Potboiler (30 page)

Bill nodded.

“Where are they?”

Bill gestured all around. Everywhere.

“So they’ll also know if you don’t do it,” Pfefferkorn said. “And they’ll know if I run.”

“You have to try.”

“What for? They’ll know. They’ll just come after me again, and sooner or later, no matter how careful I am, they’ll catch me. And in the meantime what happens to you?”

Bill said nothing.

“That’s what I thought,” Pfefferkorn said.

There was a long silence.

“Take it,” Pfefferkorn said.

“What.”

“The deal. Take it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’d take it, if I were you.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“If you don’t take it, we’re both finished.”

“Not necessarily.”

“They’ll find me. You said it yourself. They always do.”

“Not if you listen to me.”

“No calls.”

“Yes.”

“And no books.”

“Yes.”

Pfefferkorn shook his head. “Impossible.”

“It’s very simple. Don’t buy a phone card. Don’t buy books.”

“And I’m telling you, it’s not simple at all. As long as she’s there, it’s impossible.”

Bill said nothing.

“Don’t be stupid,” Pfefferkorn said. “If not you, it’ll be someone else.”

Bill said nothing.

“It’ll be a stranger. I don’t want that.”

Bill said nothing.

“It may as well be on my terms,” Pfefferkorn said. “It may as well achieve something.”

“Please shut up.”

“What’s more important, that you be the one who does it, or just that I’m out of the picture?”

“I’m not having this conversation.”

“It’s an important distinction,” Pfefferkorn said.

Bill said nothing.

“Well, let’s hope it’s the latter.”

“Shut up.”

“I will. Soon. Remember what you said before? In the shed?”

Bill did not answer.

“You said, ‘It’s a rare writer who knows when to shut up.’ That’s me.”

“For crissake,” Bill said, “it’s not a metaphor for
life
.”

Pfefferkorn took out the letters he carried on him at all times. The pages had taken on the warmth and curve of his thigh. “This one’s for you,” he said, peeling them apart. “You don’t have to read it now.”

“Art—”

“In fact, I’d prefer if you didn’t. This one’s for my daughter. Promise me she’ll get it.”

Bill did not move to take either letter.

“Promise me,” Pfefferkorn said.

“I’m not promising you anything.”

“You owe me a favor.”

“I don’t owe you a thing,” Bill said.

“The hell you don’t.”

The church bell began to toll. It tolled once.

Pfefferkorn flapped the letters. “Promise me she’ll get it.”

The bell tolled a second and a third time.

“You can’t sit here with me forever,” Pfefferkorn said.

The bell tolled four and five. Pfefferkorn leaned over and tucked the letters in Bill’s breast pocket. He dusted himself off and looked back at the town. The bell tolled six, seven, eight. Pfefferkorn looked at the ocean. The bell tolled nine. He stepped toward the water. He felt Bill’s eyes on him. Ten. He stretched his arms. Eleven. He stretched his legs. The bell tolled twelve and he put one foot in.

“Yankel,” Bill said.

Pfefferkorn advanced against the tide. The bell had stopped ringing but its vibrations could still be felt.

“Get back here.”

The water came up to his knees.

“Art.”

The sky was a high blank header. The horizon was a straight line of type. Pfefferkorn smiled back at his friend and called out above the waves.

“It had better be a damned good book,” he said.

Pfefferkorn embraced the sea.

121.

He swam.

From far behind him came shouts and splashes. Eventually the water gave up its resistance and the splashes fell away and the shouts receded and he was alone, swimming. No one could catch him. He swam out past the bend in the shoreline. His lungs burned. His legs stiffened. He swam on past the fishing boats. He swam on until he saw nothing and nobody and then he stopped. He turned onto his back and floated, unmoored, in the limitless sea, letting the current take him.

He expected to sink. He did not sink. He drifted. Water sloshed over his chest and into his ears. Salt water ran into his eyes like he was crying in reverse, sucking up the sorrow of the world. He was thirsty. Hours passed. The sun peaked, then dropped like a slow-moving bomb. The sky became a cathedral. Night fell. He turned beneath turning constellations. The sun rose and bore down like retribution. The flesh of his face grew tender. It blistered and still he drifted on, and by the next night, his thirst had waned. His stomach closed. He felt shrunken, like a jarred specimen, at once heavy and light. He surpassed pain. Time passed. The sun rose and fell and rose and fell. His clothes rotted away. He floated naked as a child.

Then he began to change. At first it was a change in perception. He ceased to feel his body. It was sad, like bidding an old friend goodbye. But there came a consolation. He felt new things, things bigger than himself. He felt the atmosphere like a blanket. The roll of a passing freighter. The tickle of kelp. The whizz of commuting sardines. The nuzzle of sharks. The stiff brush of cormorant wings. He heard new things, too. He eavesdropped on whales. He discerned the secrets of flatfish fathoms deep. It was as though he had become a tuning fork keyed to life itself. He gave himself over. He unfurled his limbs and beckoned life to him. First came algae. Then barnacles took up residence on his back and legs. They were joined there by limpets. He grew a moustache of mussels. He donned a crown of driftwood and trash. The tips of his fingers trailed delicate threads of seagrass. Coral cities were erected on his back and shoulders, attracting worms and crustaceans, anemones and clownfish, wrasses and triggerfish and tangs. Crabs hatched in his bellybutton. Eels curled up in his armpits. He was subsumed. He became a substrate. Mineral deposits grouted the gaps between his fingers and his toes. They spread up his shins. They locked his legs together. He calcified and collected. He was accommodating. He made room. He grew. His expanding shape created coves and inlets. The pilots of low-flying planes began to take him for a sandbar. He began to affect the tides. Organic matter composted atop his chest, creating a fertile soil. A coconut washed up onto his abdomen, cracked open, and germinated into a palm tree. An albatross dropped a mouthful of seeds. He bore wildflowers.

Later the wind shifted and he appeared off the coast, a vibrant and thriving assemblage, tilting like a giant hand in greeting. He was first noticed by fishermen. His natural beauty was taken note of. Word spread. The geological survey was divided over how to designate him. He seemed comfortable with his place, floating there in the just-beyond. An enterprising company began running tours out to see him. To prevent erosion, they limited the number of people onshore to twenty at a time. He was no longer visible except for his eyes, which peered out from the land around them, an invented land composed of many layers, some living, some dead. The people looked at his eyes and asked,
Is it him?
And the answer came:
It is.
Then they put out blankets and picnicked. They sunbathed on his shores. Children built castles and played in his waves. Pods of dolphins swam past, doing tricks. A good time was had by all.

*   *   *

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you: Stephen King, Lee Child, Robert Crais, Chris Pepe and everyone at Putnam, Amy Brosey, Zach Shrier, Norman Lasca, John Keefe, Alec Nevala-Lee, Amanda Dewey, Liza Dawson, Chandler Crawford, Nina Salter and everyone at Les Deux Terres, Julie Sibony, David Shelley and everyone at Little, Brown UK.

My gratitude to my wife is even greater than usual, as she made to me a gift of her idea for a casino within a casino.

A
LSO BY
J
ESSE
K
ELLERMAN

The Executor

The Genius

Trouble

Sunstroke