you’re tired, you should go sleep. May I call you a car?”

  “I’ll walk.”

  There was nowhere safer than Singapore in the morning. Yet it was no more dangerous at night. That was what made it Singapore! This permanent marvel amused the tall figure in the white linen suit as he strode across the Sentosa Gateway, past Brani Island, into the city, gripping the stone in his pocket, otherwise unburdened. He needed sleep, yes. But he thought he might first cross along the viaduct and turn into Labrador Villa Road. He wished to see the birds there.