New People of the Flat Earth

by Brian Short

  “Proteus,” she said, gently touching his face (the same face, he reflected, that she’d three times now threatened to blow into pulp with the sheriff’s gun), “I’m not the girl you think I am.”

  “You’re… what’s that supposed to mean?”

  She turned and walked slowly away from him, a gentle, sensual sway to her hips. Looking back over her shoulder, she said to him, “I met her once, you know. Can’t say that I liked her much.”

  He watched her walk off.

  She turned again and called over the wind, “Pick me up at seven. I’m your date tonight.” And then she was gone.

  He looked at the cigarette in his hand and was confused by it. Experimentally, he took a drag: it made him cough, it burned his throat. He tossed it to the ground and stamped it out, and went back inside to what was now apparently his coffee shop, which he supposed, in time, he would get around to renaming.

  •

  Because what had made the Ignatius! coffee! Co! into Proteus’s own was the sudden absence of its owner, the man Ignatius himself, who, a little late perhaps to the disappearing party, had still managed to somehow vanish all the same. By right of the means that property often – at least in the last year or so – changed hands in Cleric, that which once belonged to the person no longer there now was under the ad hoc administration, if not quite legal ownership, of the one who was.

  It had happened the week before, and Proteus was still getting used to it. It was on a Tuesday.

  “You don’t wear the colors anymore,” Ignatius had called, bent over some papers on one table, with his back to his employee, when Proteus stepped warily through the front door. “Yet you are still late as ever. Abdicating your responsibility to no one, yet abdicating all the same, while somehow the morning is still occupied, as if you were as ‘busy’ as once. You will explain this to me?” What he’d meant was that Proteus had taken off the badge and hat and gun of magic, the identifying signs and significant objects of himself in the role of town sheriff.

  “It was a bad idea altogether,” said Proteus, ignoring the thrust of his employer’s real question. “I still don’t know why, much less how, it actually happened, but I’m not doing it anymore. This town needs no law. You’re better off without one.”

  “Law, no,” said Ig. “Competent and reliable help? That I feel I could use.”

  Proteus looked about the empty store, not yet open. It was only himself and Ignatius in the place.

  “We’ll be open soon enough,” he said, switching on the espresso machine, allowing it to warm up – something Ignatius easily could have (and should have) done himself, “ready when the morning crowd arrives. Besides, I can hardly be late when we’ve never set a time for me to start. What’s your problem? I come, I do the work you need me to, then I go home again, and you scarcely pay me for that much. Don’t get me wrong – I’m happy to do it, and I’m glad I’ve got the job. But you’ve never had any real reason to complain, and still you do so constantly.”

  A shape appeared at the front door, gaunt and dark and bent and long. Davis, with his scraggle-beard face, peered inside. When Proteus saw him there, he held up both hands, all fingers spread: ten minutes. Tall Davis saw this gesture, but did not understand, so he rapped his bare knuckles against the glass to be let in.

  Proteus went to the door and opened it a crack. “Yes, Davis.”

  “Is the coffee ready yet?”

  “No, Davis. Give us ten minutes.”

  “Can I get a cigarette?”

  “No, Davis.”

  As the dark shape turned away from the door he’d once more closed and locked, Proteus said, though more to himself than his employer, “I have no idea where he could be staying. The man has no money. He hasn’t even got a cigarette. I still don’t know why he’s here.”

  “If you’d shown up at a reasonable hour,” Ignatius told him, his back still to him, “we could be up and running by now. You’ve just cost me a sale.”

  “What, to Davis? I just told you, the man has no money. I buy his coffee for him.”

  “You mean that you steal it.”

  “Seriously? Ig, what’s with you? You’re even worse than usual.” He set to grinding beans for the drip system and put a clean thermos under its basket. When he checked the till, he found there was no money in it; the drawer had yet to be retrieved from the safe. “Have you done anything this morning, or did you just get here early to wait for me and start your usual whinging? I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t believe me?” He sounded hurt.

  “No, Ig, I don’t. Just what is it that you are doing?” Because Ignatius had never once turned from the papers before him on the table. His shoulders were hunched, his back was bent, and his arms, held stiffly out, seemed to support his entire weight as he stared down at the two pages that Proteus had mistaken for an entire stack of documents. With his neck craned forward, Ignatius stared intently at these papers as if they meant life and death to him. When his own hands were free, Proteus came over to the table to look over Ignatius’s shoulder.

  The papers were blank except for a single, scrawled word on each. The hand that had written them in thick, black Sharpie marker was obviously a shaky one, childish, and had most likely been Ignatius’s own. The one on the right read simply “left,” while the one on the left said only “right.” But Ignatius’s face, mottled in splotches of red, was twisted with pain or impatience, and the muscles of his jaw clenched and unclenched again.

  “Just what…” he hissed, “about me… do you, exactly, not believe?”

  Proteus stepped back slowly. “That you’re really… Spanish?”

  With that, Ignatius did finally look up from his project. His cold eyes burned into Proteus with hate and pain. “Uh huh. Interesting. You’re right, you know. I’m not Spanish, not at all. I’m Basque.”

  “More’s the better for that,” said Proteus, still backing away. “I think I’ll just open that door now. Time to open, right? Ready enough.” But when he got the latch undone, it was not Davis who slinked immediately in, as he might’ve expected, but the Professor there, standing framed within the doorway, his stained brown teeth exposed in a wide smile, wearing a Sherlock Holmes-style deerstalker hat of red and white crosshatched plaid, a shining purple polyester suit jacket with hugely padded shoulders, and a well-worn pair of brown corduroy bell-bottom trousers. His shirt Proteus couldn’t see but for a ruffled cuff of green taffeta, poking out through the collar of his jacket, but his feet appeared clad in shoes of molded black rubber. It was, altogether, the most coordinated that Proteus had ever seen of the Professor’s outfits. And as he stood in surprise at this sight, slithery Davis bent past them both and stole into the shop like an escaped cat. “Good morning, Professor,” Proteus said chirpily. “I sure am glad to see you.” He then silently, in slowed exaggeration, mouthed the words: HELP ME… which the Professor, though his eyes widened at this significantly, only smiled at all the more broadly.

  Proteus, keeping his cool as best he could, stepped aside and motioned to the Professor to please, please come on in. And when he looked up once more, there stood the sculptor Sarfatti, ragged bear of a man, his forearm-length beard as much gray as it was brown, wearing the same camouflage field jacket as always over his massive bulk of a body, and the same skinny-tight and shiny jeans over his sticks of legs. Sarfatti seemed like two different men sewn together. The giant regarded Proteus coldly from his great height – really no more than a foot or so above him, all told, but it may as well have been a mile – and he snorted what may have been his contempt as he passed. And when Proteus looked up again, he met with two faces this time, dark and oval-shaped, black hair spilling endlessly down over their shoulders. These were the almond-eyed tree women who faced him now. They stood side by side as always, smiling, looking into, through, or past him, though pleasantly enough. “Ladies…” Proteus bowed to them as they entered. He was about to shut the front door on Mary Margaret Mary Alice, who’s appearance was quite
sudden, until his brain caught up with his hands and he was able to stop them. Her blocky self stood for only a moment’s hesitation at the threshold before she stepped, committed, within, without bothering to meet Proteus’s eye, as she was much too busy with the important business of money to notice that he was there, her telephone held firmly to her ear as usual. Once she was well inside, Proteus took a good look around to see who else might be coming, saw only the friendly and ownerless dog on the walk smiling up at him, and at last shut the door against the cold.

  Inside, Davis had found the proprietor still bent over his two papers, staring in furious fixation. He’d come up to the man and looked over his shoulder, the same as Proteus had done. Without a word, Davis switched the two, so that the right one said “right” and the left one now said “left.”

  “There,” he said and walked away.

  The others had formed into a line at the counter. Ignatius remained right where he was, though he seemed puzzled. It was hard to tell with his back to them all.

  “What can I get you, Professor?” Proteus asked once he’d taken his place behind the espresso machine.

  “Son,” said his elder, the man’s gray-green eyes sparkling with mischief, “the same thing as one requires. The last thing and the first. The summum bonum of the great work, my lad. What else? The rubedo!”

  He’d feared this. “Professor,” he said, “that will take some time.” It was in fact an extraordinarily complicated process, usually ending in failure and explosions.

  “Anything worth doing is worth the pain, child.”

  “Do you mind if I make the others’ drinks first? They may not be willing to wait for so long.”

  “Do your worst, lad, do your worst. The bent man and myself will set up our game in the meanwhile, just here beside the window as always.”

  “And how about yourself?” Proteus asked the large and hairy man who didn’t much like him.

  “I just want to watch.”

  “To… watch?”

  “To watch you struggle. It makes me laugh. Cuppa joe while I’m waiting’ll be fine, though. Hurry it up.”

  The two dark women who may’ve been trees floated forward as if drifting on the air.

  “A-and for you?” Proteus asked them.

  “We’d like,” their two voices merged together, “thirty-seven small hot cocoas, please. And that scone.”

  He groaned inwardly as he noticed the impatient looks that Mary Margaret shot at him from behind and over the two women’s shoulders. He looked toward his employer, who still had not moved, who still glared down at the two utterly useless pages on the table where he leaned – though they were at least now correctly identified. “A little help,” he said, “perhaps,” and then, “please? Ig?”

  But no, Ignatius did not move. He did not help. He was, however, semitransparent, becoming more so.

  “Uh… Ig?”

  The light through the window, the clear light of morning, the sun at its early slant, shone through the man, casting a pale half-shadow on the floor. The wall beyond him could be seen clearly through his self. “Well, here we go,” Ignatius said at last, a certain resignation in his voice. “I thought we were through with this sort of thing. It appears I was once again wrong.”

  “Ig,” said Proteus, “where are you going?”

  “It’s a better place, I suppose. Maybe not. Hard to say. I’ll let you know, or, I guess… I won’t. I’ll say hi to your friend, though.”

  “My friend?”

  “Sure, if I see her. I’ll say hi, or… something…”

  “Ig?”

  But the man was gone, not even a mist of him left.

  “Well, don’t that just beat all,” chuckled the gruff Sarfatti.

  Mary Margaret Mary Alice looked to the side in outright annoyance.

  The two dark women said in minor harmony, “A lot of that sort of thing… has been going around.”

  And the Professor, from the table by the window, called, “I’d say the place is yours now, or so it seems. The law is where you look, son. You were the law once, and so you know. Those who look are those who’re there, and the ones now not are gone. But what they see, faded to these new lands, who among us can say? Those who remain can’t know. The ultimate or the ultra? The world as it once was? The infinite? The idea? The sudden brightness, perhaps? Yes, perhaps… But I, for one, and for what it’s worth, I’m sorry to see him go. You do however make a better cup of coffee than he did.”

  Davis looked up from the board, set up between them, over which he’d bent. “It’s true,” he said. “Your coffee is pretty good.”

  •

  He shut the shop down early. He chased the children out. He swept Ceres wives – his new regulars – and the remaining old regulars alike out the door before he locked it, then walked the hill to the top, to where the station stood and waited, silent, empty, dark, and cold. Sans-serif type in smeared white stenciled onto the door said POLICE in utter, blank banality. The cellphone tower beside the squat cinderblock building jutted blunt blades and rounded antenna-box horns up toward a sky more gray than not, that shrouded the struggling sunlight, all mottled and declining towards night. Proteus had a sick feeling, but not about this – not so far as he knew. His show opened tonight. It made him want to hide under a rock and not be.

  He didn’t know why he’d come here. To torture himself, maybe? How many times had he checked the cage already? And for what, exactly?

  And sure, once more would hurt nothing, it was some cold comfort; but then maybe it would, as in maybe it would hurt something, because Old Albert, wherever he’d gone to, he was long gone, right? At least as much as Ig, as much as all the others, and maybe in the same way…? In any event, he wasn’t coming back. No one was. Truth be told, Proteus didn’t know why felt the need to come to the cage from time to time, to look inside it, to put his ear against its metal and listen…

  To what? A hum? To the building’s low thrum? (How could a cinderblock hut even make a low thrum? That puzzled him more.) Or maybe… maybe to something deep inside the mountain itself?

  Oh… yes, that’s right – to this, listen – to the voice (the one he could feel in the metal but not hear through the air):

  [BACK AGAIN WE FEEL IT. WE KNOW THAT EAR THAT TOUCH WE FEEL IT. BACK BACK HOW LONG HAS THIS ONE BEEN GONE? (And then, again, more quietly.) You are here, aren’t you? This one it listens, it lists, and this way to the source, it will find it – it wastes no time in waiting. It knows this thing it is, but it calls it sickness. Yes we know this sickness, we too, we call this cold thing to us, we know it does not sound the source that calls it; we call it this thing that it is: the hole, the hole of a doughnut. A doughnut whole. Good God Good God. WE HOPE IT DOES NOT EAT US. HA! HA! Ha. (Rasping cough.)]

  Proteus pulled his ear away from the cage and rubbed it, trying to warm the frostbite from it. The metal was freezing – much, much colder than the room around it. And when he’d got the feeling back, he pressed his head again to the cage’s iron slats:

  […doesn’t fear us now like it did, no now it doesn’t, it has changed, how un-for-tun-ate. NO THAT’S GOOD THAT’S GOOD WE WANT IT TO COME CLOSER closer to us still it will and it will please us, that this one is not afraid. That he should get into the box yes. That is the good thing. It is nice inside the box it is see try it.]

  “Nope,” said Proteus. “Nope. I won’t get into the box.”

  He listened:

  [Says it won’t do it says it’s NOT HIS THINGgaaaaahh…]

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” said Proteus. “I’m not falling for that one.”

  [ARROGANCE. THE SHERIFF KNOWS NOTHING. IS NOT THE SHERIFF. STILL IT KNOWS NOTHING. IT LOOKS ABOUT WITH EYEBALLS ROLLING IN ITS HEAD. EYEBALLS IN ITS HEAD. BACK AND FORTH BACK AND FORTH. FIGURES THAT’S HOW IT SEES. IT FEELS THE COLD AND IT FEELS THE DISTANCE BETWEEN IT AND I, YET IT DOES NOT FEEL THERE IS NO DISTANCE BETWEEN I AND I NOR I AND IT. HAVE TO BRING IT BACK YES BRING IT BACK YES to the real things
seeeeee…]

  “I’m still not getting in the cage,” said Proteus.

  [SUIT yourself.]

  He pulled his head from the cold iron slat and rubbed the numbness out, so that the ear had begun to hurt, and looked around the room, now in darkness deeper than when he’d arrived, and realized he felt acutely aware of his eyeballs in his head. Not that they hurt; he just felt aware of them, uncomfortably so.

  “Fuckin’… whatever you are, thing…” he cursed.

  On the metal desk, he found the vague shapes of the magic, in shadow, right where he’d abandoned them. No one had disturbed these things. Who would? Who in the whole town wanted anything to do with them? But still, when Proteus had left the crumpled hat, the badge, the… gun on the blotter, he’d secretly wished someone else would come along and claim them, steal them, make them not his problem. But, of course, no; they waited. They waited for him.

  He snatched the hat up, swept the other things inside the top, then rolled the brim up to enclose and carry them, leaving the darkened building in mild annoyance.

  •

  For the first time ever, he knocked at her door. Because it was seven o’clock, when she’d said to pick her up. Like it was a date. Or something.

  Amanda’s house was a beacon of warmth in the dark night. Lights burned soft within it; the glass of the windows glowed, and the front door, a white door with a worn, wooden frame, and large glass partitions veiled in sheer curtains, glowed in similar light. Through it he watched her shape appear, then approach, a blur within, growing closer. When she filled its square, the latch unhitched, the door opened.

  “Oh,” he said, and, “wow,” and, “look at you…” he said, and meant it, because he was more than a little bit stunned by what he saw.