Wanna come home with me, take a number, she says.
You withdraw.
Job, who goes by Anthony, a.k.a. the second murderer, whom you have not seen at the bar in quite some time, is standing near the window. Dark hair, long, taut muscles. Very handsome.
Hey, you say.
Evening, he says.
You ask him if he minds talking.
As long as it isn’t about my name or about my former place of employment or about anything personal, he says.
So how you got involved in this is out-of-bounds?
He thinks a minute. He shrugs. Tulip’s a friend, he says. She told me about the opening. She introduced me around. I’ve got debts.
And Tulip’s got a lot of friends, you say.
Anthony looks over at Tulip, who is bent over talking to the knockout. They are quite a pair. Your heart executes a perfect backflip and hits the water without a splash.
He turns back to me, one of his eyebrows raised. Next question, he says.
I’m not interviewing you.
You could have fooled the fuck out of me.
O.K., how did your first murder go?
You want me to talk about that?
Talk, I say.
He goes over to the table, takes a piece of stew-soaked bread off his plate, puts some cheese on it, and comes back.
It was fucked, he says, inserting the lion’s portion of the bread into his mouth, chewing then leaning in close. He smells like lemon balm and lavender. There are one or two beads of sweat on his muscular throat. Some skin connected to his jaw twitches like someone is sticking it with a miniature cattle prod. Past his right shoulder, through the window and the black netting, the lights of Tompkins Square bob and glitter. Fucked up. Bizarre. Unpleasant. Messy. Yuck. Pick a word. I didn’t like it at all. And I’ll tell you something else, it wasn’t even supposed to be a murder, it was just supposed to be a warning, a little friendly advice, cease and desist, pursue other avenues, get the fuck out of town. Just ask them.
“Them” is the two friends, two young women, fraternal twins, he notes, whose job, he says, during such jobs, is, when/if necessary, to hold people down. They both stand and step forward. The one with straight, shoulder-length jet-black hair grins and flexes her suddenly impressive arm muscles. The one with straight, shoulder-length pomegranate-colored hair grins, reaches back and snaps the loose material of her pants, and locks the suddenly impressive muscles in her thighs.
I’m not sure I entirely get what you’re saying, you say, not quite sure who you are saying it to.
At this, Tulip steps forward, pulls her hands out of her back pockets, and says, show me how the takedown/immobilizing thing gets done.
A piece of floor is chosen, a table is pushed aside. Mr. Kindt, who has been smothering strawberries in heavy cream in the kitchen, comes in and beams. The first murderer clears his throat and crosses his arms. A silence broken only by a forlorn rattling in the wall and the mued clanking of wind and scaffolding descends upon your company. The fraternal twins nod, then do something and in half a heartbeat Tulip is lying down very still on the carpet smiling and breathing quickly with her arms and legs pinned and a knee pressed against her chest. For effect, you suppose, the first murderer then walks forward, bends over, and gently slaps Tulip’s cheek. They let her go, and you all clap, and then, as if the front door was stage right, the two friends walk out.
So now you are six for cream and strawberries and then four because the knockout is no longer feeling well, she has announced, and you have watched her, arm in arm with Anthony, walk out the door. Instead of being more than slightly discomfited, instead of thinking very actively about Anthony and his distaste for what Mr. Kindt has asked you to do, however, you stand there wishing the two friends had held you down, had looked coldly across your body as they bent over you, had pressed a knee into your chest, so you ask Tulip how it was and she says, quite fascinating and not too painful, and you say, show me, and she says, shhh.
The first murderer is speaking. He is looking at you.
He says, Time which antiquates Antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor Monuments. In vain we hope to be known by open and visible conservatories, when to be unknown was the means of their continuation and obscurity their protection: If they dyed by violent hands, and were thrust into their Urnes, these bones become considerable, and some old Philosophers would honour them, whose souls they conceived most pure, which were thus snatched from their bodies; and to retain a stranger propension unto them whereas they weariedly left a languishing corps, and with fain desires of re-union. If they fell by long and aged decay, yet wrapt up in the bundle of time, they fall into indistinction, and make but one blot with Infants.
While the murderer is talking, Mr. Kindt nods, and says, lovely, and closes his eyes, and you find yourself thinking of someone you once knew, and how she listened to poetry. This person, whom you once knew very well it seemed, listened with her eyes half shut and her small, dark hands curled around a drink at a table lost in the smoke of the bar. You shake your head. You look at Tulip. She is tall, exquisite. Her fingers are long. You think of the knockout. You think, I should have taken a number. You stop thinking. The murderer keeps talking, and your own eyes close, and the room revolves around you, and the murderer says, If we begin to die when we live, and long life be but a prolongation of death; our life is a sad composition, and you open your eyes and the murderer is still looking at you, and you think, the composition is sad, it is very sad, yes, it is sad, says Mr. Kindt, from somewhere far away, and the murderer, in the most tender voice, continues speaking to you.
TEN
A polar bear can smell a rotting carcass from ten miles away. Not being a polar bear or anything else with the intuitive equivalent of an exceptional olfactory apparatus, it stands to reason that I can’t. So I shouldn’t feel bad. About not getting it. Right.
I know something about polar bears because once Mr. Kindt, who came often in his white slippers and light-blue gown after that first night to visit, and who proved at first to be very kind, very sweet, and more than a little amusing, watched a program on them with me. He came into my room, as he usually did, after dark, and slipped under my covers, and on the television set that hangs so firmly suspended above my bed by its mechanical arm, we watched polar bears swim and hunt and fight. We watched polar bears ride walruses, trying to kill them, hurting them terribly and being hurt terribly in return, and we watched polar bears carefully lick their tiny cubs. We watched polar bears bark impressively at Arctic foxes that came too close, and we watched them, presumably starving, wander with who knows what in their minds far out over the ice. We also watched them swimming both from above the surface of the water and from below. From below you could see the handsome reflection of the white bears on the water’s surface, so that it seemed they were swimming, simultaneously, in two places — one as lovely and as ghostly as the other. We watched and watched, wishing, we agreed, that the program would never end. At one point, Mr. Kindt made some sort of a high-pitched growling sound. I did the same. Neither of us sounded remotely bearlike. We sounded more like the plump young seals that polar bears love so much to eat. We laughed a great deal at this and nudged at each other with our elbows. Mr. Kindt flipped over on all fours and cut capers on the bed. I’m a polar bear hunting its prey, he said. I laughed. He did the growl and bit my ankle through the covers. He bit so hard it made my eyes water and left marks. I didn’t want to say anything to spoil our fun so I did a little writhing and groaning and laughed with him when he let go. In short, it was the sort of program we enjoyed. Nature or history. We also liked programs about economic and cultural issues, although such programs sometimes proved to be too much for Mr. Kindt. After we watched a documentary about the difficulties of the North Sea fishing industries, which largely focused on the age-old trials and tribulations of herring fishermen and the shiny little herring itself, for example, I asked Job to bring me a box of tissues to keep by my bed.