Tannery was spinning punk records, and M was doing some of Tannery’s coke. Tannery wasn’t doing any coke, which worried M, because Tannery loved cocaine, indulged in it from when he woke up in the later afternoon till he went to bed three days later. The only time Tannery didn’t do cocaine was when he had some sort of caper planned, which was, coincidentally, more or less the only time that Tannery remembered he had M’s number in his cell phone.
Well, you couldn’t blame him. M was a lot of trouble. Tannery was a lot of trouble also, but there was no reason to double down on misfortune.
“I’ve always preferred Lou’s later stuff, personally,” Tannery said, which was absurd and insane, but M had a policy of not arguing aesthetics with anyone who was giving him drugs. “But I have this version of ‘Sweet Jane’ that was only ever issued in a limited run on mammal skin, and I think you’ll enjoy it.”
“What kind of mammal?”
But Tannery was too deep in the groove to answer. “Those licks still kill me,” he said, tapping his hands along arrhythmically. Set out on a table behind him, a vast army of fully articulated G.I. Joes reenacted the Battle of the Bulge, dozens of superhero statues standing mute witness on a shelf above them, painted pewter statues of goddesses in red leather and black vinyl.
“Yup,” M said, doing another bump.
“I got a line on the Infinite Grimoire.”
“I think I heard this one before,” M said.
“No one’s heard this before,” Tannery said, visibly angered. “I had to trade three empty djinn bottles to a traveling peddler for it.”
“Not the record—that you’ve got a line on the book.”
“Oh. But this one’s a lock, this one’s for dead certain.”
“Where’s it supposed to be?”
“You’ll never believe it—it’s been in the Library the whole time.”
“How counterintuitive,” M said. “And completely irrelevant. Finding a book in the Library, not to get all Purloined Letter on you, is an exercise of almost figurative futility.”
“Not if you know where to look.”
“What, like if you had a map? A map of the Library would be the size of the Library.”
Tannery began to rattle off a stream of directions, a left at Gender Theory, your third right after the hall of High Fantasy, straight on till morning. “I bought directions from Sheelba at the Bizarre Bazaar. She hasn’t steered me wrong yet.”
“And what’s your way inside?”
“There’s a gate from the back of the main Brooklyn branch.”
“Great! I live right by there. You can drop me off on your way.”
“I was sort of thinking you’d come along.”
“Why were you thinking that?”
“Infinity doesn’t interest you?”
“Have you seen my apartment? I don’t have enough space for a wardrobe.” M had found a bit of used cellophane from a pack of Camels and was rolling it into a very tight tube. “Who gets to read it first?”
“It’s infinite—we each get to read it as long as we want.”
“But let’s say we both had to go for a dump: Who would get to take it into the bathroom?”
“I would.”
“So it’s yours, then?”
“Yeah.”
“In that case, I think you ought to toss me in a sweetener.”
“You’ve already gone through half my stash of sugar.”
“That was just basic hospitality, Tannery. Someone comes by, you offer them a glass of water, a cup of tea, fifty or sixty dollars’ worth of cocaine. You want me on a ride along, I’m afraid it’s going to set you back further than that.”
“How much?”
“Who else is looking for it?”
Tannery scratched at his acne with a sudden burst of intensity. “Most of the world, I would think. We’re a power-mad sort of species, M, present company excluded.”
“Let me rephrase: Who is it that you’re sufficiently afraid of that you’ve decided you want me riding along as shotgun?”
“Falcor Khat.”
M hoovered up more of Tannery’s blow and thought a while, and what he thought was that Tannery had been boondoggled, hogswalloped, was apt to discover that this Nigerian prince was not everything he had built himself up to be. If Sheelba, whom M had never met but who was not renowned for her trustworthiness, had some idea where the Infinite Grimoire was, why hadn’t she gone to find it herself, rather than trade its location for something worth less than infinity? M set his teeth against each other and enjoyed the familiar absence of feeling. On the other hand, if Tannery had been able to pay Sheelba, he would be able to pay M as well. On the other, other hand, while the jury was yet out on the existence of the Infinite Grimoire, Falcor Khat absolutely did exist. He was a name known of old and not known, if it wasn’t obvious, for being overwhelmingly friendly.
But then finally, on the last hand, and it had not escaped M that he was counting like Charybdis, was the fact that he had simply done too much cocaine at this point to feel fear, or really much in the way of anything but the desire to get moving, get going, make some trouble.
“Twenty,” M said.
“Ten.”
“Twenty.”
“Twelve.”
“Twenty.”
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen and the record,” M countered.
Tannery sucked his teeth miserably, then said, “All right,” and went to get the money and his coat.
Tannery was that peculiar sort of person who preferred to concentrate the vastness of his wealth and resources on things that he and a select handful of associates—not friends—could look upon exclusively, which is to say that he owned a conversion van and drove it wearing sweatpants and beat-up tennis shoes. He also refused to bring along any of his cocaine, which M thought displayed a shameful lack of gallantry.
“How is it that Falcor Khat has the same information you do?” M asked.
“I’m not positive he does. But I know he’s been looking for it. Why—you worried for your skull?”
“I am. I like my skull. It’s got all my thoughts inside.”
“But think of the rewards! Infinite power! Eternal life! The dream of man since time immemorial!”
M grunted. Infinite power would have been OK, at least he could see how it might come in handy on occasion. But M had found that the bigger you got, the more people tried to lean on you, for favors or just to see you fall, and who wanted to deal with that? As far as immortality went, that was obviously not any sort of good at all. Who had ever met death without some partial measure of joy?
Also, the book did not exist. That was the main point, M reminded himself. Foolish to feel tempted by a mirage. Pleased with his maturity, M weathered the rest of the drive in silence.
The main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library was closed at one in the morning, so any negligent elementary students hoping to finish their reports on the first Thanksgiving were going to need to spend the intervening hours coming up with a decent excuse. Or they could just use the internet. Tannery left his van next to a NO PARKING sign on Eastern Parkway, which was foolish, but then again M would be walking home, assuming he survived the evening, and thus figured it was Tannery’s problem should the thing be towed.
It surprised M not at all to discover that though the library had technically been closed for hours, there was a small door in the back that was still open, and that it led to a long, hushed corridor, and then into a chamber, which was more like the nave of an immense cathedral than the checkout room in a library. Libraries—like train stations, crossroads, church belfries, and attics—are places where worlds leak together, where the Management, in its ineffable wisdom, tends not to look too closely on what goes on.
They were in an octagonal room, exits at each cardinal point leading farther into the labyrinth, and peeking down one of them, M got a strange sensation of vertigo, of endless antechambers of erudition reflected indefinitely beyond the visible
horizon. The walls were partially stained oak and mostly colored leather and faded parchment and glossy newsprint, pulped paper leading up to a ceiling high above, the dust-covered rolling ladders mute testament to how rarely any of them were unshelved.
In the center of the chamber was a circular checkout desk, and at the desk, in the process of stamping a card—for the Library, like the federal government and our neanderthal ancestors, has not gone digital—was a librarian, or the Librarian, as the library was the Library. She might have been of any age between spinsterish and old maid. She was shrewish, or perhaps waspish. She resembled the sort of animal that one would not want to be enclosed with in a small area. She was not, for instance, Angora rabbit–ish, or pygmy hedgehog–ish.
M put a hand on the counter and hung his head over it. “That’s a beautiful scrunchie.”
The Librarian hissed, pushed M’s arm off the desk with a ruler, then pointed at an embossed gold sign in front of her that read, in capital letters, SILENCE PLEASE.
“That’s a beautiful scrunchie,” M whispered.
Tannery finished running through the directions in his head, pulled at M’s shirt, and directed him northward. “This has been a distinct pleasure,” M assured the Librarian as he left. “With luck I’ll see you on the way out.”
Though as it turned out, he didn’t even need to wait that long, because after a long jog through the celebrity memoir section, they found themselves back in the same room they had initially walked into. At least it seemed the same room to M, four doorways, an unpleasant woman stamping cards behind a circular desk.
“Reunited at last!” M said to the Librarian.
“Shhhhhhhhh!” she hissed.
“Doesn’t she remember me? Or is that her twin?”
“No, it’s her,” Tannery explained. “Somehow this antechamber is mirrored across the Library, regardless of where you are in the stacks.”
“Then why doesn’t she recognize me?”
“She recognizes you. She just doesn’t like you.”
“Impossible!” M said, hurt and flabbergasted and coming down off the cocaine none too gently.
They crossed the threshold into the children’s section of the Library—the children’s wing, the children’s labyrinth, the children’s closet infinity. The walls were festooned with bright pictures and cheery slogans encouraging the viewer to GET LOST IN LITERATURE! and warning that FICTION’S MY ADDICTION! M paused for a moment in front of a large table covered with a dozen different embossed hardbacks below a sign saying THE COMPLETE WORKS OF HARPER LEE.
“That’s far enough,” came a voice hidden by a cardboard display of characters that A.A. Milne never got around to inventing—Cynthia the rottweiler and Hunter the androgynous girl-child.
The sound of a gun being cocked was followed by the sight of that self-same gun. It was a custom model, not that M knew anything about guns really, but it was hard not to notice the filigreed silver, or that the end of the barrel was shaped like a pentagram. The man carrying it was just about average height if you included the varicolored Mohawk, which, comblike, stretched above an ochre head. He wore a red leather jacket with an eight ball on the back and a number of fetishes dangling from the zippers—harpy feathers and mandrake mandalas and fully stocked dream catchers. On one hip he had an empty holster for his gun, and on the other a curved skinning knife. He was dressed just oddly enough to warrant a double take at your average Brooklyn dive bar.
“Don’t think about trying any gimmicks,” Falcor Khat said. “The gun is ensorcelled.”
“Ensorcelled,” M repeated, enunciating each syllable. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that spoken aloud before. What’s the deal? You here picking up the latest E.L. James?”
“Cute. No, I’m really only here looking for one book, the same one you’re here for, I imagine.”
“You’re only interested in one book? That’s absurd, Falcor. That’s just indefensible. There are lots and lots of books worth reading. Proust is very good. Bolaño, Borges. Rebecca West is great, not sure why more people don’t read her. Maybe we could hook you up with something simple—The Phantom Tollbooth might be a good start. You know, minds are like parachutes—they only function when open!” M had picked this last one up from a poster hanging above Tannery’s shoulder, but he stood by it all the same.
Khat sighed. One might have got the sense that Khat did find M as amusing as M found M. “Are those going to be your last words?”
“Apparently not?”
“Good-bye, M,” Khat said, about to simplify the situation with his index finger.
“You won’t find the book without me,” M informed him, quicker on the draw.
“Bullshit. The only reason you’d be here is because Tannery hired you as protection—why he thought you capable of that, I have no idea—ergo, Tannery has the location.”
“Tannery is my silent partner. We went in halves on a spell of location,” M pulled his phone out of his pocket, opened a map app, and waved it around in front of Khat. “See? It’s been ensorcelled. Ensorcelled,” M said again.
Khat scowled. “Good-bye, Tannery,” he said, swiveling the aim of his cannon.
Tannery, white-faced, choking over an explanation, squeaked loudly. The Librarian, visible from the doorway but thus far showing no interest in their growing feud, looked up and cleared her throat unpleasantly.
“This is a library!” M said to Tannery in a stage whisper. “Keep your voice down!” Then, back at Khat, “But still, you can’t shoot him; the spell doesn’t work unless he’s above the ground. You’re going to have to give up on killing anybody for a little while. Think of it as a new challenge.”
“I guess I can wait a bit,” he said, gesturing at M, who headed deeper into the library, following, or so it seemed, the map on his phone.
The practice of magic is as diverse as any other art or craft, filled with endless specialties and subspecialties. Khat was one of those who had gone in for violence—war mages, battlefield sorcerers, sword saints, hex-wielding gunslingers, kung-fu masters, and priestesses of the goddess of death. It seemed a rather pointless way to spend the time they were given, at least to M’s mind, hours at dojos and ranges when you could be drinking sidecars in bustling Brooklyn bars—though, admittedly, there were moments, like this one for instance, when M supposed it wouldn’t be altogether useless if he had any serious idea of how to throw a punch.
“I’m surprised you’d be chasing after the grimoire, Falcor,” M said, walking briskly from Children’s Books to Books Intended for Adults but More Appropriate for Children. This was rather less well-cared-for than the zone they had come from, old copies of The Fountainhead and On the Road gathering dust in corners. “You know grimoire is another word for book, right? Really you’d need to be literate to get any use out of it.”
“You’re not nearly as funny as you think you are.”
“But I think I’m really, really funny, and so even at half rate, I’d still be hysterical.”
They found themselves back in the front room. “What are you going to do with your share of infinity?” M asked, then snapped his fingers excitedly. “Imagine the size of the gun you could carry! And all the weapons you’d have around to play with! Gun-blades, razored nunchuks, poison-needled cock rings . . .”
“I’ve never met anyone so contemptuous of the instruments by which he’d be murdered.”
“Just the man who carries them.”
“Sure, what issues have ever been resolved through physical force? I can draw faster than Doc Holiday, outwrestle a panda bear, and I learned iaijutsu from the ghost of Miyamoto Mushashi. What do you have, M? What do you have?”
“A healthy sense of the absurd,” M said. “I assumed from your haircut that was a quality we shared.”
“Keep talking,” Khat said, raising his voice beyond the conversational. “It’ll make killing you that much more fun.”
“Shhhhhhh!” the Librarian commanded. The coke-bottle glasses she wore might have bee
n the reason her eyes seemed bigger than her head was, though it failed to explain their strange darkness.
M checked his phone and took them left, into Popular Histories of World War II, 1967–1978, exiting about a half mile later into Monster Erotica. M wanted to take a detour into Aquatic Amarous Adventures, but Khat had that gun and was not slow to remind anyone of that fact.
“You talk absolutely endless reams of shit,” Khat said, “for a man who could be broken in two by a JV lineman.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t think of competing with all that hardware. You look like one of Tannery’s action figures.”
“They’re collectibles,” Tannery interrupted.
“No doubt future generations will accord them a niche in the Louvre,” M prophesied, before turning back to Khat. “We all have our specialties.”
“And what’s your specialty, M? Talking bullshit?”
“Don’t knock talking. We aren’t out here tonight looking for Excalibur or Terminus Est or storied Snaga. Words are the thing. What’s the point of killing a man when you can run him round to your point of view or poison his memory for future generations?”
“I find most people don’t look beyond the knife sticking out of their chest.”
“You aren’t really planning to murder us, are you? What would be the point? I’m cooperating. You get the book and whatever comes with it; we get to shuffle back to our day-to-day.”
“I still owe you for that thing in Taipei.”
“Who can even remember that thing in Taipei?”
“You tricked me into eating dumplings laced with arsenic.”
“Right,” M said, nodding. “That was the thing that happened in Taipei. And Tannery?”
“Tannery I just don’t like.”
“Sorry, Tannery. You don’t think that there’s any chance that upon merging with the godhead or whatever, you’ll feel beyond such petty concerns as revenge or random murder?”
A City Dreaming Page 26