compliment
was typed, “a copy of this official compliment will be placed in your file.” I was later able to confirm that this had been done. This confirmation took place just recently and is, in its posteriority to the events I have been describing, somewhat irrelevant. I have worked very hard in my life, on occasion, if not to avoid irrelevance, then at least to recognize it. A colleague of mine, when I was holding forth on the subject at one point, remarked that a certain amount of irrelevance was inherent in any organic asset; that, in fact, irrelevance constituted a key difference between organic and technical assets. To illustrate this point, my colleague related a story in which a young man, a visitor in a far-off country, climbed a fence to enter a baseball game and found himself being beaten almost to death for having done so. He further illustrated his point by describing, in some detail, the working parts of a telephone receiver. So you see, he said. I do not quite, I said. Which did not bother him in the slightest and he let it go at that, but I have continued to consider it, this difference, it intrigues me. It is that way, she said. Which way? I said. We had been walking for some time, and I had not, I should clarify, spent the whole time looking at her ankles and calves and being put in mind of epic movies about assassin robots that have begun to dwell. A good part of the time I had spent looking around me — at the people, who were varied as to aspect and attitude, at the cars, some of which I coveted, at the shops and doors and lampposts, which presented themselves, for the most part, in the standard one after the other fashion, although occasionally the odd group of doors and lampposts would arrive all at once. Is that irrelevant? I wondered. I wondered what my small computer would have said. It said several things that evening, and especially the next day at the trial, but none of them, I think, addressed this point. Once “Tuesday” blinked. And on the twenty-fourth there was a rendezvous scheduled with a certain individual. It was possible to have an overview of the events of an entire week or month or year or even half-decade, and to see them listed, before and after the fact, categorically, chronologically, and in order of priority. I must confess to having a penchant for the last. I once spent considerable time with an individual who ostensibly preferred the first. She would have pretended, that is, to have liked to know all meetings on a Tuesday afternoon at the cafeteria in the train station with a particular woman in the past year. Or all purchases of items costing between X and X purchased on behalf of whom for whom, etc. I should say I think she was pretending — I was never able to verify this. In fact, it was really little more than a hunch. Speaking of pretending, for a time afterward I used to pretend she was still there. I would greet myself and have small conversations. Usually I would do this in the dark, although once I did it on the terrace of a café. No fruitcakes, the waiter said. For my part, I have no particular interest in categories. That is to say that I am only ever interested in knowing when there is an unpleasant duty coming up. One was coming up. The fact that I had seen her then had seen her in the company of an individual holding a gun and had subsequently had a gun held on me was indicative. It’s that way, she said. Can’t you come with me? I said. Or perhaps I thought it. One thinks many things, of course, some interesting, most not. Here, she said. She handed me a pair of sunglasses. My sunglasses. Where did you get these? Never mind. And what about my hat? I don’t know anything about the hat. Well it’s a nice one. It suddenly occurs to me that I am approaching the end. Yes, I said. At the end. I said some other things before this. I am thinking of one strange sentence in particular. Hard to believe I uttered it. Did I utter it? I’m getting confused. Thanks for the sunglasses, I said. You’re welcome, she said. I put them on. We had been traveling through progressively smaller and narrower streets, which were also progressively darker streets, streets lit only by lanterns hanging from hooks above the doors or candles on the inside of the occasional window. It was a disgrace, really. I think if there is one thing a modern city is obliged to do it is to pump light into its streets. Millions of gallons of light should always be available, indoors or out, at the flick of a switch or the pulling down of a lever or cord. Ideally, of course, the intensity of the light could be modulated. I am not advocating some kind of universal brightness here. I am not fond of glare and so, while wishing to be adequately lit in my nocturnal endeavors, I would wish also to be gently, even tenderly lit, but here is my point, I was hardly lit at all. So you can imagine what it was like with sunglasses. To their credit, these sunglasses are of the variety that permits one to see quite well in varying conditions; dark to very dark, however, is not one of them. Still, I made my way forward as best I could, and, in so propagating myself, arrived at a low door that sat in the center of an enormous wall. You will pass through a low door then a large courtyard at the center of which is a fountain where you may refresh yourself, my latest guide had told me as soon as I had put on the sunglasses. Once you have or have not refreshed yourself at the fountain, you will exit the large courtyard, where they used to slaughter livestock and wash linen and pluck fowl and hold dances and weave baskets, and where a middle-aged man was once flogged for having stolen two eggs, and enter a smaller courtyard in which they did nothing, just walked through, at the far end of which there is a tree. Climb the tree. I was in the tree. Now the trick was, she had told me, to move out to the end of one of its branches and step onto a balcony, only there was no balcony, just a window. I went out to the edge of one of the branches. There were cracking noises. Small ones mostly. Then I fell. And fell — clear through the floor of the courtyard and farther, we’re talking sub-sub-basement, and, I have to give myself and my training (the organization offers occasional seminars) some credit, I didn’t scream, just gave a little yelp, not much more than a squeak, which was good because I landed in a huge pile of old hay. Pure fantasy. There was a door in a high wall, but all that happened was I rang a bell, was admitted, and went up an elevator that opened with a soft, electric swoosh directly onto the room in which there sat, among other pieces, a fine red couch in the center of which was a young or youngish woman who looked somewhat familiar. You haven’t changed, I said. You have, she said. Basically, I thought you were dead. You’ve already said that. So you were just reassigned. There was no assignment. You were disaffirmed? I would prefer not to discuss it. What would you like to discuss? I would like to discuss this couch. In the old days you would have wanted to acquire it. Would I have? I think so. Why would I have? I was never quite sure. You weren’t? I shook my head. That’s a little sad. It was. I was sitting in a pile of damp hay. It took me a moment to disengage myself. In the process of doing so it occurred to me that someone should be made aware that damp hay had been known to spontaneously combust. This had happened once in my youth, in the middle of the night. We all rushed out to the barn, but by the time we got there all we could do was watch. For some reason my father wanted my sisters and I to sleep with him that night. I remember it occurred to me that his breathing, in the midst of all the other breathing, was precarious, which later got shifted in my head to precious, the eight shared letters. Then relatives, mostly, came and took us away with them. Leaving the hay behind, I moved through the room toward a bar of light. All around me, small things scurried and something was growling, but, in accordance with my training, I walked rather than ran. The bar of light was attached to a door. The door was unlocked. The room I entered was lit with rows of torches and there were columns with bright red dragons painted on them. There were also many figures moving slowly around a square pool. Hey, excuse me, what the fuck is this? I asked one of them, but he / she didn’t answer, so I continued across the room and entered another, no door this time just an arch, this room larger still and lit by trees upon which hung some kind of gorgeously glowing fruit. About this couch, she said. I’ve been sitting here wondering, and you will think this is silly, if it is still red when the lights are turned off. Yeah? I said. I mean that it continues to be a red couch, will continue to be so when, in a few minutes, they extinguish the lights. Aren’t the lights already extinguished? Not yet. Then, yes. Yes what? Yes I think that it will be. Will remain red? Yes. I could see it. Sitting there in the dark being red. Just as, similarly, I could see that her eyes, when I could no longer see them (I could no longer see them), remained blue. Yeah? she said. Yeah, I said. My eyes aren’t blue. Technically, this was true. The woman with whom I was speaking (she lifted her sunglasses — a breach of protocol — as I illuminated the small computer) was in possession of brown eyes, or maybe they were green. Strange to relate, however, that when she replaced her sunglasses, her eyes immediately reverted to blue. Perhaps, then, it is green in the dark. The couch? Yes, or violet. Violet is a good color. Personally, I can’t stand it. It reminds me, she said. Of what? Something many years ago, never mind. Who are you? Does it matter? Are you here because you’re in trouble? Yes. Was I once in love with you? Maybe. You aren’t allowed to steal those, someone said. I had leaned into one of the glowing trees and had my hand around one of the mildly ovoid pieces of fruit. I see you managed to acquire a pair of sunglasses. I see you managed to get your fat ass back into my business, I said, declamping my hand from the piece of fruit and making to clamp it on the son of a bitch’s throat. We did a kind of a dance, a dance lit by the gently glowing trees. It’s actually rather pretty to think of — my hands going after his neck and his neck retreating from my hands and somewhere water was running and I think there might have been a light breeze. Time out, I said after a while, huffing a little. Both of us put our hands on our knees for a minute. You ready? I said. He nodded. I leapt for his throat. He backpedaled and pivoted and stuck out his foot and I fell and he put his boot on the back of my neck. Are you finished? he asked. Yeah, I said. He removed his boot and I stood and brushed off my shorts and he said no hard feelings? and I was just about to say, yeah right, you big fucking jerk, when he pulled a thick envelope out of his pocket and offered it to me. Which was actually quite a decent gesture. Almost anyone would have to admit. So I took the envelope and he stated his business, which was that he had been instructed to take me the last leg of the journey, which, once I had finished counting the contents of the envelope, he proceeded to do. We left the room of the glowing fruit trees and entered a room where toys were being made. Here there were many workshops lit with colored lanterns and candles made of multicolored wax. We walked by workshop after workshop, and the craftspeople held up for our perusal perfectly determined tin solar systems, singing robots, and glistening segments of train track. I knew a couple of the toy makers, one of them, for example, was the waiter from the restaurant where I had supped, and it was not unpleasant to stop a moment and converse with him. My guide had found his earlier form and was proving very agile with the repartee, and we all laughed quite a bit and found ourselves forced to stifle our laughter so as not to disturb the other workers, who occasionally lifted their heads and shot us disapproving glances. After a few more moments of conversation, the waiter invited me to step across the room for a glass of something, which, taking momentary leave of my guide, I did. A word of advice, he said. Yes? I said. Call it off. Call what off? What it is you’re doing. What