Wakefield (37 page)

“We must then stay in here all night!” one of the women says, in English.

“Another Corbu?” The bartender pours brandy, Coca-Cola, and milk over ice in a slender, tall glass.

The woman's voice sounds familiar to Wakefield. He sits down at the bar and asks for “whatever it is that the ladies are drinking.”

“We make it up,” the woman says, her accented English a lot like Marianna's once was.

“It is because we are architects we make up drinks named for other architects. The Corbu is after le Corbusier,” her companion adds.

Wakefield still suffers occasionally from an auditory hallucination that began with Marianna. After living with her for a year or so, he was on a city bus with a group of Hispanic high-school girls. They all sounded to him like Marianna speaking English. Only, the girls were speaking Spanish. Even after he realized the words were Spanish, the illusion persisted; he even imagined he could understand what they were saying, though his knowledge of Spanish was zilch. He got pretty rattled and got off at a coffeehouse to calm down, but the woman at the counter also spoke with Marianna's voice, though her accent was German. All accented speech thenceforth was uttered by his ex-wife, and there was no dispelling the disturbance with the aid of reason. The hallucination dissipated on its own after a while. Wakefield suspects that there was something primal about the timbre or pitch of Marianna's voice, like an urvoice that unsettled the language root in his brain.

Wakefield drinks his Corbu and orders another, and more for the French women, who introduce themselves as Françoise and Cybelle.

“You know,” the bartender says, pouring more brandy than cola into the glasses, “I'm an architecture student, and I didn't even know there was an architects' convention in town.”

“Figure the odds,” Wakefield mutters.

“This city reminds me of France,” Cybelle tells him. Wakefield has heard that before; it's no hallucination. “Françoise and I get our best ideas in cafés talking with our friends. You don't have that in most of America.”

The bartender raises a hand. “Listen. The trucks are coming.” He comes out from behind the bar and closes all the doors and windows. Then he turns off the lights and sets three candles on the bar: “So we can watch the show.” The cloud of insects and poison swirling in the air outside
is
eerie, but they feel safe enough inside.

“Since this is a café and you are architects,” Wakefield suggests, “perhaps you would design an ideal home for me, to pass the time.”

The women take up the challenge with typical Parisian aplomb.

“You must tell us what is your dream house,” Françoise urges him.

“Yes, leave nothing out!” naughtily, in Marianna's voice from Cybelle's lips.

Wakefield looks thoughtful. “I want a house that's mobile but stationary, situated in a safe place without borders, where the people are peace-loving.” Redbone glares at him from a dark corner.

“I want one of those, too,” says the bartender.

“Hmm. You would like to live in a paradox,” Cybelle observes. “Are you going to live by yourself in this house, or do you picture in it a beautiful woman?”

“Women understand well paradox,” Françoise adds, a little smugly.

The two women begin to draw on napkins, questioning Wakefield on his preferences as they draw.

“Two rooms only, library and bedroom, and kitchen and bathroom, of course,” Wakefield answers when the problem of partition comes up. Soon, a blueprint of home emerges, looking a bit like a Gypsy wagon. Cybelle adds some solar panels, Françoise designs a bed and adjustable bookshelves.

“It's wonderful,” Wakefield says, “but if there is a woman …”

“What if there are
two
women?” Cybelle suggests.

“What about me?” protests the bartender.

“Oh,” Françoise slaps her forehead, “I forgot the café!” She adds a collapsible awning on one side of the wagon, and draws in a little round table and folding chairs. “Now it's perfect, very French, no?”

Wakefield couldn't be more pleased. Emboldened, he invites everyone for a swim at his hotel. Cybelle and Françoise debate for a moment. “What about the bugs, the poison? Is it safe?”

The bartender is already putting a bottle of brandy and the other ingredients for Corbu in a plastic bag. “It should be by now. I see people walking around again.”

The four of them leave the café linking arms, strutting through still-floating wisps of poison fog. The sidewalks are carpeted with the silvery corpses of millions of termites, and the little group begins to dance along, inventing steps as they go through the square, past the cathedral, and down the silent streets. As they go, Wakefield tells them the story of the insane man with the hammer, and how he was forced to leave his apartment.

“Tomorrow,” he tells them, “I will have my beautiful revenge.” They ask for details, but Wakefield is mum. “You'll see,” he promises. “It will be very amusing.”

The foursome are frosted with termite wings by the time they arrive at the locked gate of the hotel. The night guard is waiting expectantly with a grin on his face.

“I'll be back in a minute,” Wakefield whispers to him.

He leads his guests to the suite, shows them where the ice and towels are, and returns to the gate to talk to his man.

“I got them,” the guard says, pulling a stoppered vial from his pocket. Five silvery-winged insects flutter around inside.

“Now comes part two,” Wakefield instructs him. He points out the house across the street, and describes what is to be done there.

“Shouldn't I get half the money now?” The thug makes a tough face.

“You'll get it all tomorrow, when the job's done.”

The guard shrugs. Tomorrow Wakefield will place a call to Termite Control and tell them exactly where the stolen Formosan bugs can be retrieved. He prays that they've been sterilized and won't be laying any eggs. He doesn't want to destroy the city. A nonnative species, like the mongoose in Martinique or the nutria in Louisiana, is like an arsonist in the forest, or a single lunatic with a homemade bomb; destruction is all too easy. Low tech. No tech.

Françoise, Cybelle, and the bartender are already paddling naked in the pool when he returns to the suite, their snifters of Corbu on the glass table with the towels. Wakefield strips down and joins them. The water is bathtub warm, vibrating with the energy of their bodies.

“Water,” says Cybelle, swimming up to him, “is such a perfect medium. It's the origin of our bodies.”

After some playful foolishness—the women become water-spouting sprites, the men sea monsters—they pad back into the suite wrapped in hotel towels. The night passes in lovemaking, their bodies fluid, familiar; aural, visual, and tactile senses joined. In the dark, Wakefield is no longer invisible.

Dawn slips tentatively through the fog, and there is a soft knock on the door. The guard is back from his errand.

“It's done.”

Wakefield finds his pants and rummages through his pockets, taking out the Greek coin Redbone gave him in the bunker and pressing it into the guard's palm. “Look it up on eBay, it's not a fake.”

“You sure about that?” he asks, examining the little disc of gold.

“Believe me. It's authentic.”

When it's fully light outside Wakefield gathers his friends at the window overlooking the madman's house.

“In a few minutes, that door will open,” he tells them, “and a man who is Daedalus will come out through it.” Wakefield readies his opera glasses.

The monster appears before he can finish speaking.

“
C'est lui?
” whispers Cybelle.

“
Le monstre, le minotaure, l'hypocrite lecteur!
” says Françoise.

“Mr. Termite, we're ready for your closeup!” commands Wakefield.

The madman opens the courtyard gate, and they watch him studying the brick wall adjoining Wakefield's bedroom. Wakefield can feel his dissatisfaction with the wall, his neurotic compulsion, and knows that he intends to take it down again. So strong is their psychic connection, Wakefield wonders if the madman can feel him watching. His enemy climbs to the top of the scaffolding and, as usual, sits down on his chair to survey his work.

The chair buckles under him like cardboard. They watch him fall in slow motion and hit the flagstones near a pile of bricks.

“
Mon dieu,
” Françoise cries, “he's dead.”

Cybelle is very pale but calm. “What have you done, Wakefield?”

His horrified paramours rush from the window, pulling on their clothes as fast as they can. Wakefield doesn't move, and he does not go with them when they all burst out the door.

Wakefield remains motionless at the window for a long time. Then he gathers his belongings methodically, packs his toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream, and razor in his travel case, and returns to his empty apartment.

The room is quiet; there is no more hammering, no sound at all. “I have killed the monster,” he says aloud, and he stretches out contentedly on his curtained bed. He hears sirens in the street, then voices in the courtyard next door, and promptly falls asleep.

He wakes in the afternoon to silence. He takes a long shower, then goes to the bar. Ivan Zamyatin is not in his seat at the window. A stranger is sitting in his place, drinking vodka on the rocks. Wakefield sits next to him and the bartendress brings his usual whiskey without a word.

“I enjoyed the way you handled the situation next door, but it wasn't really necessary,” the Devil says. “I hope you didn't do it for my sake.”

Wakefield turns to the stranger, an old man wearing a ski cap and smelling to high heaven. “Self-defense. I just reacted. And what do you mean ‘it wasn't really necessary'? When I heard that hammer, I went for my bugs. It was a shootout.”

“The hammer wasn't the starter pistol, you know,” the Devil says.

Wakefield is calm. “Really? Then I still have some time before my quest begins?” But he has a sinking feeling, made worse by the Devil's grudging approval. You'd think His Holy Hoof would approve murder as a proper conclusion, or at least a deal sweetener.

“I don't honestly know,” the Devil says, only slightly amused. “They keep changing the agenda on me. Your case has been shelved, for the time being. There's a big deal brewing and I've been called up. Don't know when we'll talk again.” But he doesn't want to hurt Wakefield's feelings, so he adds, “I did enjoy our travels, I really did.”

“What's that ‘we,' white man? I didn't see you around.”

The Devil chuckles. “You saw me all right, but you were too busy paying attention to ‘important' things, haha. Remember the geezer at the desert roadhouse? ‘I shot a sonofabitch for playing bad music next door.'”

“That was you?”

“How about that beefy bodyguard stage left in Wintry City?”

“That creep was you, too?”

“Sunglasses, gun, and bulk, my favorite getup. I was also a projectionist and a few other folks you either ignored or forgot. Don't feel bad about it. I'm all about amnesia.”

Wakefield is speechless. He had felt so free, so at liberty.

“Ah, well, all good things must come to an end. At least you get to keep mucking around until we activate your file again.
Adios, amigo. Adiablo
is over for now.” The stranger extends his hand, and Wakefield holds it for a moment, palming the old man a twenty.

“Thanks, man,” the old guy whispers.

Wakefield doesn't even finish his drink. He heads home, to read. What else could a silence-loving man do in a hammer-wielding world?

About the Author

Andrei Codrescu (
www.codrescu.com
) is the editor of
Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Books & Ideas
(
www.corpse.org
). Born in Romania, Codrescu immigrated to the United States in 1966. His first collection of poetry,
License to Carry a Gun
(1970), won the Big Table Younger Poets Award, and his latest,
So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems: 1968–2012
(2012), was a National Book Award finalist. He is the author of the novels
The Blood Countess
,
Messi@
,
Casanova in Bohemia
, and
Wakefield
. His other titles include
Zombification: Essays from NPR
;
The Disappearance of the Outside: A Manifesto for Escape
;
New Orleans, Mon Amour
;
The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile's Story of Return and Revolution
;
Ay, Cuba!: A Socio-Erotic Journey
;
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess
;
Whatever Gets You through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments
;
The Poetry Lesson
; and
Bibliodeath: My Archives (With Life in Footnotes).

Codrescu is the recipient of an ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry, and the Peabody Award for the movie
Road Scholar
. Until retiring in 2009, he was the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2004 by Andrei Codrescu

Cover design by Mauricio Díaz

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1988-0

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.