Some other time is like soon, I know what that means. You don’t get to be my age with a heart still beating without knowing some things. But, still, I’m grateful. Not everyone helps. I got a building full of yo-yos here. Won’t even stop to answer you in the hallways. Next door I got nuts.
I thought of the nuts next door. Then I thought of the couple leaving Two Boots with the stroller, wondered what they were like, wondered if, through some fluke, or some serious upgrade in my customers, I’d be paying them a visit soon. The woman had been good-looking, exceptional, even, like some Greek movie star. The guy had been tall and beefy. Not bad-looking, but nothing like the woman. Cute kid too. I let myself flash for exactly one ridiculous second on me and Tulip pushing a stroller, maybe stopping for pizza, buying diapers for the baby, laughing, heading home, unloading groceries, giving the baby a bath. I then gave the scenario a quick run-through with the knockout, handsomely stomping her way down the avenues, in place of Tulip, then the contortionists, pushing the stroller with their feet, and almost laughed out loud.
Come here, Henry, I want to show you something, The Hat said.
He was standing next to what looked a little like a medicine cabinet sunk into the side wall. I raised my eyebrow, went over, and he opened it. There was a peephole there that looked out — at his insistence I bent over and put my eye to it — on the hallway. The Hat left my side, went around the corner, and reappeared in my line of sight. He took off his fedora and did a bow. Then he came back in.
You can’t see it from the outside, he said. I got that from the old days. Some of us got them put in special. In the old days you didn’t want to be inspecting your visitors through the balsa wood they got for doors in these places.
I guess not, I said.
Now it’s just a convenience. Now if for example some guy, like you, Henry, comes and knocks at my neighbors’, then stands and has some words with my sister, who has seen better days and can’t answer right, I can see who it is.
Yeah? I said.
I don’t mean I care, he said, not one way or the other, but with this thing and with my old habits I can keep my eyes open. Then I can think about the sounds I heard coming out of my neighbors’ and put it together with things I’ve been hearing about jobs getting pulled in the neighborhood.
Jobs? I said.
You’re pulling jobs, he said.
They’re fake, it’s a service, I said.
Sure, he said. But fake is funny, don’t you think? Fake is like Steve McQueen and the movies — there’s always a little real there too. Fake is never 100 percent. And sometimes fake is real.
He looked up at me for what felt like a long time, then he said, Kindt’s working you good, huh?
I set my beer down on top of the peephole cabinet and told him it had been nice talking to him.
He’s tough, huh, Aris Kindt? I never met him, not even in the old days, but I’ve been hearing things for years. Independent. Ran funny jobs. Always an angle, that one. Always smart. He’ll fool you. He’ll take care of you. He took care of a guy not too long ago. Guy who kept his books. Some accountant. That’s what they say and that’s what I heard. I heard you don’t ever mess with him if you’re smart.
We’re friends, I said. It’s not really business. He’s retired. Someone else is running it. It’s all fake.
Friends, said The Hat, and grinned. Like my good friends across the hall and in this building and in this neighborhood. I got so many friends I’m going to have a heart attack. What I also got is my sister, in there, looking through some boxes of junk, and a peephole in my wall so I can see who comes around and who is getting up to what exactly in this fucking city. I can look through this hole and see straight through the building. I can see you hitting yo-yos with salad bowls and getting yourself tattooed without knowing what was getting put on you and sleeping on the street and getting hit by trucks and running into blonds you got no idea about and meeting friendly Mr. Kindt. I can see that when you say you’re busy, you mean you’re going to go back to a flop and take a nap. I can see you pulling jobs and saying some quiet bullshit to my sister who can’t answer you and I can see you looking at my hat now and saying, check out this old clown. Check out this old motherfucker who likes Steve McQueen. You want another beer? You want another beer, punk?
The Hat took a step toward me. I had the distinct feeling that he was going to produce a gun and put it in my face and pull the trigger and that there wouldn’t be anything fake about it.
I’ve really got to go now, I said. I’m sorry for the trouble.
So go, Henry. I’m going to watch a movie. I’m going to watch Steve rock it on his bike. You should see the look on your face. You should go show it to your “friend.” Go show it to Mr. Aris Kindt and see what he says. See what he says and leave this old clown with his hat and his sister in fucking peace.
TWENTY-SIX
A herring swims. A herring swims in a bucket. A herring swims in a blue bucket. A bright herring swims in a huge blue bucket. A herring moves forward. Why a herring and not some other fish? Because it’s exquisite. Because the adult common herring, more properly known as Clupea harengus, is found in temperate cold waters of the North Atlantic and is about one foot or thirty centimeters long with silvery sides and a blue back.
Blue.
Yes, can you picture it? The female of the species lays up to fifty thousand tiny eggs, which sink to the sea bottom and develop there, the young maturing in about three years.
And then?
And then they rise.
Elevate.
Propagate forward and vertically through the deep and the dark by the millions.
So many.
Yes. And other fish come to feed upon them.
Eat them all?
Not all.
Most?
Yes, most, and in dying, it’s quite lovely, they luminesce.
I’m not sure what you mean.
I mean they give off light as they die. As they drift off through the dark waters.
Do the immature fish luminesce?
I’m not sure. Probably.
And they’re blue?
With silvery sides.
Most of them, as you say, are killed by other fish.
By other fish, yes, Henry, which is an utterly acceptable form …
Form of what?
Of undoing. Of annihilation.
Having said this, Mr. Kindt leaned far back into his chair, lifted his cigar, and took a long, ruminative puff.
Think of the beauty of it, Henry, he said. It happens over and over, and will continue to happen long after we are gone, long after we have laid aside our skin and bones or whatever it is we have here and have shued off.
Or stepped forward.
Out of our skin and into our shadow.
What about the fishing industry?
Of course, the fishing industry. Yes, that’s true, the fishing industry complicates things, and has most certainly taken a hideous toll.
A hideous toll that puts that pickled herring into your mouth every day.
Mr. Kindt smiled. Oh, I’m simply full of contradictions, Henry, he said. Aren’t you?
I shrugged. I wasn’t sure what I was full of. A neat scalpel trench, some metal sutures, and a lot less morphine than usual, for starters. Besides Mr. Kindt, who had given me a little hit of Dilaudid so that I wouldn’t, he said, go completely to pieces, I had seen no one apart from Aunt Lulu since my assignation with Dr. Tulp. Since the surgery, the slight correction, the scraping-out of some renegade flecks of lead, the “lightly invasive procedure, Henry” she had performed. After they had held me down and ripped my suit off me. After they strapped me to a gurney and rolled me down the hall.