Taking the proffered hand, Sovereign asked, “Are you a bank robber, Mr. Selfridge?”
“No, sir. I’m in the international message trade.”
“You work for AT&T?”
The small man was in his late thirties, at most forty. He laughed, showing a row of healthy but uneven teeth.
“No, sir,” he said again. “There are a lot of people all over the world who need their thoughts known without any kind of trail, electronic or ink. When the need gets great enough, people like me are employed to move the message from one place to the other.”
“And Eddie has a message for me that he couldn’t pass on the phone?”
“Can we go upstairs, sir?” Monte asked. “I don’t usually transact my business in open spaces that aren’t anonymous to the receiver.”
“That’s me? I’m the receiver?”
Monte Selfridge smiled.
“So,” Sovereign James asked his brother’s representative once they had both settled in his living room. “I’m supposed to receive a message from Drum now?”
“Actually this is more a personal favor than a proper transaction,” Monte said, looking a bit uncomfortable. “You see, your brother did me a big favor twelve years back and he’s asked me to reciprocate.”
“You use a lot of big words, Mr. Selfridge.”
“My profession crosses many languages and requires a broad vocabulary,” he admitted. “I never write anything down, and so words and their usage have a tendency to stick.”
“What kind of favor?”
“First Eddie heard that you were blind and then that you were being prosecuted for assault. He asked you if you needed help and you said no, but he wasn’t sure about that. So I’m here to talk to you about the situation.”
“As far as I know, charges have not been lodged against me.”
“Forty-eight hours from now they will be.”
“How do you know this?”
“I know a lot of people in New York, Mr. James. That’s why Eddie asked me to come see you.”
Sovereign turned his head to look out the window. There was a jet going past, south of Manhattan island, above the false horizon line of skyscrapers. He imagined himself sitting next to a window in that airliner, looking down on the hundreds of thousands of anonymous people hidden inside the buildings, and so small they were invisible walking down the streets. He and Monte Selfridge were a part of that nameless, imperceptible mob. This thought provided relief.
“I was blind,” he said easily, “and then I could see — but only for a moment. It was like a sudden shaft of light inside a shuttered room. In that brief frame of vision there was a young woman’s face. She turned out not to be the ideal woman I’d always wanted, but the window, that brief instant in time, would not leave me.”
“You loved her?”
“I do. And she in turn loves a series of distractions and tragedies. Through her I feel... I don’t know — strong. It’s stupid, really, meaningless. But that doesn’t matter.
“She,” Sovereign continued, “she brought a man in here and he wound up attacking me. She hollered in my defense. My sight returned again, this time permanently, and I beat him nearly to death.”
When Sovereign looked out the window the jet was gone and yet still in his mind. He wondered how long that image would stay with him: a gray winged aircraft in a fading blue sky.
“That’s the story, Mr. Selfridge. If the prosecutor wants to send me to prison I’ll be unhappy to go, but I probably will. My whole life, I now realize, has been under a blanket of darkness. Now that I can see it I will not turn away — from anything.”
The small white messenger’s left heel was pumping up and down. The nail of his left thumb grazed the skin of his lower lip. His eyes, black like his hair, peered into Sovereign’s words.
“You look like Jinx,” Monte said after a few moments’ gaze, “around the eyes.”
“That’s Eddie, right?”
“Yeah,” he replied with a smile.
“So what’s the verdict, Monte?”
“You got a good lawyer?”
“She’s a lawyer and she gives good advice even if I don’t take it.”
Monte Selfridge grinned with recognition, as if seeing himself in a highly polished mirror of ideas.
“Jinx did have a message,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“He wanted me to tell you that he loves you.”
These words brought up an odd feeling in Sovereign. For a moment he was at a loss, and then he realized that it was a question without words noodling through his mind, like a sightless worm.
The jiggle and swish of the front door sounded.
“Sovereign?” Toni Loam called.
“In here.”
She was wearing the ochre dress from that day. The hem made it only halfway down her thighs. She had strong brown legs that made Sovereign’s heart skip. It was a physical feeling that he wanted to deny. But it persisted.
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know you had company.”
Monte was seated on the white sofa while Sovereign had the red chair.
“This is Monte Selfridge,” Sovereign said, “an emissary from my brother, who, as you know, is a retired bank robber now living in Brazil, or thereabouts.”
“Oh,” she said again.
Toni walked across the room, up to Sovereign in the red chair, and seated herself on his lap.
His erection was instantaneous and insistent, a perfect counterpoint to the skipping of his heart.
“Hello, Mr. Selfridge,” Toni said, curling her left arm around Sovereign’s neck.
A musky, half-sweet odor came from her body, her torso. The dress and perfume, the aggressive seating, and even the huskiness of her voice were all designed as a message for Sovereign — a man realizing that he had lived alone in his mind for far too long.
“I think I’m interrupting,” the emissary said.
“No, not at all,” Sovereign replied. “I haven’t heard from my brother in the last thirty years. Now he’s called me twice in as many days and sent you. I won’t send away maybe my only connection to him.”
“That’s right,” Toni said. “We can all have dinner together. Sovereign said that we were having French.”
“Yes,” Sovereign added. “I insist.”
“Then at least you can allow me to take you two out to a place I know.”
The restaurant was on the third floor of a nondescript building on the Bowery — Chez Willomena la Terre. The aluminum elevator carried no more than four at a time, and the small dining room, with its zinc bar, had only nine tables — all of which were in use.
“How did you ever find this place?” Sovereign asked Monte after the salad made of Bibb lettuce with olive oil, garlic, and red wine dressing. “The food is great.”
“I’ve been coming here for seventeen years,” the mortal Mercury admitted. “My mom was friends with Willomena. Do you like it, Miss Loam?”
“The bread is good,” she said.
Her left hand was stroking Sovereign’s thigh under the table.
After coq au vin with escarole and scalloped potatoes, Monte ordered apple tarts and a bottle of cognac for the table.
The conversation up until that time had flowed easily back and forth between the diners. Toni liked to talk about her family and the people who lived in her mother’s building. She didn’t mention Lemuel, but Sovereign thought that he could tell when she skipped over a memory or a significant moment in a story that might have included her sometimes ex.
For his part James told about his capitalistic revolutionary career that spanned a more than twenty years, admitting that, in the end, it had probably been a misguided adventure.
“Sounds like a practicable idea to me,” Monte said. “I mean, somebody has to make the plans — and execute them.”