The Impossibly (24 page)

Bandages are no good, I said.

Well then let me clean it, he said.

I allowed him to daub my neck with iodine.

This hurt.

They paid me too well not to go along with them, he said.

Who paid you?

They paid me too well to tell you.

Has Ms. Green been here this morning?

No.

Please call her.

Certainly.

Please also call John.

Why John?

It occurs to me that John may have killed me.

But of course John hadn’t killed me. Or so he said when he came into my office a little later.

Come on, would I hit my best friend repeatedly on the head with a blunt instrument?

I was almost at my office and I wasn’t thinking quite as clearly. My cognitive powers were fading. The pain in my neck was reasserting itself. Aware that whatever reprieve I had been granted was ending, I redoubled my efforts—this time focusing my speculations on the missing part of the evening I tailed my first client’s husband.

He had knocked on the green metal door and had entered. A moment later I had followed. It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the gloom and for my mind to accept the chaos of ruined machines and sickly blinking lights. When I could both see and make sense, or some sense, of what I was seeing, I made my way through the machines (I had no idea what they were for) to a point of great light, an emanation within the darkness, a lamp-lit clearing at the center of the machines. Within that emanation (I stayed outside of it, neatly hidden, or so I thought, behind an enormous coil of wire) I perceived, and the sight was horrifying … but even speculation couldn’t take me that far.

Now, of course, I can see quite clearly what I couldn’t even imagine then. But now it doesn’t particularly help me to do so. Nothing, in fact, particularly helps me, so it is not at all surprising that I have so much trouble in carrying out even the smallest tasks.

Take for instance my latest assignment, which, with the aid of charts and texts, is to peer into a telescope pointed up into the night sky, and to make notes on what I see. It is information for an equation, I am told, but I have not been told what the equation is for. The equation is part of another equation, being the only explanation I have yet received. Be that as it may, I am unable, I am told, even to correctly fulfill this task. Just as, all those years ago, I was unable to correctly solve my case and later, when I joined the other organization, this organization, having been forced to leave the transactions firm, to carry out what should have been the simplest of assignments.

I have just recently had my legs broken and set. This event has sparked my thinking on this subject, these subjects.

I am recuperating. My hours in the observatory, while I do so, have been cut back. I am allowed to lie in my bed and look out the window. It is winter again. My bed has been pulled back far enough away from the window so that, lying here, I cannot see the people below on the street, though I can hear them. They are always speaking, these people, there is always sound. When I am here I am connected to several machines, which blink dully. I am not, of course, connected to any machines when I am in the observatory. Unless you count my oxygen canister. But that is a contraption, not a machine. Incidentally, all those who have not had the benefit of cool oxygen from a canister should indulge themselves. I sit by the telescope and peer into it and make my notations and, cannister on a stand beside me, breathe. I am not, you see, entirely sure what it is I am looking for, what I am meant to detect. This despite many explanations and threats of further punishment.

It is not as though I have never spent time looking at the stars. I used to spend whole evenings lying in the yard. We had dogs then. Or a dog. The dog would lie in the dirt beside me. It was as I was lying there in the dirt beside the dog looking up at the stars that they first, they claimed, found me keening. Any excuse would do. I mean for the accusations, not for the keening. I couldn’t move, this was true. I couldn’t speak, this was true. But I didn’t keen. And my immobility was due only to the fact that I had ceased to be able to recognize what was spread above me as the night sky filled with stars. There were no stars. No sky. There was some black with imprecise white marks on it. White smudges. Nothing moved, nothing gleamed. It was as if the entire night sky had died. Or as if I had died. Am I dead? I was finally, when the sky began to seem to move again, able to ask them. Which no doubt contributed, once this remark had circulated, to the rumors.

What I am discussing now is context, clearly. Dirt and immobility and stars.

Mr. Smith, I said.

He was waiting for me on one of the chairs in my secretary’s little room.

I have come, he said, to see what progress you have made on the case.

Quite a bit, in fact, I said. I’ve just been engaged in the most fruitful speculations. Let’s go into my office and discuss it.

I ushered Mr. Smith into my office and shot my secretary, who was all smiles and insistent gestures of contrition, a meaningful look. Meaning, don’t move, I’m going to come back out of this office and fire you.

Mr. Smith took his seat and I took mine and we both smiled at each other.

Shall I begin? I said.

Please do, he said.

But before I could begin talking, he had begun talking.

I see, I said. After a certain interval I said this again.

Now you, he said.

What should I tell you?

Anything you like.

So I told him about the years I had spent on the farm after my father had died, about the small bedroom in the attic, about the books, about the basement, about the blue jay that used to screech in the fruit trees.

How often did they put you in the basement?

At the end it was almost every day.

Mr. Smith spoke again for a time.

He had never been, so to speak, in the basement, but he had been buried when a building collapsed. This had been in a city built on the side of a mountain. He had been buried, along with many others, when the building had slid down the mountain in a river of mud.

Is that true, Mr. Smith?

My name’s not Smith.

But the card you left …

Belonged to another, an associate, a certain individual with an orange hat and a cracked tooth. I wanted to let you know he was coming, to give you a heads-up.

Thanks. He already came.

I know he did.

We looked at each other.

He smiled.

It was too bad about the lips, but he had those gorgeous choppers.

Tell me about the progress you’ve made on the case.

I told him.

It was not, in the telling, massively impressive, and I found myself, absurdly, adding embellishments—a chance meeting with an eyewitness as I had wandered below the streets, an interesting interaction with a mysterious blond woman at a hotel bar.

But none of it seemed out of order to him, and when I had finished, he wrote me another check. Before he gave it to me, however, he said, so you haven’t spoken to Ms. Green yet?

I wasn’t sure why I had omitted my interaction with Ms. Green from the account I had given of my case-related activities. After all, he was the one who had given me her name in the first place. And he was such a pleasant client, with such gracious manners, thought-provoking stories, and gorgeous eyes. Still, my recent revelation regarding Ms. Green, Lyla, and my love for her, coupled with my speculation regarding my client’s true identity (he had encouraged me, when I mentioned it, to pursue this line of inquiry), his overlap with my boss at the transactions firm and all the concomitant sinister possibility, not to mention his unexplained connection with the nefarious individual with the cracked tooth, contributed to my withholding.

So you think I should speak to this Ms. Green? I said.

Absolutely. I think she can and will furnish you with significant information regarding the case.

All right.

But now you’ll have to locate her because she’s no longer at the number I gave you earlier.

And you don’t know where she’s gone?

No. Although you might ask Mr. Smith. I left one of his cards with her as well.

What exactly, if you don’t mind my asking, is the nature of your relationship with Mr. Smith? I asked, but unfortunately my client was no longer there.

In his place sat my secretary.

You asked me to come in, he said.

Yes, I said.

For a moment I couldn’t remember why I had done so.

The poor guy.

He was a good-enough secretary after all. It was true that certain aspects of his personality, not to mention the issue of his loyalty, left something to be desired, but I really wasn’t paying him very well. And how much hygiene and loyalty could you expect for a sucker’s salary every month?

Cash this check and go to the dentist, I said.

Then I’m not fired?

No, you’re not fired.

Thanks, Boss.

Before he left I had him make a couple of phone calls. One was to Ms. Green. My client appeared to be right—the line had been disconnected. The other was to my first client, the one with the husband troubles. Once my secretary had placed the call, I got on the line and charmed my way through her perhaps only feigned surprise at hearing from me into an appointment for drinks the next day.

Then I went over to the transactions firm.

It was late evening when I arrived and most of the employees had been given their assignments and had set off for the night. It was with little hope of gratification then that I entered the copy room in search of information, and perhaps even a drink; as it happened, I got both.

Mr. Smith, I said.

I’m not called Mr. Smith when I’m here, he said. I’m called Max.

Max, I said.

Sport, he said.

He grinned and held up a bottle.

I grinned and began backing toward the door.

But he told me there was no need. What had to occur elsewhere, under other circumstances, was entirely unrelated to what would and had to occur here.

So have a drink, he said.

I have a gun, I said.

I had the gun in my hand and, as a precaution, was now holding it against the front of his cranium.

A gun is a weapon that fires a bullet, a shell, or some other missile, I said. Most guns fire by the force of a gas created by the rapid burning of gunpowder. The shells in this gun contain gunpowder, which, I said, can quite easily be encouraged to create gas.

My cranium is soft, Sport, and I’m unarmed, he said.

Are you? I said.

Actually, I could see that he was. I could see, in fact, straight through him, straight through his shoes and clothes and orange hat. I could see the black heart beating in his chest and the black brain beating in his skull. Your brain is black, Max, I said.

Ask it anything you want then have a drink, he said.

I did so.

I mean I asked then I had a drink. Then I had another then took the barrel of my gun off Max’s head.

Is the boss around tonight, Max?

Yes he is.

And John?

John is probably with the boss—he’s with him a lot these days.

With the trains?

There is only one train. Many tracks, one train. He insists on this arrangement.

I think I would like to go in and speak to him, to them.

Impossible.

Why?

We have work.

We?

The two of us. A body.

I’m on a leave of absence. I’m working on a case.

Check the board.

I did. I went back. Max grinned.

My neck hurts, I said. I was shot.

Yeah, I know, I’m sorry—it looks terrible. But it’s time to go.

I followed him out the door and we made our way off across the city to a small apartment in a medium-size building in which we found a small pretty body, Ms. Green.

It was at this point, I should say, that I began to lose hope in my abilities as an investigator, and also in my future in that line of work. You will remember, I expect, that not so many days earlier, I had been quite hopeful and had imagined that my future would be quite bright indeed. And yet, faced with my first complex case, I was already mired in uncertainties, which seemed sure to overwhelm me at any moment.

Can we just leave it here? I asked Max.

Our instructions are to take it to the river.

But I’d like to tell Ms. Green about this.

So tell her as we’re walking, he said.

I don’t mean her, I said, looking at the body.

Who do you mean then?

I had to admit I wasn’t sure. I mean, there she was. But there I was, too. Or at least I thought so. Perhaps I was elsewhere. I
was
elsewhere. I could see the sides of a hollowed-out turbine. Ms. Green was there. Sitting beside me.

Explain, I said.

I can’t, she said. It’s up to you.

I see.

This was the next day. I was sitting at the bar of a hotel listening to a stunning blonde, my first client, and she had several interesting things to say.

You really don’t remember, do you? she said.

No I don’t. I mean yes and no.

You don’t remember the firm’s annual dinner and being introduced to me and to my husband?

No, I said.

Wait, yes, I said.

I had suddenly caught a glimpse. An enormous banquet hall filled with round tables and flower arrangements and endless bottles of expensive cognac.

You’re married to the boss, I said.

Yes, she said.

So you had me following the boss?

My husband.

It really was your husband.

Why should I have lied?

I raised my eyebrow.

At this my former client lifted her drink to her lips, looked at me, smiled.

Nobody imagined that you would be able to continue to follow him once you had entered the green door, she said. That was a pretty trick.

A pretty trick, I said.

She smiled.

Your husband was seeing someone, wasn’t he?

He was.

Who?

You don’t remember, she said, being introduced that evening to the woman sitting on my husband’s right?