A City Dreaming (39 page)

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, you'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.”

•  •  •

“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.

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.

“He's not coming,” M said. “He's not going to get out of that chair for another twenty-four hours. Maybe eighteen. He's a bright kid.”

“It's all right for us to risk our lives, though.”

“I don't think we're quite at the arming-children stage,” M said. “It's done regardless. Flemel is out. The question is, which of you are in?”

Bucephalus smiled and lit a joint. He enjoyed a good fight, and it sounded like this would be one. The rest took a little more convincing, but not so much. Stockdale and Boy did it because they were M's friends, true-blue, scout's honor. Andre did it because he did not want to shame himself in front of Boy.

M ushered them all out and turned off the lights. Then he turned them back on, found a sticky note, and wrote, “Apartment paid up until the end of the month. If you hold on to the records, I will teach you something next time I am in town. Assuming I am still alive.” Then he put the note onto Flemel's head, turned the lights back off, and left for the final time.

At Nostrand Station, they dropped into the last car of an uptown 3 train, busy with Manhattan-bound scenesters planning a night out in the city.

“Any idea what to expect?” Stockdale asked.

“Not really. The Engineer had a set of keys. We're going to be picking the lock.”

Midway through the Clark Street tunnel and without giving any warning, M reached over suddenly and pulled the safety cord. The train stopped abruptly, everyone tumbling against one another. A commotion erupted among the passengers, who would now be stuck for two hours easy, dinner dates upended, movie tickets wasted, and let's hope the person next to you doesn't suffer from crippling claustrophobia.

“Everybody calm down,” M said, spilling a smidgen of his collected energy into the ether, enough to buzz the assemblage into an eager submission. “I'll make it up to you by saving the city in heroic fashion. Bucephalus, if you'd do the honors . . .”

Bucephalus slid painted nails into the seam of the door and flexed his biceps like pistons. M went first and led them single file toward the back of the train. A few steps past the last car and the darkness grew ubiquitous. M took a thin flashlight from his jacket pocket and ejected a flickering beam from its eye.

“Really?” Stockdale asked.

“You couldn't . . .” Boy waved her hands like a stage magician.

“I'm pacing myself,” M informed them, banging his hand against the plastic frame.

“Could you at least have checked the batteries?” Andre asked.

It was a fair point, though as they kicked in just then there seemed no point in discussing it further. They turned down a side passage, following a train tread that hadn't been used in what seemed a very long time.

“Are you sure you know where you're going?” Boy asked.

“Confident.”

“Confident isn't sure.”

“That's true, they're different words entirely.”

A tunnel, of course, is not simply a tunnel, any more than a beach is a beach or a mountain a mountain. One cavern is as different from another as an old-growth forest is a mile of badlands. The abandoned subway line our troupe had come through was old, worn-down, damp, graffitied, fetid, and unhygienic. But the side passage that they took then was another level of foulness altogether, like sliding down an esophageal track. Stared at straight on, the walls looked like walls, but seen out of the corner of your eye—and, really, how much time does one spend staring dead-on at a wall—they seemed to pulse, to reverberate like an oversize amp at a backyard summer barbecue, though the only sound that could be heard was the occasional nasal drip. Andre slipped at one point, coating his pants with some mucouslike substance, and he cursed vigorously, though to no great effect.