by Yoav Blum
Sooner or later, he always fell asleep. Sometimes only for a few moments, but that was enough. When he woke, he would discover that someone had come and slipped a brown envelope under the door to his apartment.
He remembered lying in bed one time, flush with adrenaline after successfully orchestrating a coincidence that prevented a woman from being unfaithful to her beloved. The apartment was dark, but he left the area in front of the door illuminated and placed his bed at an angle that would allow him to see the envelope when it arrived.
He remembered looking at the clock and seeing it was 4:59. He blinked one exhausted blink and dozed for a few moments. When he opened his eyes, it was 5:03, and the large brown envelope had been placed in a square of light, where it chuckled at him scornfully.
He jumped out of the bed, falling and twisting his leg, but still somehow managed to run to the door and fling it wide open. He looked quickly in all directions. The stairway was empty. He listened. No steps could be heard. Making a quick decision, he left the door open behind him and dashed unsteadily down the stairs on his aching leg, two steps at a time, tightly grasping the railing and trying not to scream in pain at every step, until he reached the street and began to search left and right like a crazy man.
The street was empty; the first bright rays of sunlight began to warm the cold night air.
Guy stood there, shaking a bit, his sleepy mind responding with shock to the rapid transition from drowsy repose to frantic and painful sprinting in the cold morning. A few light shivers sent him an unequivocal message: “Tell me, have you lost your mind?”
He turned around and went back home. By the time he got upstairs, he had decided that he actually didn’t care who placed the envelopes under the door.
He was a professional, right?
Everything else should be of no concern to him. He must carry out the job and execute it in a way that would cause his assigned events to occur in the cleanest and most natural way. That’s it.
He slowly sat up in bed, savoring the few remaining moments before receiving a new mission.
Soon he would shuffle from the bedroom to the living room, and see the envelope with the next mission placed just inside the door. The first page would include a general description. Bringing lovers together was a mission he had received a lot lately. Perhaps this time would be different.
The mission could be to change a worldview; unite families; make peace between enemies; sow seeds of inspiration that generate a work of art, a new insight, a groundbreaking scientific discovery if he was lucky—who knew. The first page would contain this description, detail who was involved, provide a bit of general background and the immediate circle of people he’d have to interact with, and the usual reminders about adhering to timetables.
Then he would find a number of small booklets containing information about the relevant players. Names, places, influences, statistics of decision making in various situations, conscious and unconscious beliefs. There would also be a booklet of specifications for the coincidence to be created and the repercussions that must be avoided. He recently had been assigned to bring together two future lovers, but the briefing explained that the young woman must not meet any member of the young man’s family before meeting the young man, and that no alcohol could be involved during the process of their becoming acquainted.
Several months earlier, a briefing he’d received specified that he couldn’t make use of emergency medical situations in order to facilitate the coincidence, which was aimed at steering the client toward a new insight about death. This complicated the matter a bit.
The last pages of the briefing would specify which “broad” activity could be conducted in the short term. The explosion in the water pipe the previous day was an activity of this sort. In fact, the briefing nearly required the activity because it was designed to facilitate a number of more complex coincidences (level four, apparently) that transpired at the same time. Guy probably could have fulfilled the mission without the water pipe. There were a thousand ways to block a street.
Such broad activities were always a bit problematic. It was difficult to predict the scope of their repercussions if the briefing didn’t explicitly define them. Perhaps it was possible, but it would require diagrams that would cover an entire ten-story building. Guy wasn’t at that rank yet. A bit more time on the job, and he would get there.
And there was, of course, the usual waiver, to which no one paid serious attention. “I hereby declare that I have decided of sound mind to resign from active service. . . .” Blah, blah, blah.
He entered the living room, where the envelope was waiting.
He allowed himself to ignore it for the time being and turned to the bathroom, his eyes still bleary.
He had dreamed the dream again last night. Each time in a different place, but always the same thing. Blurry pictures of himself standing in the middle of a forest, in the center of a soccer field, inside a huge bank safe, on a soft cloud . . .
In the dream last night, he was in the desert. Miles and miles of hard, cracked ground sprawled out before him, thirsty broken lines on an endless yellow-brown surface. He moved his eyes back and forth and saw only barrenness to the horizon, and the sun scorched the top of his head.
In this dream, as always, he knew that she was standing behind him. Back to back. He felt her presence there. It could only be she.
He tried to spin around, to look away from the barren landscape and turn his body toward her, face-to-face. And as always, his body didn’t obey him. He felt a gentle breeze on the back of his neck and tried to say her name and woke up.
Every few days, like a bothersome friend who can’t take a hint, the dream came, each time a slightly different variation. It was starting to bore him.
When would he have normal dreams?
While brushing his teeth he let the mild smell of the paint and the tingling feeling of a new mission awaken him. He always liked to wait a bit before opening the envelope. Only an hour later, when all the morning affairs were organized and Guy felt completely alert and lucid, would he sit down on the sofa, place his cup of coffee on the table, and with the familiar light tingling in his fingers, open the envelope.
Today’s was unusually light and thin. He wondered why, and then discovered that it contained only one piece of paper. An hour, place, and a single sentence: “Do you mind, perhaps, if I kick you in the head?”
FROM TECHNICAL METHODS IN COINCIDENCE MAKING—PART A
Among historians of coincidence making, there is a common view that “cliché-dropping” is one of the three most ancient methods of coincidence creation, and was apparently developed even before the official design of the classical coincidence-making methods by Jack Brufard.
Cliché-dropping is considered one of the least expensive and simplest techniques, and one of the safest maneuvers for beginning and apprentice coincidence makers. Consequently, you will already practice C.D. during the first month of the seminar. However, due to the complexity this entails, as demonstrated in the studies by Florence Bunshet, it is customary for the clichés to be set in advance by the trainers, while the students in the course primarily practice the technical aspects of the drop, such as strength, diction, pauses, and spacing or location vis-à-vis the object.
During the coming weeks, you will be assigned various sayings that you will have to practice thoroughly and drop at the place and time the trainer defines.
There are three customary methods of C.D., and we will practice all three of them during this course. We will first perform the exercises in a dry run and later in crowded places such as lines at health clinics, movie theaters, and banks, among large audiences during shows or in busy restaurants. The student will practice arriving at a precise location within hearing range of the desired object and at the correct time. Usually, the goal of the drop is to plant sayings that would not reach the object through his or her regular modes of thinking and thus arouse new thought processes. Of course, one should say the clich�
� to somebody else in such a way that the object ostensibly hears it by coincidence.
Classic C.D. In Classic C.D. (C.C.D.) common clichés are used. Good examples include: “If he believes, he will succeed,” “The truth can be found within yourself,” and “You can’t cry over spilled milk.” Today we use C.C.D. primarily in dry runs because few people are still influenced by classic clichés. Studies have shown that the public is immune to them.
Postmodern C.D. P.M.C.D. usually tries to adopt the method of contradictory clichés. “He has no chance, the little bum” was the first P.M.C.D., which was successfully tried on a jockey in a horse race by the founder of the P.M.C.D. method, Michel Clatiere. Opposite sayings usually generate a strong reaction from an object who is not totally in despair. The trainer is responsible for studying the object before the use of P.M.C.D.
Client-tailored C.D. This is the most prevalent type of C.D. today. The coincidence maker must conduct an in-depth study of the object’s character in order to discover key words, events, and associations that are likely to influence him. Students will practice C.T.C.D. only in the second stage of the course, after completing the introductory lesson on personality analysis.
CAUTIONARY RULES FOR CLICHÉ-DROPPING
Always go in pairs; people do not tend to believe someone who is talking to himself. In this way, you will also be able to correct and offer encouragement and comments to each other. At the beginning of the conversation, speak in quiet voices until the cliché is spoken in a louder voice. C.D. performed by an isolated person (for example, in a fake conversation on a cell phone) will be performed only by certified coincidence makers.
Drop to the target only. If you identify another passerby that is liable to hear you, make sure the statement does not affect him. Twenty percent of the mishaps in C.D. coincidences derive from a drop absorbed by the wrong person.
Intelligent use of cynicism and sarcasm—For P.M.C.D. users, there is a tendency to adopt cynicism and sarcasm in order to communicate messages. Make sure that your client is capable of understanding these nuances, and use them cautiously.
Follow-up—Do not drop without conducting a follow-up! Always check that your statements have achieved the desired impact and make corrections as needed before proceeding.
3
The plane made a nearly perfect landing and came to a complete stop a few minutes later.
The no smoking sign went off and the passengers got up from their seats and burst into a meaningless race toward the plane’s exit, back to the world in which the light turned on automatically only in refrigerators and not in bathrooms.
The quietest and most efficient hit man in the Northern Hemisphere sat in his seat and waited patiently for everyone to deplane. He had always been the patient type, and there was no reason this one flight should change him. He somehow managed to ignore a certain amount of excitement that he felt. Perhaps “excitement” is a bit too strong a word. Let’s say “readiness.” A hit in a place he had never visited was always a refreshing change, and he wondered whether this strange sensation in his belly, the small and solid ball that developed there at takeoff and refused to disappear even after hours of flying, really was due to anxiety prior to the hit, a feeling he had not experienced for a long time, or derived from his concern for the fate of his luggage.
Or perhaps it was actually connected to something he ate.
His aunt’s meatballs always made him feel strange, even when he was a child. Back then this had manifested as gaseousness, and not as a small, determined ball of iron floating in his body cavity. Nonetheless, what the hit man felt was apparently some type of anxiety. He just hoped that a good half-hour nap in front of a boxing match on television would settle his head.
That is, his stomach.
He got off the plane, smiled to the flight attendants, who smiled back at him in a Pavlovian response, and stopped for a second to look out from the top of the stairway. The sun hung in the middle of the sky, and it was hot. He might have to buy sunglasses.
As he descended the stairs he wondered how he had managed without sunglasses for so long. Indeed, sunglasses were a sort of status symbol in his profession. How could you be a self-respecting hit man and not go around with sunglasses?
Am I a self-respecting hit man? he wondered as he stood in the bus transporting him and fifty other people who ran to get there before him. He had always been treated a bit differently from the regular murderers. That was part of his thing—that he wasn’t like everyone else. He operated in a different way. Perhaps he wasn’t supposed to act like a self-respecting hit man but more like, let’s say, a travel agent who was only fond of himself? Do travel agents who are only fond of themselves usually wear sunglasses? And what about the switchblade he usually carried in his sock? It wasn’t comfortable there; it always bothered and distracted him when he walked. If he started to regard himself as a travel agent instead of thinking about himself as a hired killer, could he finally go to sleep without a gun under his pillow, like a normal person?
That’s how it was when you had a profession that chose you instead of a profession that you chose. “Normal” was only a word.
Few people knew him by name. Not necessarily for reasons of secrecy. Primarily because in a profession like his, people were not interested in names.
They remembered nicknames more. The Black Plague, The Black Widow, The Singing Butcher, The Silent Hangman—those were the types of names they used. A nickname that was easy to remember was an advantage. Only a few people could talk about him based on personal acquaintance. These were usually the people who persuaded others to hire him. This persuasion most often began with a sort of executive summary for people who were not really executives, even if some of them occasionally viewed themselves as such.
The summary would begin with: “He is very, very efficient.” Undoubtedly, a positive statement. Then the one who defined himself as an executive would ask, for example: “But how did he get that name?” And the one who tried to persuade would add, instead of answering him: “And he is extremely quiet.”
The executive would move his head from side to side, put aside for the moment the question troubling him, and try to clarify whether “your guy” could do “the job.” And only after the details he heard satisfied him would he again ask: “But how did he get that name?” And he would receive an answer like: “It’s just a nickname. Perhaps it’s connected to a job he did in the past.” There were truths that did not need to be exposed, or at least should be provided only after “the job” was done.
He sat on the bed in his hotel room, on the fifteenth floor, with the sea glimmering in front of his eyes.
The suitcase was to his right, the cage to his left.
“That’s the sea, Gregory. Isn’t it beautiful?”
Gregory didn’t answer.
“I hope you didn’t suffer too much down below there.” Gregory was busy. He wasn’t in the mood to conduct a conversation.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to bring you something to eat.”
Gregory sniffed the air. He really was a bit hungry.
They could have called him “The Quietest Murderer in the Northern Hemisphere,” but that would never catch on. Maybe because it was too long, perhaps because people like something special, something different. So somehow he became “The Man with the Hamster.”
Not that he cared. He loved Gregory.
He took him out of the cage to pet him, and the ball in his stomach became smaller and smaller until it nearly disappeared.
4
Emily and Eric waited for Guy at their regular table.
Emily sat with her back to the window because “this way, the light illuminates everyone for me,” and Eric was positioned so he could survey everyone entering the café, as well as the young women walking along the street outside. “It’s purely a professional matter,” he would say. “I’m practicing.”
“Practicing?” Guy would smile. “Of course.”
“Oh ye of li
ttle faith.” Eric would lean back and raise his glass of orange juice as if it were a martini that was shaken, not stirred. “In a profession like ours, it’s important to guard our instincts, to continue to discover the secret and unconscious interactions among people, and the ways in which small details influence processes. Well, you know.”
“Yes.” Guy would shrug his shoulders. “I know.”
“And besides,” Eric would say, “there is so much beauty in the world. It’s a shame to miss it.”
“I understand you had a successful coincidence yesterday,” Eric said as Guy sat down with them.
“Apparently,” Guy mumbled.
“And I understand that it again entailed matchmaking,” said Emily.
“Something like that,” Guy said.
“Sometimes you’re too transparent,” she said. “You never come on time after a successful matchmaking mission. I would expect that after so many times it would excite you a bit less.”
“It’s my favorite type of mission,” Guy said. “I can’t help it.”
“You’re a cheap populist,” Eric declared. “Missions of love are the most reversible type, and from a statistical perspective, they are the missions in which our investment is lowest relative to the outcome. You’re simply a person of ratings. A bit of work, high and fragile profit.”
“And exactly how do you measure the outcome?” Emily asked.
“Since when are you categorizing missions by their rating?” Guy asked.
Eric played with his fork in a puddle of syrup that, twenty minutes ago, surrounded a large stack of pancakes. “That’s exactly it—I’m not categorizing. I try to approach each coincidence we make with the same tools, even with the same respect. The way is important, not the outcome. You need elegance; you need style. It’s a bit like being a magician—you make them look in one direction, and do something somewhere else.”