Or thought I did.
The individual, wearing his orange hat, entered quickly, gun drawn, a smile on his face, finger on the trigger, a burst capillary in his left eye. On registering that I was not at my desk, he performed a series of deftly executed advances and pivots, which, each motion, he repeated several times. When he was satisfied that I wasn’t standing out of the range of his peripheral vision, he took two quick steps over to my desk, simultaneously looking under it and pushing the curtains aside.
Where are you? he said.
He said it in a very casual, almost friendly way, which nearly caused me to become, if I wasn’t already, completely visible again, or at least to attempt to answer. For a moment though, I was drawn all but irresistibly away from this line of hypothetical inertia into a moment’s reverie in which I was hiding in a footlocker in a dark room and someone holding a large knife and a flashlight was looking for me.
Where are you? she said, in a very casual, almost friendly way, so that, as she stood outside the locker, I nearly answered, or began to breathe again.
Suddenly, he was standing right beside me. If I could have felt anything I would have felt his breath on the lobe of my left ear.
This is where you are, he said. He spoke now in a hoarse, half-whisper, so that it was somewhat difficult to hear him.
Yes, this is where you are, he said, tilting his head back and forth. I wonder what you’ve learned so far. I wonder if you have learned anything at all.
Very little, I thought, though I have learned some things. I have learned, for example, that murder was done, most certainly. Great quantities of blood and tissue and several small pieces of bone were found.
By whom? (I thought.)
The authorities.
What authorities?
Those charged with attending to this variety of incident.
And how did you come by this information?
I was part of the clean-up crew.
To clean up the blood and …
Yes. This was following the assessment.
After the scene had been analyzed?
There was no analysis. There was just the assessment, then the cleanup. There were some 1.8 pints of blood, 3 ounces of tissue, and 3 slivers of cranium.
I don’t believe you.
Nevertheless.
Who estimated the amounts of blood and tissue? Who determined that it was cranium?
I did.
You possess the expertise?
I possess the expertise.
This was done under whose orders?
The authorities’.
Whose authorities?
The firm’s.
What firm’s?
I can’t tell you.
What became of the body?
It had been removed.
By whom?
(No answer.)
Isn’t it possible that the body, not dead, removed itself?
No.
Why not?
There were certain indications.
Such as?
The blood had spread around the body and congealed, leaving behind an almost perfect outline.
Almost perfect?
There were bootmarks, a single set, pointing inward. They interrupted several of the edges.
Was this documented?
There was a photograph of the crime scene — a damp alley, much rusted metal and garbage and crumbling brick, to one side of which stood a green door; an alley like the one I had recently visited, having left the dark woods and having, part of me that is, returned. A small man was in the photograph. He was standing off to the side, looking down at the almost perfect outline of a body.
I am small. (I thought.)
Who was the victim?
We have not yet made a positive identification.
I repeat, who was the victim?
We aren’t sure yet.
Who is we?
We of the firm.
What firm?
I can’t tell you.
I know what firm.
Not from me.
No, not from you.
This I had probably learned earlier during those days I spent alone as a teenager in the large farmhouse or out in the surrounding fields. I would lie in bed in the dark and look at the rectangle of light the service lamp projected through the window onto the ceiling above my bed. It seemed to me, as I lay there each night and early morning looking at it, that the world had at last been reduced, that its substance, if substance it could be called, had been sucked away, that all that was left was this poorly formed rectangle, which, in its turn, would surely begin to fizz and fade. In the fields, in the early morning, I would walk and hum and throw stones and think, there where they have fallen, there, quite silent, is where I will lie.
I stared at her astonishingly handsome face. I mean the body’s.
What body?
The body that had been there. The one I had put there. When I had been there earlier, having left the dark woods, having returned to my apartment, then crept down the back stairwell and out into the alley, earlier.
How long have you been dead? I said after a time to the astonishingly handsome face.
I’m not sure I am yet.
You are.
And where is my body?
It has been removed.
It suddenly occurred to me that I had been speaking aloud, that almost all of the preceding had, in fact, been said loudly enough for the individual with the orange hat and the cracked tooth to hear.
Did you hear me? I said.
Yes, he said.
So you can see I know very little.
Not as little as you should know — one should know very little about these matters, as little as possible.
About what matters?
He laughed. A judgment has been made.
What judgment?
You’ve been disaffirmed.
I’ve already been disaffirmed.
He lifted his gun and aimed it at me.
Yes, knowing very little is best in these matters, he said.
The gun, unless my eyes were deceiving me, probably they were deceiving me, was largely transparent and glowing slightly, and though I wasn’t entirely sure what a gun, or any weapon for that matter, could do to me, given my current condition, I did not feel well enough informed to make the correct decision. And in fact it was just as well that, right before he smiled and pulled the trigger, I allowed myself to fall backward through the wall, because the bullet, itself partially transparent, that issued from the gun and struck me in the neck instead of the heart, did considerable damage and hurt tremendously, as bullets, even beautiful ones, are wont to do.
Shot through the neck and falling backward then, I watched him smiling, his cracked tooth caught in some stray line of light and my friend’s head peeping in through the door, until the wall I had fallen through obscured them.
For a time then I fell — through the floor of the next room then through other floors then through the earth which glowed and seemed warm and then through a shaft and the edge of a platform and onto the rails of a subway line along which I skidded for a time then lay still. I don’t know how long I lay there, but many trains passed through me, causing me only a slight pain, nothing compared to the pain in my neck. It was likely this pain that held me immobile and caused me to focus my thoughts so effectively. I had often done some of my most interesting thinking when in pain and this has remained the case, even all these years later. It was just a moment ago, in fact, when they reset my leg, that several details (of the events I am now relating) both resurfaced and were seen in a fresh alignment that might have helped shed light on what had followed, if only, once the pain lessened, the alignment had not begun to seem less assured. I am still, however, in a position to relate several of these details, and will now do so.