Listen, I said, I’d like to ask you something.
Mr. Kindt put a cracker in his mouth and looked at me.
Well, Henry, as I say, I may not be able to answer or talk about certain questions.
O.K., how about I ask the question and you decide whether or not you want to answer?
That sounds reasonable.
All right, buddy, what I’m wondering, and what I asked Cornelius and he wouldn’t answer …
Mr. Kindt raised a finger. Perhaps no more buddy now in this context, he said.
Fine, no problem, I said. Anyway, what I asked Cornelius was whether or not this whole murder gig thing I’ve been doing was just a lead-up to this — to, you know, bumping you off. If, you know, the whole thing was to prepare me, to lend authenticity, as you put it, to the big job, which was you.
Mr. Kindt put another cracker in his mouth.
Why do you want to know this, Henry? he said after he had swallowed.
I’m feeling kind of uncomfortable with the whole thing, I said.
I’m sorry to hear that.
I had kind of an ultimately pretty sour meeting with a guy called Mel the Hat.
Now there is a name.
He said you were tough. And tricky.
Oh well, I suppose I am. Or was.
He said he knew about you from the old days. Said you had a reputation. That you took care of people, had even taken care of someone recently. I was wondering if, maybe, you know, you were planning on taking care of or tricking me in some way.
Mr. Kindt picked up the last cracker and handed it to me.
That’s for you, buddy, he said, smiling.
I took it, told myself that that was his way of answering, smiled back, and pushed the conversation off in another direction.
Tulip and I got together, I said. Two nights ago.
Oh, did you really? he said.
Yes.
And? Was it lovely?
It was.
Excellent.
Yes, excellent. Absolutely. But …
Yes?
What I’m wondering is, what I can’t stop asking myself is, why did Tulip sleep with me?
I would have thought she or Cornelius would have told you. It’s part of your motivation. She has now, to paraphrase the script, seduced you and told you that there is a portfolio of valuable documents under the floorboard along that wall.
Cornelius told me.
Good. The board is loose. When you leave, after the job has been completed, take the portfolio with you. Then go and see Tulip.
Right, I said. But, I mean, she really did sleep with me. Not fake. Not, you know, mock. Not part of the scenario. We, ahem, tussled.
Oh well, said Mr. Kindt, I have always entertained hopes that the two of you would become better acquainted. If the fulfillment of my little scenario has helped move you in that direction, that is wonderful, that is really just fine. All my blessings, as it were.
Really?
Mr. Kindt said, yes, my boy, really, then suggested that it was time for me to take my leave.
I’ll be going then, I said.
Yes, until tomorrow night, he said.
So, I’m going to murder you.
I’m counting the seconds.
It’s not going to be pretty.
I certainly hope not.
Beautiful maybe, but not pretty.
That sounds perfect, Henry.
I’m going to hit you hard.
Oh yes, good. Don’t hold back. It must both look and feel authentic. The feeling is what is essential. The feeling is what I am after. I woke up last week and thought, I just have to be killed. That will do it. It won’t undo it, of course. But it will help.
Help what?
Never mind, Henry. I’m just thinking aloud.
Do you want to run through it now?
No, I don’t think that will be necessary. You know where everything is? The ashtray? The bag of my blood to splatter around?
I nodded. He smiled. We stood there looking at each other.
As I walked down the stairs, out the door, and over to the park, I thought of him, screaming and rocking and stuffing crackers in his mouth and calling me dear boy and limping slightly and paying my way into museums. As these images played before me, and as I registered how very differently I felt now than I had after leaving Stingy Lulu’s and walking across the park earlier, my mind turned simultaneously to the aforementioned films my old girlfriend and I had once taken in at the Pioneer, next to Two Boots. They had consisted almost entirely of light playing off water, and water playing off people, as they themselves played at running through bars of light. Children had run past the camera and thrown shadows onto attic walls, or swung sticks back and forth through blue-tinted air, and we had left the theater with the sensation that projector light was gushing out of our eyes. For a moment, this remembered light poured onto Mr. Kindt, the one my mind held out before me, making him almost completely translucent, a kind of ghost of photons and dust motes and bands of fine shadow. It was just as this image was about to dissolve into glittering nothingness that Mr. Kindt himself, ever full of surprises, came up beside me, said, hello again, buddy, wiped a little oil from the corner of his mouth, and took my arm.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Nothing ever happens the way you say it does — we can agree on that, right? I mean something happens to you and then you tell it and you’ve just told something different from the something that happened and that’s what people hear and they say, oh, that “monstrous, miscomprehending, appearance-believing” creep. Or that’s what you hear. You tell it to yourself. You go to the store and you buy a pound of flour and some crackers and then you say to yourself, even if only casually, I went to the store and I bought a pound of flour and some cookies, I’m hungry, maybe I’ll have one, despite the fact that I’m a “monstrous, miscomprehending, appearance-believing” creep. So a cracker is not a cookie, even if for some people it might be an adequate substitute. However, I am not one of those people and I don’t particularly like crackers, I have no idea why I would buy them. And the flour, that’s also a mystery. Why a pound of flour? To make cookies? My favorites are peanut butter and peanut butter chocolate chip. My god I used to love the way Carine would put on her French accent and say chocolate: “cho co let.” But I don’t have any peanut butter. Not here. And I don’t like crackers except with herring. So I went out to buy herring and instead I bought flour. I succeeded in getting the crackers, even in getting a good brand of crackers, Carr’s, I believe, so there you have it.
Have what, Henry?
I’ll give you a better example. Take the vanishing of Mr. Kindt. When I said that the last time I saw him he had let go of my hands and vanished, I meant something very different. I meant something more like diminishing.
So Mr. Kindt did not vanish?
No, Mr. Kindt diminished.
Explain.
I mean he was still there — not immediately, I grant you, he did do the thin-air thing then went away for a few days, or whatever you would call them, to make himself available to his swimmer, but soon enough he was back. He was back, but his eyes were no longer such a pretty blue and his neck seemed to have straightened and he didn’t talk to me anymore about stealing and withholding meds. Even when I brought these subjects up, he acted like he hadn’t heard me.
In what way was he there?
He’s still there. You want to go see him? Maybe we can catch him conversing with his wet friend.
Later. In what way is he there?
He comes to my room, like before, only he doesn’t get in my bed and watch TV with me anymore, and he doesn’t show any interest in cigars or Hank Williams or in eating herring.