am I doing? I’m not sure. But you want me to call it off? That’s right. Did someone tell you to say that? Yes. Did you steal my hat? The young lady did. Which young lady? The one who came in to dine after your departure. My first departure or my second? Your second. And you say she stole my hat? I may have the sequence of events wrong. Well I can’t call it off. Why not? Because I’m already there. How’s that? In the room. It’s dark. We’ve already started. Someone just screamed. There were several other rooms, all of them pleasant, none of them real, and then my guide and I rode up an elevator and shook hands and he said, we’ve arrived at last, and I said, thank you for the envelope, and he said, you are welcome, and I closed my eyes, and when I opened them he was no longer there. I walked through a door and found her standing in the center of the room and she said, I want to get out of here, right now, so we made for the door but a large individual appeared, shaking her head. Then I was moving gingerly through the warm dark with my arms outstretched, palpitating the occasional object — a table, a chair, a sharpened feather duster, a roll of red tape. That I had, in my palpitations, placed my hands on these objects, which upon entering I had placed in a drawer as per my instructions delivered over fried potatoes earlier, was quite significant. The procedure was regulated by rules which stipulated that if your hands closed over certain preselected objects you used them. Prior to that evening, my role in those proceedings had consisted in, among other things, transporting the evening’s realia — always different — and then standing very still in a corner; or in acting as a placer of the preselected objects, so that the key person, as it were, would find them. That I had been selected to play a substantive role, and not just a tangential one, was an unexpected development, and it was with both pride and trepidation that as the instructions began to be delivered over the intercom, instructions that were meant only for the holder of the preselected objects — take two steps forward, one left, not such a big step, three right — I began to move forward and left and then right as the others stood or sat or hid or lay together waiting. One of them marked the end of my itinerary, though none of them, as they waited, knew who had been chosen or who was coming or what exactly beyond unpleasantness would occur. At certain junctures I was prompted to say, I am coming, and so I said, I am coming, several times, and moved through the dark and, moving slowly, following their instructions, right then left then left then right, arrived at my terminus. Once, as we sat in the tub watching the green rubber duck float poorly between us, my acquaintance of the glamorous proportions and of the evocative calves and ankles, recounted the following anecdote. It appears that some time ago, she said, a certain party, A, was obliged to murder a certain party B. However, this obligation was complicated, as it occurred, by the need first to murder parties C, D, and E, none of whom, when A began, had yet been located. Why did A first have to murder C, D, and E? I asked. Because it was an essential part of the mechanism that A, or the person for whom A acted as instrument, had elaborated. I see. Yes. Did A find C? And D. But not E? It was necessary to substitute. F? F escaped. Was there a G? Yes, G, in effect, became E. So then B became possible. Yes, it all worked out in the end. I, too, was a part of something rather elaborate once, I said, giving the rubber duck, listing rather precariously at that moment, a shove. It was interesting and elaborate and also had a mechanism, albeit rather an indeterminate one. It involved fixed and moving points, some of which converged, and others of which dispersed. I ran first through streets and gardens and then through a woods. In the distance, it was possible to hear dogs barking. Occasionally in my running I would intersect with another point and we would confer. Then a siren sounded and we all went to see what there was to be seen but there was little left. When I had finished recounting this anecdote she sort of looked at me, then said, your anecdote is lovely, you may keep the duck. The duck? Yes, the duck. That is how I got the duck, which I think I still have. Is that you? I whispered. I was standing in the warm dark holding a sharpened feather duster. Not a duck. The duck never leaves my apartment. The duck is not really all that interesting. Not nearly as interesting as the gift I had been given previously by the individual I now imagined was standing before me in the dark, was breathing before me in the dark, and which I keep always in my pocket and that seems impervious to explanation, although I do make some attempt in my description of those earlier events, not an entirely successful one. Then I went home to bed. I mean after the entire affair had been completed. What affair besides the breathing? you might well be asking. But by then I was already fast asleep. Here is what I dreamed. The two of us are sitting at the edge of a castle wall. There is a considerable drop-off and I am concerned about her proximity to it. She, of course, finds my concern suspicious. I didn’t want to do it, I say. Oh, but you did it, didn’t you, she answers. And in a moment, even here, my erstwhile lover, you will push me off this wall and that will be that. But I wasn’t even sure that it was you. And why should that matter? Before I could answer, I woke to someone pounding on my door. I opened it and a very small man came in. Are you the detective? I asked. He nodded, then told me that I was required to answer a number of questions. Okay, but can we do it over breakfast? I asked. He shook his head. It won’t take long, he said. It didn’t, I suppose. But by the time he had left I was ravenous and began ripping the cupboards apart. No sooner, however, had I settled into some breakfast — a very beautiful loaf of bread, an excellent jar of fig jam — then someone else started pounding on the door. Uh, hi, I said, who are you? We are the police, you are under arrest, they said. Well can I be arrested after I have completed my breakfast? They looked at each other. Couple gals with big hair. One of them said, he is resisting arrest. I said, I am not. But they clobbered me just the same. In the instance of unconsciousness they knocked me into I was back on the castle wall alone. I really didn’t mean to, I said, my voice seeming to echo. I didn’t mean to all that much. I was lacking information. There was a key string missing from the sequence. Then I came to because someone was shaking me. As I have said, the organization I work for is very large, and while it is clear that the concept of large, and certainly of very large, is relative, there is about it a sense of comprehensiveness, of saturation even, such that some days one sees very many pairs of sunglasses in the city indeed. One sees also, of course, very many hats and hunting capes on individuals not wearing sunglasses. I find it an excellent aspect of the organization that its sunglasses, so to speak, can come off. Mine, you will have noticed, were off during a significant portion of this narrative. I am quite proud of that fact. One learns to plant the flag of triumph where one can. At any rate, the organization is large and within that largeness it expands and contracts, sunglasses coming on and off, and individuals arriving — just as I had arrived that previous autumn — and individuals leaving and going far away, like I have now done. Or will do. Soon. I have it in writing. Of course “leaving the organization” should also be understood in a relative sense. The process of leaving is rife with conditions and stipulations, and you often come back even when you don’t want to. That was her case, I’m sure. In fact, I asked her and she said, yes, you’re absolutely right, the fuckers made me come back. But at any rate, the organization does claim to arrange for the eventual permanent relocation of its assets, organic and otherwise — this is advertised in one of its many brochures. I once, however, went to the relocation office listed in the brochure, in hopes of scheduling an eventual exit interview, and found only a vacant lot. At the back of the lot a notice was posted to the effect that several years hence the ground would be broken for the office. The notice was not dated. Obviously, now I’ve admitted that I have nothing in writing, no written guarantee. We’ll run away, I said. What? she said. We’ll run, I think I can get us out of here. We will not. Why not? Because there are monitors watching us with infrared goggles. This was true. On a previous occasion it had been my role to serve as one of the monitors. So what should I do? I said. You should plead innocent, it’s your best option. This was the lawyer talking, the one who had been shaking me. The lawyer chewed gum and used great quantities of a fragrant product in his hair. I was sitting next to him in the trial chamber, which was very crowde