You were sitting here in a chair because you owned an Uzi, an automatic killing machine you had purchased quite legally in a state further west of this one, a weapon no one had ever used to defend his family against an intruder, or his girlfriend against a rape attack, or to put a fresh joint of deer on the dining table. Sure, like the gun lobbyists said, it wasn’t the weapons that killed but the people holding them. They think it’s enough if you just make sure the bad guys can’t get hold of them. If the assumption was valid then it had to mean that almost all the bad guys in the world lived in the United States which alone accounts for ninety per cent of all young victims of gun crime among the twenty-two wealthiest countries in the world. What was freedom? To be allowed to own a weapon designed to kill people because the guy standing next to you owned one as well? Or was it not having to own a gun because you could feel reasonably certain the guy next to you didn’t own one either? I could see how fear triumphed over common sense, how — given your socio-economic position, your education and your bad genes — you were only the first mechanical element in the creation of a gun that had already been fired by the time it came into your hands. And how when you — subject as you are to the laws of psychology and economy, just as the parts of a weapon are subject to physical laws — pulled that trigger, then that was just one link in an unstoppable chain of reactions. But it starts with you. The centre, the point at which the stone first hits the water. Now the ripples spread across the still, dark water. The one who sells guns. The weapons activist. The forces behind the killer. The authorities. The executive. The ripples get bigger. And bigger.
I emptied the water from the glass. The little fish flipped and splashed about on the bench and puffed itself up. A protective mechanism. Not to frighten by size but to make itself more difficult to swallow.
When I was done I left, turned the key in the padlock, headed out through the large communal studio, out the door and into the forest that surrounded the low, single-storey house. We’d got it cheap, and we used to hang out here and study each other’s work. Children had loved it, the woods and all the strange exhibits in here. In the evenings we had partied, the whole gang of us. Talked about the future, how we were going to make it big, how we were going to take over the world. Monica and I had spent the night out here once. I think that must have been the night the boy was conceived. But Monica said she’d never been so afraid, because I told her this was wolf country. And now, I had read, they were here. The wolves were here, the artists had gone, the only one left was me.
A narrow track led down to the main road where the car was parked. It was a walk of about a mile, but I didn’t want anyone to see or hear me coming and going. So tonight Monica and I were going to sleep out here, like we did back then.
I crept down inside my sleeping bag on a mattress of pine branches beneath a tree and looked up into the starry sky. Looked for her. Looked for what was written in shimmering letters and symbols, things that couldn’t be seen above the city.
32
The Password, October 2016
Bob’s eyelids flickered. It was the light that woke him. It came from a combined alarm clock and lamp he’d given Alice as a birthday present. The soft light came on at the hour the alarm was set for and then gradually grew brighter, like a sunrise. That was the idea. He’d taken it with him after Stan appeared, when Alice told Bob he could take absolutely anything he wanted. Bob probably hoped she would be hurt by the fact that he’d taken her birthday present but instead she seemed relieved, she’d never been someone who needed a gentle wake-up.
The radio turned itself on. Bob dozed as he listened to the newsreader say that the opinion polls were still predicting that within a few weeks’ time Hillary Clinton would be elected the country’s first female president. Then came an interview with an election expert who warned against the Bradley effect, this being when pollsters call people up on the phone who don’t dare to admit they won’t be voting for the politically correct option, as happened a while back in the case of the black California gubernatorial candidate Bradley, or now, with a female presidential candidate. By the end of the broadcast they still hadn’t mentioned the hunt for Tomás Gomez, concluding instead with a report that the NRA conference had sold out the US Bank Stadium quicker than any Vikings home game.
Bob got up. He was cold and had a throbbing headache from yesterday’s drinking but felt revived after a warm shower. He opened the cupboard above the sink, looked at the pink pill tray, took out the tube of toothpaste and closed the cupboard door. He put the coffee on while still brushing his teeth, switched on his laptop and registered that his internet was down. After thinking about it he called Mike Lunde. The taxidermist sounded busy.
‘My internet’s OK, yes, but this Labrador has to be finished today, so I’ve closed the store to be alone here and to give it my full concentration. I’m not letting any Tomás Gomez in here today either. How about tomorrow?’
Bob hung up. Though he much preferred the coffee at Moresite, they didn’t have Wi-Fi like Starbucks.
After a bus ride to Southdale he bought batteries at the mall and picked up the Volvo, complete with parking ticket, and drove into Dinkytown.
‘This isn’t a laptop place,’ said Liza when he sat down on one of the stools and put the computer on the counter at Bernie’s.