“Maybe it’s got nothing to do with politics. Maybe someone did Ibis out of some . . . personal animus.”
Salome smiled bitterly. “I’d think you know me better than that, and if you don’t know me, you knew Ibis. He had his . . . side interests. I was far from the only one.”
“Yeah,” M said, voice gravelly. “He did.”
“And even if I’d lost my mind with jealousy,” she said in a tone of voice that suggested this was more impossible than implausible, “do you really suppose I’d be foolish enough to kill Abilene’s favorite in Abilene’s territory?”
“I never give anyone the benefit of the doubt when it comes to stupidity. People do very, very stupid things, and smart people more than most.” M pointed suddenly at one of the group, an inoffensive man wearing a splotch-colored hoodie. “Is that blood?”
“It’s paint,” the man said quickly. “I’m a graffiti artist.”
“Make sure it stays that way,” M countered quickly, then moved to the other end of the bar before his mystery had time to fade.
“If it’s one of them,” Cavill said, “they go in the ground. Tonight. No appellate judges, no calling up to the booth. A life for a life,” he said, and among the dozen or so people standing round him four were stupid enough to repeat it—though not Boy at least, M was happy to see.
“And if it’s one of yours?”
“Why would we do it?”
“People kill each other for all sorts of reasons,” M said, picking a bit of lint off of Cavill’s shirt. “Greed, envy, lust. A theological dispute, a fantasy-football rivalry, unresolved homoerotic tension.”
“Don’t let him fuck with you,” Boy said. “He’s just trying to stir up trouble so he can see what rises to the top.”
“I know it’s been whole weeks since you’ve gotten blood on your knuckles, but perhaps you could put aside playing the savage for another twenty minutes or so, just in the interests of justice?”
“Justice? That’s a strong word for a hypocrite. Let me ask you, M, is there anything you believe in standing up for?”
“I believe in trying to avoid murder if it’s at all possible,” M said, though he shot Boy a look that seemed to refute the statement. “Perhaps that seems quaint.”
“You’d best get to being the hero,” Boy answered, “because I’m about ready to play the villain. Or do you think that little trick with the exit will work on me as well?”
M retreated from the scrum and smoked one of Flemel’s cigarettes. Stockdale did the same.
“Well?” his apprentice asked expectantly. “Who did it?”
“Do I look like Phillip fucking Marlowe to you? I have no idea. That was a complete waste of time, I’m afraid, and the natives are getting restless.” He stamped out his smoke. “We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way—with black magic. Stockdale,” M began, speaking loud enough to grab the attention of the half mob, “if you’d hand me your switchblade, please. Flemel, head over to the bar and grab a pint glass and a bottle of the highest-proof liquor available. If the rest of you would be so kind as to join me round the body.”
Stockdale pulled his knife from a pocket of his leather jacket and threw it over to M. M knelt down beside Ibis and flipped open the blade.
“Are you,” Cavill asked, somewhere between furious and horrified, “you aren’t really—”
“Going to decant Ibis’s blood into this glass that Flemel just handed me? Yes, indeed I am. And then I’m going to have a sip of it—we all are,” M said, a quick spray of red spitting out as he made the first cut, the flow turning to a trickle, which he directed into the goblet. “And then we’re going to ask Ibis if he’d like to tell us who it was that killed him.” M swirled the blood around in the glass, making an unappetizing rose tint with the corn liquor. “And anyone who refuses to take part, we’re going to assume is the culprit, and we’ll act against him in a manner most savage.” M stood, gracefully so as not to spill anything from the glass. “This was what you wanted, wasn’t it? Revenge?”
“Justice,” Cavill said, taking the glass from M.
“Form a circle around the body,” M said, “and concentrate on your memories of Ibis.”
These were people well used to ritual. These were people accustomed to ceremony, to chanting in unison, to esoteric liturgy. It did not take long for them to follow M’s directions. The goblet went clockwise, till it came back around to Cavill, at which point M, still standing, grabbed it and began to chant.
“By dusk, by ether, by circle squared,” M said, drinking what was left in the glass, wincing and continuing on. “By monkfish’s eye, by doe’s horn, by blood shared,” his voice echoing loudly back from the night. “By inviolate mother, by the last prophet, by the diamond sutra.” Ibis’s body took on a pale blue nimbus. “By Ilúvatar who lives alone, by the New Sun, by the Self-Created.” That nimbus stretched and expanded into a shadow of a man, and then the details took form—the bright green eyes, the towhead, the slow smile. “By the Lord of Cups, by the Yellow King, by the Walker in the Darkness.” Ibis stood fully formed beside M, unwounded, arms open, sad but not angry. “By the first seed, by the final frost, by the big bang and Götterdämmerung . . .”
Anais sobbed terribly, broke ranks from the circle, and threw herself at the feet of her former lover. As her hands passed through him, she let out a wail that was as much as a confession.
“Oh, God, no,” Boy said, all trace of anger leaked out of her. “No.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Anais screamed, the words all but indistinct amid her howls of despair. “I swear I didn’t! It just happened!”
Easy to see how it might: Ibis too clever and not clever enough by half, a charming smile and wandering eyes; Anais long-suffering but long is not eternal, is it? An incautious text, or eyes held too long on Salome, one indiscretion more than Anais could overlook. A spark of rage in someone for whom the difference between a wish and a spell was thin as a razor.
Easy to see how it could happen, and not even so hard to forgive—but M had sworn an oath, and justice is an impartial bitch, after all. He clapped and Ibis dissipated. Anais screamed louder. The nimbus faded and coalesced around M’s hands. He brought them to his mouth and breathed into them, blowing a bubble of light from what had been Ibis’s shade. He held it up to the moon, then let it burst above Anais’s head. Anais screamed once more and fell silent.
“His memory will dilute every happy moment, every drag on every cigarette, every sip of liquor, every embrace, every orgasm, every sunny day and smile. You will carry him on your shoulder until the day you die, a day that I think might not be so long in coming. And should any man think this insufficient punishment,” M said, raising his voice suddenly and aiming it at the crowd, “any witch or wizard present who supposes my judgment less than just, you make good on your complaint now, immediately, or you forswear vengeance, in perpetuity, until the final unspooling of the cosmos.”
Silence, apart from Anais’s shuddered sobs.
“It’s done, then,” M said, waving his hands. “I’ve removed the spell on the door. You’re all free to go.”
And go they did, shuffling off with some speed, half ashamed of their bellicosity, half happy to be freed of the threat of violence. That left our heroes, or at least our protagonists, alone with Ibis’s corpse, and Anais, and her memories.
“His eyes were blue,” Stockdale said after a while.
“What?” M asked.
“His eyes were blue, not green.”
“Of course they were. I’m not sure how I forgot.”
“It was a good likeness apart from that.”
“Thanks.”
“That wasn’t him?” Flemel asked.
“Dead is dead,” M said. “If there’s a way to contact those lost, I don’t know what it is. That was just smoke and mirrors, a light show.”
“Then what the hell did I drink his blood for?”
“For effect. Because it seemed scary. Because if you have to bluff, y
ou’d best bluff big.”
“What if she hadn’t confessed?”
“Then we’d have been pretty fucked, I suppose,” M said. Then, to Boy: “Call Abilene. Tell her she needs to come by and clean up the mess.”
Boy nodded silently. It was hard to detect any trace of the bloody-minded vigilante she had been only moments earlier.
“What happens to Anais?” Flemel asked.
“Every moment poisoned, like I said.” M threw a last glance over his shoulder at Ibis’s lover and killer, still seated beside his body, though her sobbing had trailed off to a trickle. “She’ll do it to herself. We all do it to ourselves.” He leaned on Stockdale’s shoulder as they headed down the stoop and out into the street. “Now somebody find me a cab.”
• • •
29
* * *
Royal Audience(s)
“It’s not like it used to be,” Celise said, just after her watercress salad had arrived.
“Isn’t ever,” M said. There was nothing on the menu that M wanted, but he had ordered the lobster anyway, because it was expensive and Celise was paying.
“What I mean to say is, the privileged position that you’ve held on to all these years might well not be one that you can hold on to forever.”
“Privileged?”
“How long do you wish to remain Switzerland?”
“It’s done right enough by the Swiss.”
• • •
“You must have noticed it by now,” Abilene said, forking a slice of tofu.
Maybe M had and maybe M hadn’t, but either way he saw no point in saying.
“Things have been going faster these last few years,” she continued. “There’s more to draw on, and you can do bigger things with what you take.”
“With my life of strict monastic rectitude,” M asked, “how would I have noticed?”
• • •
“And the menagerie of oddities that the city has been sending out this last year?” Celise asked. “Surely you can’t pretend to be unaware that the five boroughs are shaking like an epileptic.”
“It’s a weird city,” M said, “in a weird world.”
“Yesterday I had to stop a cockatrice rampaging through Central Park.”
“Can a cockatrice really rampage? I thought they were mostly chickens.”
“The part that isn’t a chicken more than makes up for it, I assure you. Walk down to Strawberry Field tomorrow. You’ll notice a line of extraordinarily lifelike statues that weren’t there last week. ‘Guerrilla sculptures,’ the press is calling it.” She shook her head. “It’s a wonder people haven’t started to notice.”
• • •
“Maybe I agree things are getting crazier,” M said, “what’s your point?”
“It’s the heart,” Abilene said simply. “It needs to be tapped.”
“Great,” M said. “Good luck with that.”
• • •
“You were friends with the Engineer, back in the day, yes?” Celise asked.
“To stretch a point.”
“But it’s true that he gave you the location?”
“You know it is.”
• • •
“Why do you think he gave you the location?” Abilene asked.
M was not certain. He had not known the Engineer very well, really. No one had. The Engineer was not someone whom you could get friendly with, any more than you might get friendly with the changing tide or a drop in air pressure. M assumed that it was part of the thing that made the Engineer so much more than human, so much more than what M was, or, for that matter, Celise and Abilene. “I suppose because he knew I’d never use it.”
• • •
“Circumstances change,” Celise said. “Nothing stays constant forever.”
“I try to remain constant in my inconstancy,” M said.
“It’s not a question of ambition. You know that’s never been a motivation of mine.”
“You’d be the first saint I ever met with a Versace handbag.”
• • •
“It’s not about power,” Abilene said. “It’s about survival. Things can’t keep going on like this.”
“It’s always about power,” M said quietly, picking at his fakin’ bacon.
• • •
“It needs to be tapped,” Celise said. “And there’s only one person capable of doing that.”
“Only one person?”
Celise had been trying to be friendly to M. Just then she started trying a little less hard. “Dear as we are to each other, M, I’m sure you wouldn’t do anything so foolish as to insult me by mentioning my rival in my presence.”
“Convenient that this solution of yours would end up making you into something like a god.”
“A benevolent one,” Celise said, smiling. “One in a position to do any number of kindnesses for her favored servants.”
“It’s been my experience that gods make promises better than they keep them.”
• • •
“It’s only me or her who could do it,” Abilene said. “Surely you don’t think you’re strong enough to hold onto all the draw?”
“I’m never one to underestimate myself.”
“It’s a narrow line between confidence and hubris.”
“Part of my charm that I can straddle it so neatly.”
• • •
“Can you imagine what it would be like if she got it? One big commune from Queens to Staten Island,” Celise said, as if a mouse had just run across the table. “The hoi polloi squatting in the MOMA.”
• • •
“Just think what the city would look like if she was in charge,” Abilene said. “Like what they’ve done to the East Village, except everywhere.”
• • •
“How awful,” M said, and sipped his cocktail.
• • •
“Revolting,” M said, and drank the rest of his beer.
• • •
“Then you’ll do it?” Celise asked, shaking a thin black cigarette out of the pack.
• • •
“Then it’s agreed?” Abeline asked, licking shut the seam on her hand-rolled.
• • •
“You can count on me,” M said, leaning over with his lighter.
30
* * *
The Heart of the City
M spent the next few weeks walking around building up a charge. Grinding himself against reality, like scratching wool in the winter. He woke up early and went to bed late, and in the interim he strutted around the city, across the five boroughs and back again. He went to bars for hours and spoke to no one, just nursed a beer and watched the people. He sat in parks and on benches and in malls and did the same thing. He showed no preference in his wanderings for wealth over poverty, for beauty over ugliness. He would spend half a day in Central Park and the next half walking through Willets Point. He did not discriminate.
Fortune accrued thick around him. Everywhere he went, the radio or stereo or house DJ would play the exact right song to complement his mood. One day he was comped every single thing that he had bought to eat or drink, managers sprinting out from the back to say they liked the look of him, and he could come back anytime. Three times in a week he ended up going home with a model, sure evidence of someone slipping a finger onto the scales of fate.
Most days he would stop off at Union Square and play a couple of games of chess against the men there. One afternoon he won thirty-seven straight, trounced everyone who sat down against him, including a ringer who only played against the other professionals and three men from a nearby club who came over to try their hand.
The next day M called everyone and told them to show up at his house around six in the evening.
Flemel showed up at five-forty-five, as M had known for certain that he would, carrying a magnum bottle of Belgian beer. “There’s something different about you today.”
“Don’t worry about it,” M said, opening it. �
�Go take a seat in the den. There’s this bauble I just got my hands on. It’s in the box on the coffee table. Take a look, let me know what you think.”
Flemel toddled off to do just that.
“Blood of Christ on my forehead,” Stockdale said, “what the hell are you getting ready to do?”
“Better wait for everyone to arrive. I’d rather not explain the whole thing twice.”
“Been sticking your finger into electric sockets lately?” Boy asked when she arrived.
“I prefer to use a fork,” M said. “Stockdale is in the other room. I’m sure he’ll make you a highball.”
“Already started!” Stockdale said.
“What have you been taking, my friend?” Andre asked M once he had taken off his coat. “And can I get a taste of it?”
“Boy is here,” M told Andre. It had occurred to him just before Andre’s arrival that he couldn’t remember if they were still together.
“I know. She told me to buy beer.”
“Bring her one. I’ll join you both in a moment.”
“So we going to do this?” Bucephalus asked, the last to make his appearance.
M nodded and handed him a drink and followed him into the living room.
M explained the plan. Some of it, at least. Some of it he wasn’t sure about himself yet, and some of it he figured would go better with only him knowing.
“You could not exactly call that a Swiss clock,” Stockdale said.
“That has holes big enough to drive a truck through,” Boy informed him.
“The blood of Roland, Bonaparte, and de Gaulle runs in my veins,” Andre informed him. “And I must say this seems to be rather rash.” He turned to Flemel. “What do you think?”
M’s apprentice had been uncharacteristically silent during the discussion, his attention taken up entirely with the jewel M had given him—a polyhedron with so many faces that it was almost, but not quite, a sphere, and each one of them movable. The entirety of Flemel’s focus seemed to be taken up with shifting them into different positions, and he gave no sign of having heard Andre’s question.
A City Dreaming Page 30