The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(8)

You’re out on bail, said Western.

Yes.

I thought you werent supposed to leave the State?

Technically true. But in any case I’m here but for a few days. If that will put your mind at ease. The old town was beginning to wear on me. When they finally sprang me I went home and showered and changed and was on my way down Jackson Avenue to see if I could cadge a drink when I ran into an old girlfriend. Why John, she says, is that you? I havent seen you in ages. Where have you been? And I said: My dear, I have been in durance vile. And she said: Really? You know my sister married a boy from Winston-Salem. And I thought to myself: I really need to get out of this town.

Western smiled. The waiter brought the beer and set it on the table and went away. The long one raised his glass. Salud. They drank. Brat was in conference with Darling Dave. Seeking counsel. In this dream, he said, I climbed through a window and beat this old woman senseless in her bed with a meatmallet. She had these waffle marks on her head.

Dave brushed something unseen from the tabletop. You’re reaching out for help, he said.

What?

It may be that your body’s not getting something it needs.

It’s always about freedom, said Bianca. Lifting all that stuff off of you. Like a parent dying.

Seals roused himself. A bird person he. In his bathroom brooding raptors hooded like hangmen shifted sullenly upon their perches. A saker, a lanneret.

A parrot? he said.

Bianca smiled and patted his knee. I love you, she said.

Various of them looking for work. John gestured with his glass. Brat very nearly secured a position, he said. But of course at the last moment it all came uncottered.

I just blew it, said Brat. Something came over me. This breather kept going on about this policy and that policy. Finally he said: And another thing. Around here we dont watch the clock. And I said well I just cant tell you how happy I am to hear you say those words. I’ve had a lifelong habit of being up to an hour late for just about everything.

What did he say?

He got sort of quiet. He sat there for a minute and then he got up and left. And it was his office. After a while the secretary came in and she said that the interview was over. I asked her if I’d gotten the job but she said she didnt think so. She looked kind of nervous.

Have you found another place to live?

Not yet.

What about the arson charges?

They dropped them. They found some of the cats.

Cats?

Cats. Yeah. The problem was that the fire had started in about six different places so that looked sort of suspicious to them but then they started finding the cats. It was just a matter of putting two and two together.

The cats knocked over a can of my paint thinner, said Bianca. Then they rolled around in it. Then they all ran up under the heater and caught fire. And then they just ran all over the studio.

Cats.

Kittens. You know. Little cats. She measured a length between her palms. I said why would I set fire to my own apartment? And anyway, we’re only renting for God’s sake. How are you going to collect on that? I mean anybody should have been able to figure it out that the cats were on fire. What did they think, they were just sitting around waiting for a fire to start so they could throw themselves into the flames? Obviously the cats caught fire first is what started the whole thing. They’re just so fucking dumb.

The cats?

No, not the cats. The fucking insurance people.

It was pretty much fun, said Brat. When the bailiff raised his hand to swear her in she reached up and slapped him a big high-five. I dont think they’d seen that before.

I suppose the genetic predisposition must vary with the breeds, said John, but in any case the selfimmolatory tendencies of cats does seem to be a known factor in the feline equation. Noted in the writings of Asclepius, among others of the ancients.

Jesus, said Seals.

It would seem to contradict Unamuno, though. Right, Squire? His dictum that cats reason more than they weep? Of course their very existence according to Rilke is wholly hypothetical.

Cats?

Cats.

Western smiled. He drank. A cool and sunny day in the ancient city. The noon and early winter light soft in the street.

Where is Willy V?

He’s set up his easel in Jackson Square. Hopes to peddle his daubings to the tourists of course. He and that mooncolored hound of his.

That thing will bite some tourist in the ass and he’ll be in a lawsuit.

Or jail.

Long John had set about unwrapping a large black cigar. He bit the end and spat and rolled the cigar along his tongue and gripped it in his teeth and reached for a match. I had a dream about you, Squire.

A dream you say.

Yes. I dreamt you were wandering in your weighted shoes over the ocean floor. Seeking God knows what in the darkness of those bathypelagic deeps. When you reached the edge of the Nazca Plate there were flames licking up from the abyss. The sea boiling. In my dream it seemed to me you’d stumbled upon the mouth of hell and I thought that you would lower a rope to those of your friends who’d gone before. You didnt.

He ran the match crackling along the underside of the table and fell to enkindling his cigar.

Are you really a diver? said Bianca.

Not the kind you had in mind, Darling, said Dave.

He’s every kind of diver you can name, said Seals, struggling partially upright and placing one fist on the table. Every goddamned kind.

I’m a salvage diver, said Western.