I don’t follow.
Don’t you?
I’m your friend, Henry. Your best friend. It’s me. Aris.
That’s a nice name, very nice. How did you come by it?
Mr. Kindt’s smile, which had been holding steady, became its reverse.
I’m afraid of a sudden I find you a touch disagreeable, my boy, he said.
Well, you can bet you’re not the first person to feel that way. Usually it’s more than a touch. Can you even swim?
You should get back on your feet, Henry, he said, get some exercise, stop thinking so much, do that job.
I asked a question. How about an answer? I repeat, can you swim?
No. I can’t. I never learned. Why are you asking me these questions?
I told him the truth, which was that I didn’t know. They had just come to me. Had seemed important. Especially in the context of the shift that had occurred in our relationship.
Well, no doubt they are important. But now how about that job?
“That job” was related to some ampoules of pharmaceutical speed that Mr. Kindt had arranged for me to acquire. They were six hallways, two elevators, and a picked lock away.
I don’t think I want to do it this time, Mr. Kindt, I said.
Ah, but you must, Henry. We must. After all, the window of opportunity is fast closing. And there are individuals involved who might turn their attention elsewhere if the desired items are not expeditiously secured.
Why can’t you do it, you were a thief once, right?
A very long time ago I was a very bad thief.
So?
Mr. Kindt, who had been pacing back and forth, stopped and pointed his cracker at me.
In addition to being disagreeable, you seem, Henry, if perhaps you won’t mind my saying so, somewhat less than grateful at the opportunity, the very bright conduit of possibility, that’s been presented to you. I don’t know what all this is about my name and swimming, but I am speaking of business, of transaction, and, more important, of obligation.
I didn’t say anything. The unpleasant look I had seen in the hallway when he had broached the subject of stepping in for Job was back with a vengeance, and I didn’t like the look of it at all. But I felt tired and my head hurt. And I was sad that things, which I thought had gone back to the way they were, definitely seemed to have transformed.
Please go away, I said.
Mr. Kindt stood there, indecisive, as if he wanted to keep haranguing me or maybe cut my throat, but then, although the hard look that had come into his eyes didn’t entirely leave, it did soften, and his jaw relaxed, and he said, all right, my boy, yes, I can see you are tired, we’ll talk later.
He came toward me with his herring-laden cracker, but I shook my head. He shrugged, put it into his mouth, and turned toward the door.
TWENTY-ONE
It was Tulip who told me who my next victim would be. It was near the end of a long night that started with a pleasant dinner at Mr. Kindt’s apartment. There were no special guests that evening — just me and Tulip — and I had already, so to speak, killed (the accountant I had chloroformed and relieved of his documents) and talked about it, meaning I had nothing better to do after dinner than go back to The Fidelity and mutter to myself, the way my aunt used to do, and/or chew on the walls. So when Mr. Kindt, who for some time, under the guise of telling us about one of his early jobs in Cooperstown, had been holding forth on the subject of weaving and about the melancholy from which, as it is well-known, weavers have a tendency to suffer, all of a sudden said, wouldn’t it be lovely if the two of you spent some time together, perhaps this very night, after dinner, I very quickly said, yes.
Not that, under any circumstances, I would have said no.
What do you think, Tulip? said Mr. Kindt.
Why not? Tulip said.
Then it’s settled. Straight after dinner. Or after dinner and a game. Actually, let’s start the game right now, while we finish. That way the two of you can depart all the more quickly.
The sooner the better as far as I was concerned, and Tulip was agreeable, so I went to get the game board. There wasn’t any reason to ask which game Mr. Kindt wanted to play. There was only one in the apartment — Operation — and we played it frequently. Tulip had brought it home with her one evening early in the fall and when Mr. Kindt had seen what it was he had clapped his hands and squealed with delight. Operation, for those of you who missed out, is a game where the playing board is a man’s body. The point is to remove the bones and organs without hurting the guy too much. You can tell you are hurting him when, in trying to remove one of the bones or organs from its narrow metal receptacle with a pair of metal tweezers, you touch the side and a buzzer goes off and the guy’s big red nose lights up. The bones and organs have names like bread basket, broken heart, etc. It’s fairly asinine. When we would play and the buzzer would go off, Mr. Kindt would giggle. The more the buzzer went off and the guy’s nose lit up, the more Mr. Kindt would giggle. Tulip, with those long deft fingers, was the best at it and usually ended up with most of the organs. Mr. Kindt was easily the worst.
It was clear, in fact, that the whole thing for him was about the buzzer and the nose and making himself giggle.
Anyway, asinine or not, we started playing and pretty soon were all laughing in between bites of boiled vegetables and beef. I tried and failed three times to get the bread basket and Tulip tried and, surprisingly, failed to get the broken heart. Mr. Kindt said Tulip should keep trying to get the heart, and when she did on the next turn he clapped, whistled, pushed his chair back from the table, and did a little dance that concluded with the removal of his shirt.
Wow, I said.
Impressive, isn’t it, Tulip said.
Mr. Kindt’s chest, bare apart from the wires attached to it the last time I had seen it, was now speckled with tattoos.
At his suggestion, I inspected them and while I did so he pointed at the game board and then at his own chest, stomach, and lungs, and I concluded that, yes, they had been very skillfully (or, as Mr. Kindt put it, “very charmingly”) done.
Tulip’s work, said Mr. Kindt.
I gathered, I said.
All the body parts along with their receptacles from the board had been tattooed onto Mr. Kindt’s torso.
My legs too, said Mr. Kindt. He said he had a bright red nose he could put on if I wanted to get the whole picture, the entire ensemble, but I said I thought I had the whole picture and that it was pretty cool.
Do you truly think it is cool? said Mr. Kindt.
Yes, I do, I said.
I am glad, my boy, I am very glad. Perhaps one of these evenings the two of you could use me as the board.
Mr. Kindt giggled.
I’d like to get a tattoo, I said.
I’ll give you one tonight, Tulip said.
We ate and played a little more and talked about this and that. Mr. Kindt, who had calmed down, though he hadn’t put his shirt back on, said he still felt like talking and asked if we wouldn’t, after all, mind postponing our departure a touch longer. We said that we wouldn’t, of course, and that he should talk as much as he wanted to, so he did. He started with combustion, positing it as the hidden principle behind nearly all human endeavor, which led to a discussion of furnaces and iron factories and forest fires. He then related an interesting anecdote about a certain saint, Sebold, who was ascribed the extravagance of having made icicles burn, citing this as an example of the extremes to which we, as a species, will go to separate ourselves from cold and from things lurking and from dark.
Incidentally, when it is my own time, he said, I should like to be cremated, not buried. The prospect of slowly dissolving beneath the cold, so to speak, clay strikes me as more than mildly alarming. Cremation is very nearly as ancient a farewell ritual as burial and is infinitely brighter. If you think of it, you might throw some cedar wood or other aromatic onto the pyre.