The Mirror Thief

by Martin Seay

  COAGVLATIO

  It is pictures rather than propositions, metaphors rather than statements, which determine most of our philosophical convictions. The picture which holds traditional philosophy captive is that of the mind as a great mirror, containing various representations—some accurate, some not—and capable of being studied by pure, nonempirical methods. Without the notion of the mind as mirror, the notion of knowledge as accuracy of representation would not have suggested itself.

  —RICHARD RORTY,

  Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

  57

  Two packed charter buses are unloading in the porte-cochère as Curtis enters the lobby of his hotel: conventioneers with rolling suitcases and sheathed laptops sweep through the glass doors, an unbroken column from the sidewalk to the registration desk. Curtis isn’t quick enough to find a gap; he stops under the armillary sphere to wait them out. They collect their keycards, break away, recombine in cheery clumps, crushing hands and clapping shoulders, calling back and forth in sportscaster voices, shooting each other with finger-guns. Somebody passes bearing a huge foamcore placard—

  9:00 a.m. – The Three Most Powerful Skills For Success In Sales

  9:45 a.m. – How To Achieve Your Personal Best In Times Of Turmoil

  10:30 a.m. – A Soft Sell Opener Guaranteed To Get You A “YES!”

  11:15 a.m. – Four Ways You Will Leave Your Comfort Zone

  —and Curtis can see nothing of the person who carries it aside from a pair of white sneakers and eight curled fingertips.

  Another big fake painting stretches overhead; Veronica, no doubt, could tell him what it’s a copy of. A hero on a winged horse, about to harpoon a fire-breathing monster. A man with chains drooping from his mouth. A guy with a broken-stringed violin, his arm around a naked lady. Another guy who plucks a lyre in front of a thick city wall while stone blocks levitate all around him. Curtis gets that the lyre music is lifting the stones, but he can’t tell if it’s supposed to be building the wall or taking it apart. The painting’s midpoint is a field of blue sky. A pair of gods floats there: Mercury with his snake-twisted staff, Minerva with her gorgon-faced shield.

  The crowd of conventioneers thins and Curtis moves forward, then gets snared by a plainclothes security guard blocking the exit. The guard holds the door for a tall silver-haired man in a black bomber jacket who looks exactly like Jay Leno, and it takes Curtis a second to realize that it’s Jay Leno. Then he realizes that he’s standing in Leno’s path. Curtis’s hand is still extended from where he’d been about to push through the door, and Leno grabs it and shakes it. Hi! he says with a broad grin.

  You’re Jay Leno, Curtis says.

  Yeah, Leno says. Have a great conference!

  He passes Curtis on the left. The security guard is right beside him, and gently eases Curtis out of the way. Leno and his small entourage pass through the lobby—Leno waving, shaking more hands, walking the same way every famous person Curtis has ever met has walked, quick and restless, like if they stop moving they’ll die—and then they all disappear through a passage to the left of the registration desk. Curtis watches them go. More people with luggage push past him into the lobby, chattering excitedly. Jay Leno! most of them seem to be saying.

  Outside, Curtis climbs into the first idling taxi. It’s another Fortune Cab, black and white and magenta, and Curtis wonders if it’ll be the same cabbie who took him to the lake this morning. But when he sits down and sees the eyes in the rearview mirror, they’re Saad’s. Saad? Curtis says.

  I’m sorry?

  It’s not Saad: this guy is younger, less relaxed, not Arabic. Bangladeshi, maybe. But the white hair is the same, and the wrinkles. Can you take me to the Quicksilver, please? Curtis says.

  In Henderson?

  No, Curtis says. In the hills east of here, the edge of the valley. It’s a new place. A few blocks off North Hollywood, above the Mormon Tem—

  Yes, the guy says. Now I know. Thank you.

  He makes good time to the freeway and Lake Mead Boulevard, using the same route Saad took. He doesn’t try to make conversation, and Curtis appreciates that. In the fast-failing light, Curtis opens The Mirror Thief one last time, wanting to read a little more before Stanley takes it back. Curtis isn’t thrilled about how things have gone out here, but he figures at this point he ought to be satisfied. He’s not satisfied, though. Not even close. Maybe once he sees Stanley he will be.

  Be secret, Crivano! This poisoned world,

  blown out like an egg, hides nothing.

  No cross for you, no Campo de’ Fiori—

  be not covetous of such monuments,

  sad fictions of kingdoms deferred. Nothing

  here is saved, nothing worthy of saving.

  Evaporation is your legacy,

  your ecstasy, your escape. All matter

  is mere shadow, swept over dark glass.

  Your moment, Crivano, is done: a bubble

  hung in history’s slow amber, a seed

  in silica suspended, then fed back

  to the furnace. Burn, thief of images,

  on the amnesic sea!

  As Curtis reads, he tries to imagine finding the book the way Stanley found it, to guess what strange pull it could have exerted on a fifteen-year-old Brooklyn kid with a dead father and a crazy mother and a fifth-grade education. Curtis can’t fathom it. He thinks of his dad’s stories about growing up in Shaw in the Fifties, then of his own fifteenth year—what it felt like, what went on in his head—but he can barely recall, and the memories suggest no new route into the book. Instead Curtis just winds up thinking about Jay Leno: how friendly and cheerful he seemed. How that friendliness and cheer seemed to close him off like a stone wall, and how that wall could have been hiding anything. Or nothing. He thinks about the conventioneers performing for each other in the hotel lobby, and of the cocktail waitresses performing for the well-heeled grinds in the Oculus Lounge. He thinks about the bartender at New York with the Staten Island accent, and about Saad—you do this rap for all your fares?—and about Argos’s blanked-out features, shifting in the hot light off the lake surface. He thinks of himself in high school, practicing his game-face in his grandparents’ bathroom mirror. Trying to be convincing. Trying to convince himself.

  Every substance, Hermes says,

  must fashion its own reasons.

  Even now, oligarchy’s thugs

  unmuzzled stalk Rialto’s corridors.

  To hide what can’t be seen, Crivano,

  install it in plain sight, everywhere.

  Invisible commonplace! Machine

  for unseeing! Submerge your name,

  weighted with your past. Wall-hung,

  neglected, the moon-skin lies in ambush.

  And then, one unexpected day, you meet

  the stranger you have always been.

  A couple of UNLV co-eds dressed as leprechauns are stationed between the Quicksilver’s riverstone columns; they grin and wave as Curtis’s cab pulls up, bend to pin plastic shamrocks to the cardigans of wheelchair-bound gamblers. Curtis pays his cabbie, steps onto the rubbery sidewalk. At the valley’s opposite edge, Mount Charleston is a blue shadow on the purple dusk. The setting sun lights its snowcap like a brand.

  Welcome to the Quicksilver! one of the leprechauns says. Need some luck?

  No thanks, Curtis says. I’m not playing tonight.

  The PA in the lobby has swapped its New Age flutes and rainsticks for New Age bodhráns and uilleann pipes. The kid behind the counter wears a green plastic bowler hat, keeps himself busy by adding links to a six-foot paperclip chain. Hello, Curtis says. I’m Curtis Stone. Walter Kagami is holding a room for me.

  The kid hands over a keycard in a small paper envelope. Top floor, he says. First door on the right. It’s a suite.

  The elevators are on the far side of the gaming floor. There’s not much traffic at the tables or the slots, but what traffic there is moves awfully slowly, and Curtis doesn’t feel like navigating it. H
e tracks the right-hand wall to the bow windows that overlook the sunken courtyard, then follows them across the length of the casino. Lights are coming on below: in the palmtrees, under the recirculating fountain and the waterfall. The guineafowl that he saw last time are not to be found—gone wherever they go at night—but a peacock has climbed atop one of the stone picnic tables, and as Curtis passes, he spreads and shakes his tailfeathers into an oscillating iridescent screen.

  When Curtis reaches the corner he immediately tenses, feeling a bad closeness, something wrong, but it’s already too late: a heavy plastic coinpail bumps his ribs and a smooth voice murmurs in his ear. You ain’t wearing anything green, my man, it says. Somebody’s liable to pinch you.

  Curtis jerks to a halt. Albedo shoves the pail against his side again; something in it is heavy and solid. Keep on marching, my brother, Albedo says.

  A flood of adrenaline sweeps through Curtis’s limbs into his groin; he shudders with the need to piss. Takes a deep trembling breath, lets it out. Walks on.

  Albedo came up on Curtis’s left, from slightly behind: exactly the spot where Curtis’s nose blocks his peripheral vision. He knows about Curtis’s eye; Damon must have told him. When Curtis first met him in the Hard Rock the other night, Albedo kept leaning back in his chair: he was testing Curtis, feeling out the limits of his sight. This has been the plan all along. Albedo knows that Stanley’s on his way.

  There’s no surveillance by the windows, probably. Cameras watch the elevators for sure—but when he and Albedo reach the elevators, Albedo falls back, giving Curtis plenty of room. Even if Kagami is watching, he won’t see anything.

  Curtis doesn’t press the callbutton. He hopes Albedo will talk to him—ordering him to do it, giving himself away—but Albedo just moves past him and presses it himself. A car opens at once, empty, and they step into it. Don’t talk to me, Albedo whispers as he crosses the threshold.

  There’s a small lens behind the tinted glass of the instrument panel; maybe a mic somewhere, too. They rise to the top floor, the sixth, in sullen silence, sunset streaming through the glass at their backs. Curtis studies Albedo closely. Albedo doesn’t meet his gaze. He has a cool dead-eyed aspect like some guys get when they’re drunk, but Curtis doesn’t think he’s drunk. He wears a bright-green T-shirt under his motorcycle jacket. His boots and bluejeans are dusty, snarled with burrs and what look like tiny pricklypear needles. Through the frayed fabric at Albedo’s knees Curtis glimpses bloody skin. The handle on the coinpail is stretched slightly by whatever weight it contains, and a plastic bag spread over the top hides its contents. The big hand that holds the pail is raw, scored all over by scrapes and scratches. FIGHT ME—I’M IRISH! Albedo’s T-shirt says.

  On Five the door slides open with a low chime, and a turkey-necked old codger with a glossy toupee, a bolo tie, and a poof-banged, decades-younger date on his arm tries to step in. Albedo moves into his path. You goin’ up? he asks.

  Goin’ down, the old dude says.

  Albedo pushes the guy backward lightly with the fingertips of his right hand. Well, sir, he says, y’all might oughta give that little down-arrow button a tap.

  Albedo’s outstretched hand looks like it was worked over with a potato peeler. The old guy stares at it openmouthed. The door slides shut again.

  I believe I went to high school with that girl, Albedo says.

  As soon as Curtis exits on the next floor, Albedo draws a pistol from the pail, spread-eagles him against the wall, takes away his revolver, and pats him down. Albedo is fast, looking for nothing but wires and weapons. When he’s done he tugs Curtis upright by his collar, aims him down the hall. Open the door, he says.

  Curtis fumbles a little at the keycard slot. When the green light clicks on and the handle turns, Albedo lunges forward and slams his shoulder into Curtis’s upper back. Curtis sprawls through the door, face-plants on the carpet. Albedo is right behind him, kicking him in the side, stepping over him, keeping him covered with the little Smith revolver as he clears the suite with his own pistol. Curtis sucks air through his clenched teeth. The Mirror Thief is on the floor, a few inches from his chin. Albedo’s plastic bucket hangs from Curtis’s upraised left foot.

  Albedo disappears into the bedroom for a second. Then he reappears, both pistols leveled at Curtis’s face. Albedo’s gun has a thick blunt taped-up suppressor on its barrel that looks like it might have been made from a can of beans. The gun is a matte-black semiautomatic, similar to the one that Argos had this morning. Curtis thinks of the pink column of dust he saw on the lakeside road, and then he thinks: no, not similar, the same. The thought makes him feel sick, and scared, and angry. Angry most of all.

  So, Albedo says, another twenty, thirty minutes, you reckon?

  Fuck you, man, Curtis says.

  Albedo laughs quietly. He seems tired, strung-out. Yeah, he says. I reckon maybe twenty, maybe thirty minutes.

  Curtis kicks the pail off his foot, rolls over, sits with his back against the wall. You’re playing this wrong, he says. You’re too late. Killing Stanley and Veronica is not gonna fix anything for Damon. NJSP has issued warrants based on physical evid—

  Not for my ass, they ain’t, Albedo says. C’mon, Curtis, don’t act like a retard. I ain’t looking to fix shit for Damon. That boy’s gone and fucked hisself. Which is his prerogative, but he’s damn near gone and fucked me, too. Soon as I clean up here, I’m getting on a damn airplane. And ol’ Damon better be a-wishin’ and a-hopin’ that the Jersey cops get hold of him ’fore I do.

  That’s a bad plan, Curtis says. You don’t think—

  Lemme give you some advice, Albedo says. Shut your fucking mouth. While you’re at it, start thinking about how I’m gonna round Damon up when I get back to AC. You come up with a fool-fucking-proof plan of which you are an indispensable goddamn component, and you don’t say another word till you got one. Because right about now, Curtis, you are looking mostly like a problem to me.

  Albedo slides a chair away from the table with the toe of his boot. Then he sits, puts the two guns on the tabletop—their barrels parallel, aimed at Curtis—and begins to examine his damaged hands, plucking at cactus-spines with his long fingernails. I told Damon, he says. I told him on numerous occasions that bringing you in on this would be a dumbass move of pretty much the highest order. And I bet you wish more than just about anybody—don’t you, Curtis?—that he’d paid me a little more attention on that point. Well, nobody ever listens to my fucking advice. I mean, I told you, didn’t I, that this shit was gonna go wrong, and to make some other plans. Did you listen? Hell, no. I told Damon that he had only one advantage, only one thing working for him in this whole ugly shitstorm, which was that nobody he’d got crosswise with was apt to talk to the cops. And what’s the first thing that ingenious motherfucker does? He brings in a cop.

  Albedo glances up, warming to his subject, then jerks and freezes. He’s staring slackjawed at the wall to Curtis’s left; his widened eyes are all pupil. He spasms, blinks hard, gives his head a violent shake. Then he snatches Argos’s pistol from the tabletop. Waving it around as if targeting a phantom housefly. Fuck, he says. He turns back to the wall, sights along the pistol’s slide. No, he says. No way. Fuck.

  He fires. Then he fires again. The suppressor swallows the muzzle-blasts, but not the cracks—loud, like a yardstick slapping a table—of the bullets going supersonic. A cloud of pulverized drywall bursts over Curtis’s head, and then the air is full of glitter: sharp stinging grains that strike his scalp. He curses, shields his eyes. Whoa, he says.

  A high-pitched cacophany fills his left ear: glass breaking and falling. Albedo has just shot out the big mirror that hung over the room’s dressing table; Curtis couldn’t see it from where he sits. Jesus, Curtis says. What the fuck, man.

  Albedo’s laughing silently, trembling, shaking his head. Oh, buddy, he says. Holy shit. I am tweaking for sure. I coulda just sworn—

  The phone rings. Albedo jumps, puts a third bullet in the wall; Curtis
’s hands go to his face again. On the second ring, Albedo sighs—a little sheepishly—and points to the phone with the pistol’s fattened barrel. I’m guessing that’s gonna be for you, he says.

  Curtis rises to his feet. His knees are wobbly; he stumbles on his way to the desk. He reaches the phone on the fourth ring, lifts the handset. This is Curtis, he says.

  Curtis, it’s Veronica.

  He’s badly shaken: he has to fight hard to steady his voice, to pay attention. A lot is riding on the next few seconds. Behind Veronica’s voice he can hear more crowd noise and PA pages: the airport again. She sounds tense—irritated and fatigued—but not scared. Listen, she says, Stanley’s jerking us around. He wasn’t on the flight.

  Curtis blinks. Say again? he says.

  Stanley wasn’t on the plane he said he’d be on. He called while I was at baggage-claim. You’re not gonna believe this, but he’s in—He’s gone. He’s long gone.

  Curtis feels as though he’s just stepped off a cliff, he’s hanging in midair like a cartoon coyote. Then a crazy thrill creeps up his spine to his throat, and he fights to keep a smile off his lips. Okay, he says. Go on.

  He wanted me to be at the airport, Veronica says, because he’s got me booked on a flight out. It’s boarding in like five minutes. I still have to put some stuff in a locker and go through security, so I don’t have much time.

  Curtis closes his eyes, puts a hand on the desktop to steady himself. Through the tangle of white noise on the telephone line he imagines he can hear Stanley laughing, shouting coded numbers like a quarterback.

  Don’t ask me to explain what he’s doing, Veronica says, because I have no idea. But I wanted to call, to let you and Walter know what’s up. Now I better—

  Curtis opens his eyes. Walter? he says. Walter’s coming?

  Yeah. I figured he’d be there by now. He’s usually off-duty by—oh, shit, I gotta run. Listen, Curtis, I’m really sorry. And thanks. I’ll be in touch.