by A. R. Moxon
Then you stepped back from your work and reckoned with it. A single drawn panel, the large block of text. It looked different from the ones the author had completed before you’d taken his place, but taken as a final page, you judged this could pass as an artistic flourish.
You’d hidden your enemy. Next you hid yourself. Given strict instructions that all future communications were to be funneled only through your agent—Rupert Paddington, a short but robust round man with a big physical voice. Still capitulated to a valued client, yes, but occasionally strident, increasingly raised in volume as you offered various diffident excuses for your failure to meet deadline—writer’s block, ennui, sickness—at last you’d invented a injury, unbearable pain in your drawing hand. Relief, however, proved fleeting; this was a monthly publication. In four weeks, another twenty-four pages would come due. So Juanita Neato entered the picture: an eager and talented young artist ready for a chance, recruited by Paddington for her skill and her discretion. You agreed to meet at a nearby café.
And, Paddington had claimed she was a fan. If you’d known how unendingly treacherous that would make her, you’d never have taken the meeting.
“Julius!”
The priest turned. Gordy hadn’t followed him; instead he stood almost in a stupor, gazing at the latest advertisement adorning the windows of Ralph’s General & Specific. An identical copy of the thing was pasted up on each pane, including the recently replaced one.
It was a poster. Not the kind of crude one-toned fluorescent garish sheet with sans-serif black text that typically plastered the windows at Ralph’s, no, but a triumph of art deco, an advertisement for a show, a really big show, an invitation. Gordy remembered moustaches, a striped suit and top hat, an improbable dancing capering jigging round man exhorting, a circus years ago.
And there, below all this, slender and graceful: a woman on a trapeze, with dark hair shot with honey, with almond eyes, a lustrous beard darting from her chin on an oblique trajectory as she floated from one trapeze bar to the next. She was magnificent. She was Jane. His precious bearded lady.
“Oh mercy,” Gordy whispered. Fingers on her illustrated face.
“We’re late,” Julius said, trying and failing to hide his impatience.
“Look,” Gordy said, pointing. “There’s a schedule. She’s coming here. She’s coming here.”
—Boyd Ligneclaire, Subject to Infinite Change
LIE
Each day, Donk knows, he will worry over the lies he’s told. Lies of omission, lies of commission, the fine variegations of who he’s going to be to each person, strings of lies, each interaction presenting another necessary untruth slid onto his chain, a bead to fret and worry over, the better to remember it, the better to keep it—You walked the narrow path for Ralph; you’ll walk a narrower one for Morris.
Donk, natty in his suit, strides the street with his retinue of loonies following, passing Ralph’s food emporium, cutting across the lot; he’s flagrantly skipping office hours, and the scared and resentful eyes of the old guard watch him from the windows of grocery and donut shop as he goes. But let them smolder. A new game started a week ago, and they’re only now beginning to realize they aren’t players in it anymore…He approaches the Wales, this time with no need of bowling ball to knock; he’s expected. A cardinal waits at the door to bring him down into the tunnels. He leaves his loonies outside, no doubt they’ll prance around in their bathrobes, turn cartwheels, harass citizens—in short, blend perfectly into the new madness now descended upon Loony Island.
On the Island streets these past few summer days, paranoia’s baked and risen like yeast. More was released during the riot than a mere multitude of inexplicably kinetic insane people; insanity itself was unleashed, chaos incarnate, loose and unfettered and poured out upon a place already representing the very bottom, the worst, the poorest, the most crime-infested; riddled with varied addictions, stinking of desperation and gummed with the sour crust of schemes doomed to fail and schemes already failed, a hustling nonelect already shunned and reviled. But before, there’d been balm in degradation, an order, a context, and within that context, small alcoves of contentment. Even the Domino City shut-ins and the Checkertown impoverished needed look no farther than the Wales for a reassuring sign of someone occupying a position even lower than they. And there they were: loonies. Filling the giant green cracker-box without even their minds to hold onto. Any of them could look at a loony and think: Sure I’m hurting, sure I’m broke, but hey. I still got my freedom, and I still got my mind.
But this was before the Loony Riot, which smeared heretofore indelible lines of demarcation, set loose the stored potential madness of the Island, harnessed it, gave it purpose. Society had assayed them all against the loonies, and its scales had weighed them equally. It was too late to undo the psychological damage by the time the police had arrived with their gas and truncheons and rubber bullets. The bluebirds smashed loony heads, chased them off the streets, threw them in the drunk tank for the evening, but by then, even the unheppest cats had gotten good and hep about what the score really was. The loonies hadn’t been released; the boundaries of their confinement had simply been expanded to include the Island. Loony Island didn’t contain the loony bin. The Island was the loony bin. Even the neighborhood’s colloquial name seems dispositive: Whose island is this? Why, it’s the Loony Island, of course. The city’s leadership had clearly come to consider the asylum walls redundant, and so allowed them to become permeable, allowed society’s least valued out, surrounded as they were on all sides by an exactly equal measure of worthlessness. All of this hit folks hard. The general tide of opinion trended toward resignation; a degeneration among the degenerates, a subtle death.
Many for the first time noticed the architectural similarity between the Joan A. Wales Psychiatric Institute and the tenements in which they themselves lived: Domino Town, huddled beside the Wales, popped up nearby, clustered like toadstools, smaller clones of the parental fungus, some freakish urban housing parthenogenesis, the architecture of the buildings themselves testifying to the sameness of their residents. Had the loonies not grown such an inexplicable collective pride in their bathrobes, those former badges of their madness, which they wore like justices their robes or priests their vestments, they would have quickly and easily been able to insinuate themselves into the protean mass, sly as geese among ganders. If anything, the bathrobe of a loony created a mark of distinction, an election to a relevance the rest now found unattainable. Bathrobes everywhere were transformed from shameful brand to badge of pride. The loonies weren’t burdened with the indignity of forced equality with those previously considered subordinate; rather, they experienced the thrill of the subordinate promoted.
Moreover, Donk knows, they possess another advantage over the rest, which can be considered “advantage” only within the specific context of Loony Island: None of them remembers a thing prior to the night of their first freedom. A new development—they’d been loonies before, but not amnesiacs. Rather than dragging the ever-accumulating iron links of their past behind them, they’ve clipped the chain and run free, sans manacles. This provides them with a momentous drive, an impetus to which even their daily amphetamine doses can’t compare. The loonies have forced themselves, bodily and psychologically, into the Island’s hubbub and humdrum, but without compromise of their own notions of themselves. Donk accepts all this without judgment. He doesn’t give a sandy turd about the mental anguish brought on by sudden collective forced recognition of social imbalances. If anything, the disequilibrium affords some advantage: time enough to adjust quicker than the rest, and to act (of course, always) with superior information.
Morris has, on a number of occasions, hinted he knows something about the loony amnesia, but he hasn’t explained it to Donk, who, well aware (thanks to Tennessee) of the reason, ignores the hints and does not ask, mystifying his new boss, or else impressing him with his rectitude. Donk enjoys
creating the mystery. Morris—who obviously intends for Donk to remain in the dark about loony amnesia and all things Pigeon Forge—isn’t aware of the monologues of Tennessee, and in all likelihood isn’t even aware Tennessee still exists. But even if Donk hadn’t lucked into Tennessee, he might still not have asked. The loonies’ collective amnesia would have been a curiosity to him in that case, but it would have been an unsolvable one. Donk has risen as he has by distinguishing well between solvable and unsolvable curiosities. Better when facing an unsolvable curiosity to simply pretend you already have it solved. Knowing things without having to be told them may be the only way to impress Morris. And you’ll have to impress him, Donk thinks, following the cardinal down the tunnel, if you want to stay out of one of those oubliettes.
He’s heard hints of the muttering around the block; they’re all gossiping: What the hell? Donk’s working with the cardinals?…did Ralph give the OK? because if he didn’t then Donk’ll have his paw caught in the jar pretty soon, and serves him righ…
All this backbiting custard dries up quickly inside the grocery, however—nobody wants to get sideways of Donk in any way, so he’s yet to be questioned directly about any of his actions—which demonstrates yet another shift. In the past, he’d been accorded the respect of his position, but the respect had required the position. The respect flowed from Ralph, who bestowed it upon Donk, who wore it imperfectly, like a sweater knit for a larger man. Now, though…there’s something new in his eyes nobody wants to see, something in his smile and easy tones which make cats sweat and stammer. Before, he had been considered a great acquirer, a master strategist, an opportunist, a climber, an amazing survivor, certainly somebody to admire or at least to respect, but not somebody you’d fear if it were just you and he and a couple of lead pipes and an empty alley. But now he is feared—and Donk knows they’re right to fear. Back in the Fridge, after Tennessee finally came to his discursive finale, Donk had spent another hour in the dark, hands curled and relaxed, curled the heat out of himself and relaxed the coldness in, until finally his hands had relaxed without curling, and the cold calm had filled him and stayed in him. It was in him as he left to attend to his duties for Morris. It is in him still.
The gangs recognize coldness, so the gangs lend him this new respect, and as he’s working with the loonies and the cardinals—either with Ralph’s blessing or without Ralph’s reprisal—they’ve started drawing wild conclusions: There’s no Ralph anymore, some loony cartel’s forming, some hidden conductor behind it all, some deformed wizard hiding behind the curtain, some malevolent doctor hiding deep within the bowels of the Wales. Some were beginning to believe this wizard might be none other than Donk. Or—or!—Donk is Ralph, and has been all along…
He’s no longer being referred to as “Donk,” but as “the Coyote.”
The Coyote. Donk smiles—I like that.
The cardinal leads him into the long tunnel. The silver eye at the end of the passage grows large, revealing itself once again as a seeming vault door as they approach it and then move past it into the anteroom. The oubliette is here, gleaming steel lid open. A dozen other cardinals are here, including both little Andrews. Morris is here, his leg plastered and jutting. Ralph is here, dressed already in an oubliette harness, his arms tied roughly behind him at the wrists and elbows with white nylon zips. A rubber ball is in his mouth. One eye swelled shut and blood in his hair—naturally Ralph did not come quietly. Ralph’s eyes go wide and shocked to see his lieutenant captured, then wider as he understands.
“Hey boss. How’s the leg?” Donk asks Morris. Bringing this up might be a mistake, but anything you say to Morris might be a mistake, so what the hell. The cold and the calm are still in him. His hands are relaxed.
“It’s fucking broken and won’t fucking ever heal right and I’ll be in this fucking cast for weeks and the fucking doctors claim I’ll walk with a fucking limp the rest of my fucking life,” Morris says. Donk says nothing; to speak would risk revealing his amusement. The affectless calm façade Morris projects is starting to show some cracks. Morris’s injury pleases Donk more than anything else in the world; since the moment he saw Bailey hit the pavement, the thought of harm coming to Morris is the purest pleasure he can experience. He tilts his head toward Ralph inquiringly. Morris grunts, then says: “It’s your show.”
The room is perfectly white. The cardinals smear up against the walls like sheets of blood. Ralph’s a filthy puddle staining the floor, straining uselessly but diligently against his bonds. Donk can see his jaws working at the ball, as if he intends to take a defiant bite through the hardened rubber apple. He’s making angry hoglike noises. Donk squats down; it’s novel to get such a close look. They’ve communicated so long by proxy and note and conference call, so rarely face-to-face, and even then always in dim rooms. Stiff orange hair covers Ralph’s body but it’s fading from the top of his head. He’s fatter than Donk remembers him, but still powerful at the neck, the shoulders, the arms. He came up mean, did Ralph. A big kid, thick-necked, fists like kettle bells, feral and shrewd and with wily eyes. These are the arms, Donk thinks. These are the arms that threw Yale off the HQ roof. And now he’s here. The moment he’s worked for is here, yet it still feels like any other moment. Soon, he knows, he will feel it. The culmination of it.
Donk steps forward and loosens the strap under the ear, releasing ball from mouth. He thinks about Yale, but now the coldness is in him and he feels no anger. He thinks of the children of the greenhouse. His first friends, their disappearances uninvestigated, perhaps even unreported. He thinks of Yale. His hands are relaxed. The room is perfectly white. “What I do with my enemies,” Donk says, “is I put them in an oubliette.”
“This suppose to be a joke, boy?” Ralph glares at him with the one good eye. He strains and splatters sputum. His voice the accumulation of ten thousand retired cigars.
“A resignation. I’ve quit. You lose.”
“You’re crazy. You think you’ll skate on this? When the gangs hear?”
“And who’s telling them? You’re here. Which means your bodyguards are all dead. And the gangs hear from you through me.”
Ralph licks his lips, turns his attention to Morris. “This is about money? Fine. I’ve got money. More’n this one does. All you want.”
“Spaghetti-shit for your money,” Morris remarks, studying the ceiling.
Donk leans in close and whispers. Gives the message he’s kept close over years and years and years, a truth long kept refrigerated, preserved to impart in the instant of victory…but he’s tired, this hate is old and dried, gone fallow, it all feels like the mechanized preordination of a music box: key wound, gears turning, a tinny tinkling revelation of vengeance. The moment comes and the moment goes, and the coldness is still in him and his hands still relaxed as the cardinals take hold of Ralph and hook him into the box Ralph screaming crazy you’re crazy, children, what children, what the hell are you—
and the lid snicks closed forever.
It is done. It is over. Accomplished. It doesn’t feel like anything.
“So that’s one for you,” Morris says. “Now it’s time to do a few for me.”
“He didn’t remember the children,” Donk mutters. He hadn’t meant to say it aloud.
“Nobody remembers anything,” Morris says. “It’s the condition of the day. Forgetful. People only remember what happens when they’re truly paying attention. Let me tell you a few things I think you’ll remember.”
Something shifts and the clustering cardinals are paying undue attention to him. They are only modestly closer, their weapons still sheathed, yet the air is electric with alertness and possibility. Donk stands at parade rest, thinks, so here it is—You knew you’d have to play a big hand today. His hands relaxed, and the coldness in him proclaims—You can do this and you will. It’s not that you know how to say exactly what he wants to hear. It’s not even the things that you know and he doesn�
��t. It’s that he doesn’t suspect you know it. That’s how you’ll convince him. You’re holding all the cards, and Tennessee is the trump.
Morris wheels his electric cart around, pointing his bleached driftwood of a leg at Donk.
“Are you listening closely?” Morris asks.
“I’m listening.”
“Two days ago, I was chasing a man.”
“Gordy.”
Morris spits it back at him. “Gordy. He disappeared outside your place of business.”
“That’s the word.”
“That’s the truth. Listen, ‘Coyote,’ or whatever it is you’re calling yourself now,” Morris wheels himself a bit closer. “You provide information. It’s your entire purpose. Bring me some information now, and I don’t mean about how to capture some third-rate crime boss. I want good clear intelligence—now—about Gordy and where to find him.”
“You know,” Donk remarks, “I seem to recall two weeks ago I told you exactly where and how to find him, and I was completely right. Wasn’t I?”
Morris, shaking his head slow, voice measured: “You’re displaying a lot less consternation than I’d like to see from somebody who’s failed me this badly.”
“You’d like me to apologize?”
“I’d like to see you more consterned. I’d like you nonplussed. You’re far too plussed.”
“I’m a calm guy. You don’t want a calm guy working for you?”
“You don’t seem like a calm guy to me. To me you seem like the cat with the cream. You seem like the guy who figured out what I need and stole it.”
“So. How do I convince you otherwise?”
“I’d feel better if I was sure you were motivated to find that hard-to-see prickhole last seen right next to your headquarters.”
“I’ll find him.”
“That’s right, Coyote. You’ll find him, because here’s the deal: I will have Gordy in my custody within the next two days, or you’re going in one of those boxes. I’ve got one here specially for you.”