“Get a table in back if you can. In the meantime, there’s something you should do.”
“What?”
“Call your wife,” Maj said, and walked away.
It took David ten minutes to get an approach straight in his head. Then he stood on a corner and called her.
“Plus amazingly I ran into someone,” he said, low-key, after he’d told her everything he’d done—up to but not including whatever he’d just experienced in Union Square. “From when I lived here.”
“Would this be a man someone … or a lady someone?”
“Man, of course,” David said quickly.
“I’m joking,” Dawn said, though she sounded a little relieved. “So who is he? I don’t remember you mentioning anybody in particular from back then.”
“His name … he’s called Maj.”
“Weird name.”
“He’s … kind of a weird guy.”
“Do you want to stay there tonight and hang out?”
“Would that be okay?”
“Of course, silly. If you’re going to set a book there, this has to be a good thing, right? He should be able to help. With current stuff, atmosphere, what it’s like living there now. It’s been a while since you were in the city properly, after all.”
“Exactly,” David said.
“Where would you stay?”
“I don’t know. Maybe with him. Crash on a couch or something.” There was silence down the line. “What?”
“I wasn’t going to tell you,” she said, in a bubbling rush. “I wanted you to find it when you got home. But there’s a letter for you from Ralph’s office. Plus … I checked our account. Your advance came through.”
David felt exhausted. “Oh, thank God.”
“So if you wanted to stay in a hotel or something, it’s okay. Nowhere too fancy, though—save that for when we’re there together.”
“I will,” he said, laughing, feeling relief wash over him—mingling with guilt he felt for not being honest with her. “What will you do?”
“I’ll muddle through somehow. I’m …” She hesitated. “Maybe it’s wrong. But I thought I might start sorting through the spare room.”
For a moment David didn’t get what she meant—he couldn’t imagine what would impel her to tackle the room on the second floor where all the homeless junk in their lives got thrown—but then he did.
“Go for it,” he said, momentarily nowhere else in the world except on this phone call, with this woman.
“You don’t think it’s too early?”
“I think it’s a great idea.”
“And it won’t … you know.”
He knew what she meant. That starting to prepare the room for a nursery would anger the gods, causing them to reach down to stir darkness back into their lives.
“No,” he said firmly. “We walked a long way down Superstition Road the other times and it didn’t help at all. Good things need welcoming too, and that’s what we’re going to do this time.”
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you too.”
“So go hang out. But get home early tomorrow. Remember what we’re doing.”
“What?”
“The scan,” she said. “I told you.”
“I knew that.”
“Hmm.”
“Be careful, okay? Don’t move anything big. Wait until I get back.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m only a bit pregnant.”
“That’s like being a bit unique.”
“Pedant. Buzz off and have fun. But not too much.”
David lowered the phone from his ear, feeling a pang of regret for not being home, for not being able to hug his wife at the moment they’d discovered he’d been paid. He resolved that nothing like this should ever happen again, making it all the more important that he got to the bottom of what was happening right now, and end it.
It took him another five minutes to get to Bid’s, down a side street not far from Bleecker. His feet remembered the way even if he didn’t. He hesitated on the sidewalk. The door at the bottom of the steps was open and you could smell decades of stale beer from where he stood. He hadn’t yet discounted the idea that this was a complicated con and/or set-up—and if so, that getting further into it was a very dumb idea. Right now, a voice was telling him, he could just split. There was no one here to stop him. He could get the hell out and just go home.
That was his rational mind, however.
Another part knew, though it didn’t understand, that something else was going on, that even if he didn’t remember Maj, he somehow knew him—and that things do not go away simply because you turn your back or run away, and that at least this was a public place.
It was this part that took him down the stairs and into the past.
Chapter 23
The bar was low-ceilinged and narrow and would have felt cramped even if there hadn’t been a lot of people already filling it, drinking hard. When David reached the bottom of stairs he was hit with a wave of recollection. He’d stood on this spot a number of times, looking out for someone—usually one of the aspiring artists/writers/whatevers he’d struck up acquaintance with while he lived there, and had never heard from since. The sensation wasn’t one of simple nostalgia, however: he also knew that on some of those occasions he’d been feeling much as he was now—trepidation, a sense of duty he didn’t want to fulfill. He took faltering steps into the mass of people milling around, propping up the bar, lurking at the few tables at the edges. Bid’s made even less effort to be welcoming than Kendricks—took a typically New York pride in this, in fact—and evidently remained the lair of hardcore locals and hipsters.
Finally he saw someone he recognized, a face at the far end of the room. It wasn’t Maj, however. It was the man in the ill-fitting suit who’d spoken to David when he first reached Union Square Park.
The man rolled his eyes as if glad to have finally gotten his attention, and beckoned with a small upward nod. When David didn’t respond immediately, he gestured him to come over, more urgently. Not knowing what else to do, David started to shoulder his way through the drinkers.
When he got to the other side he saw the man was standing diffidently beside a small table with three stools around it. “Sit down,” he said.
“Why?”
“Just do it, mate, eh? Quickly.”
His manner was deferential but insistent. David sat. The man immediately followed suit, selecting the stool on the opposite side of the table, so that David was facing the wall when he looked at him.
“Why did you wait for me to sit down?”
“Don’t move your mouth so much when you talk, eh?”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll look like a knob.”
“I don’t … know you, do I?”
“Nah. Didn’t know Maj back then, did I? The name’s Bob. Fictitious Bob, if you want to be formal.”
“What can I get you?”
David looked up to see a straggle-haired girl standing over him with the air of a person for whom this encounter had gotten old and too dull for words before she’d even opened her mouth. “Huh?”
“To drink.”
David ordered the first beer that came into his head and watched, baffled, as the girl barged off through the crowd. Bid’s had been celebrated for the bad-temperedness of its staff, he remembered. He turned to Bob.
“Why didn’t she ask you what you wanted?”
Bob shook his head as if every question David asked wrote the word “buffoon” in bigger letters on his forehead.
At that moment Maj appeared out of the crowd and sat straight down at the remaining place. He glanced around as if taking the measure of the room, and moved the stool to be closer to Bob. He looked preoccupied.
“Got your work cut out here, Maj,” Bob said, nodding toward David. “Makes your average Dozeno sound like Lonely Clive.”
“Being here didn’t help? You still don’t remember anything?” Maj asked David, exas
perated. “I was hoping the fact that you’d come to the city meant something. And we used to meet here often. Before you stopped.”
“I … had a dream last night.” David hesitated, looking at Bob.
“He’s a friend,” Maj said. “And a Cornerman. You don’t get any more discreet than that.”
Bob nodded with what appeared to be pride.
“What’s a Cornerman?”
Bob glanced at Maj as if warning him not to respond, but Maj overrode him. “The closest we’ve got to newspapers, cell phones, and e-mail. What was the dream about, David? Quickly. It’s too crowded here tonight. You won’t be able to hold this table long.”
“Why?”
“David, seriously. The dream.”
“I was in my parents’ house,” David said, feeling like a kid at school being railroaded into something by older boys who seemed to understand everything he did not. “I couldn’t stand their fighting, but I couldn’t get away. So I went under the kitchen table.”
David had Maj’s full attention now, and he realized how familiar the man’s face seemed. Not as it was, but as it had been in an earlier incarnation. He’d known this man well. “There was another boy under there.”
Maj didn’t say anything.
“That was you, wasn’t it? And it wasn’t a dream. It was a memory.”
The man smiled—beautifully, looking in that instant so like the boy from David’s dream that he didn’t even have to answer the question. Something twisted in David’s heart, forgotten joy cut with regret and loss.
“But … how?” David said.
The waitress reappeared, slapped a glass on the table, and barked a number at David. After paying for the beer he took a swallow. A familiar taste flooded his mouth, and he pulled the glass away and stared at it. “This is Brooklyn Lager,” he said.
“What you ordered,” Bob said. “Good choice. May I?”
“It’s crowded, Bob,” Maj said.
“Oh, go on. It’s been ages.”
Maj rolled his eyes. “David, stand up a second.”
David did as he’d been told. Nearby drinkers glanced at the table, one couple even taking a meaningful step toward it. Realizing he had to send some kind of signal to hold them off, David hitched up his trousers, as if he’d stood for that purpose.
Meanwhile Maj and Bob ducked their heads toward the table. Bob took a big slurp from the top of the beer. Maj then tilted the depleted glass toward his own face without lifting it from the table and did the same before returning it to the upright position. They leaned back together. The whole thing took three seconds.
“Nice.” Bob ran his tongue around his lips appreciatively. “Can’t beat your local lagers.”
“Sit down,” Maj said to David.
David sat, and the seat vultures went back to their conversations, for now. Nobody seemed to have noticed what had happened at the table in the meantime, and David looked curiously at Maj.
“You get good at playing the angles,” Maj said. “And misdirection, of course.”
“Maj is the best,” Bob said. “Famous for it.”
“Maybe,” Maj said. “But it doesn’t pay to get overconfident.”
“You get anything out of St. Pat’s?” Bob asked, still eyeing David’s beer. “Talk to Clive?”
Maj shook his head. “He’s not there. Apparently he took himself to the basement two days ago. So … that’s the end of him.”
“Sorry, mate.”
Maj shrugged, but it didn’t look convincing.
“Worth checking any of the others?”
“They’re even worse.”
“Doesn’t have to be a problem though, does it?”
“No. It happens all the time. But Lizzie said these people seem very nosy and one might have sharper sight than normal—which is why I came back to the city in a hurry. Not to mention there are a few friends who’d like to capitalize on any outside threat right now.”
A shadow passed over Bob’s face. “Speak of the devil.”
Maj turned. At first David couldn’t work out who they were talking about. Then a chill ran down his neck.
Four people were standing next to the bar in a line, their backs up against the wall. David realized with a start that he’d seen one of them before—the short, stocky one was the man who’d been glaring at him in Union Square Park, near the end. The others were thinner and taller, weirdly tall, dressed in clothing so dark it was hard to make out details of individual garments. Two men, one with long, gray straggly hair, the other cropped short over a skull that looked like it had been shaped with blows from a shovel. Between them stood a painfully thin woman whose hair was dirty red. All had pale skin stretched over large and bony facial features, and they looked so similar they had to be related.
They were very still—or so David thought at first. Everyone around them was in movement, leaning toward one another, gesturing at bar staff, laughing, talking, looking around for seats. The four up against the wall appeared motionless … except if you looked at them long enough you realized they were vibrating slightly, enough to make their edges look a little blurry.
“Christ,” Maj said.
“How does he do it?” Bob asked, with what sounded like awe. “Just appear like that—as if he knows someone’s been talking about him?”
“Nothing magical about it,” Maj said irritably. “Golzen’s been sniffing around me for weeks, and his three spooks have been hard on my tail since I got back to the city. Golzen probably told them to follow me. That’s all.”
Bob didn’t look convinced.
“Who is that guy?” David asked. “The shorter one? I’ve seen him before.”
“When?”
“In Union Square. He was staring at me.”
This seemed to confirm whatever concerns Bob had about the man. “I’m not liking this, Maj,” he muttered. “I don’t want to get on Golzen’s bad side.”
“Fuck him. He’s just like the rest of us.”
“I’m not so sure. I hear a lot of things, remember. People are taking him seriously these days, more and more. There’s chatter going back and forth.”
“Like what?”
“You know I can’t tell you, Maj.”
“I meant in general.”
“They want to know what he’s saying, that’s all. And he left a broadcast with me a couple days ago. Sounded like he was telling people to get ready for something. But not everyone. Just them who knew some code.”
“What was the broadcast?”
“It was ‘For the twelve. Be ready. Follow signs until Jedburgh appears.’ ”
“What?” Maj laughed. “It’s bullshit. He sends out random nonsense to make his acolytes think he knows something. He’s crazy. All four of them are.”
“So you say. But I’d already been hearing rumors about twelve chosen ones, Golzen and eleven others. What if he’s finally found out where Perfect is? I don’t want to get left behind, do I?”
“Bob, it’s a myth.”
“I dunno. I’m hearing things. Every day. They say getting to Perfect will be like the Bloom—but it lasts forever. And you get strong.”
“There’s no such place. It’s Chinese whispers and wishful thinking and the demagogue fantasies of a guy who’s not right in the head. The Bloom is the Bloom and then it’s done. End of story.”
“I’m hearing things, Maj,” Bob repeated stubbornly.
As the two men argued, David noticed there were a couple of small wet patches on the floor by their stools, as if a splash of water had dropped from the ceiling in front of each of them. When he glanced upward to see where it might have come from, he discovered his view was obscured. Two guys in T-shirts were standing over the table, very close. Too close. They had hard faces and the boxy, geometric shoulders of men who paid daily homage to their self-image with repetitive exercise.
“Waiting for someone?” the nearest one asked.
“No.”
The other smirked. “You sure?”
&nb
sp; For a moment David couldn’t work out what this was supposed to mean, then realized the men were looking at him in a way that was predatory and unkind. “Look …”
“No, you look. The place is slammed. Either drift or we’re going to join you.”
“What are you talking about? There’s no space left.”
“Are you being funny?”
David looked anxiously at Maj and Bob for backup. They weren’t there. The stools on the other side of the table were empty.
The first guy squatted down so his face was close to David’s. His eyes were very sharp and blue, but there was no depth to them at all.
“So what’s the story, princess? You want to make some nice new friends?”
David got up hurriedly. He made his way into the crowd without looking back, but heard the two men laughing together all the same. In the last half hour the room had gotten so packed that he had to shove his way through the crowds. How had Maj and Bob managed to get away so quickly?
When he got to the door he glanced back, but couldn’t see any sign of either of them. The other people remained at the end of the bar, however, in a line, their backs against the wall. They turned their heads as one to watch David as he left. The girl smiled at him.
It was not a good smile.
Chapter 24
Maj was waiting on the sidewalk in the twilight, looking distracted. Bob had gone.
“This isn’t going how I hoped,” Maj muttered.
David stormed up to him. “Look, just tell me what the hell is happening. Who are you?”
“I’m your friend.”
David felt hysterical with everything he didn’t understand. “Yes, you keep saying that, but how can you be if I don’t even know who you are?”
“There’s someone else,” Maj said. “He’s one of you, not one of us. He’s wrong about a lot of things, but he might be able to explain the situation in a way you’ll find easier to understand. The most important thing is the opportunity we’ve got now. This almost never happens, David. I don’t know anyone who it happened to. Or where it happened and took. It’s like …” He thought for a moment. “Do you remember third grade science class?”
“What? Of course not.”
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