Trader

by Charles de Lint

  He started to walk away then.

  “Johnny!” she called after him.

  He turned and she took a step back when she saw the fury in his face.

  “My name’s Max. Got it?”

  Zeffy swallowed thickly, but she forced herself to go on. “Okay. Whatever you want to call yourself. Fine. But you’ve got to get some help. If you go on like this...”

  “Fuck you. Is that clear enough? Just stay out of my way or the same thing that happens to your boyfriend is going to happen to you.”

  He walked away again and this time she didn’t call him back. She watched him stalk off down the path, the dog trailing mournfully behind him. People gave way to him, and no wonder. Everything about him exuded anger and the promise of violence.

  She watched a young girl dressed all in black come up to him. He paused as she started talking excitedly to him, but he didn’t give her much of his time, brushing her off with a few harsh words. She looked as much hurt as surprised. She began to say something else to him, but he handed her the leash and left her standing with the dog as he walked away. The girl stared at his receding back, obviously unhappy from what he’d said to her. Then a young Native American man, one of the fortune-tellers, approached him. They, too, had words, before Johnny snarled something at him and walked off once more.

  Zeffy shivered. Johnny’d lost it, she realized. Totally. She really should have let the cops take him away. But it was too late for that now. What she had to do was call Max—warn him that Johnny was on his way and he was acting way crazy, capable of anything.

  Max.

  Zeffy hesitated a moment, then brought the guitar around so that she could look through the sound hole and see inside the body. There was a small piece of off-white parchment glued where the neck joined the body. It read:

  BODY FASHIONED BY SANDOR JANOSSY,

  SUMMER I984.

  NECK BY MAX TRADER,

  FALL 1989.

  How could he have known?

  Hold on a moment, she told herself. It didn’t mean anything. It was just more of his research. He’d seen the guitar before, looked inside. But she remembered Max bringing it down from his apartment yesterday, the casual way he’d handled it. Like it was nothing. Just some old guitar. While Johnny...Johnny spoke of it with reverence, the kind of reverence she remembered Max expressing for his old mentor in the articles she’d read.

  An eerie feeling settled in her. She looked across the park, but Johnny appeared to be gone now. Or at least she couldn’t see him anymore. But she could still see the young dark-haired girl he’d left his dog with. She was standing where he’d deserted her, shoulders shaking.

  Zeffy gathered the change in her guitar case and stuffed it into her knapsack. The guitar went back into its case and she closed the snaps. Hoisting it and her knapsack, she went to talk to the girl. As she closed the distance between them, she thought about Max yesterday, him telling her about the future owner of that mandolin he was making, the way he’d referred to him as a man. She compared that to what Johnny told her. She’d heard of the Oak Mountain Girls, of course—they were a popular, all-female bluegrass band based just north of the city—but she didn’t know the name of their mandolin player. Maybe she would call this Frankie Beale—if there even was a listing for her. But first she’d talk to the girl with Johnny’s dog. Then she’d...

  She didn’t know what she’d do. It was all so crazy. Except, crazy or not, Johnny was about to do something she couldn’t let him do.

  23 MAX

  Zeffy’s right. I am crazy—but not the way she thinks. It’s more as if I’m becoming Johnny Devlin, as though pieces of him that got left behind are trying to change me, Devlin antibodies trying to expel or at least neutralize the virus that’s me. I can’t imagine being Devlin, but I can feel the impulses. That’s the kind of crazy I am and it scares me.

  I could’ve hit her—that’s just the kind of thing I can imagine Devlin doing. I could feel it building up in me. If that guy hadn’t shown up, I don’t know what might have happened. It wasn’t simply Janossy’s guitar. But seeing her with it, just casual as you please, out busking with it, like there was nothing special about it...

  It reminded me too much of all that’s gone wrong—how everything in my life is subject to Devlin’s whims. My instruments, my tools, my wood. My life. If it had been him standing there instead of Zeffy, I think I would’ve tried to kill him. And I don’t think this Hank would have been able to stop me.

  Hank.

  I almost want to smile, thinking of that nice little nametag sewn to his shirt. Once I would have done the same thing as him—stepped in to help instead of being the cause. But I told him to fuck off. Just as I told Zeffy fuck off. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone to fuck off before. Thought it, sure. But I’ve never said it like I meant it—with so much anger.

  I have all these mood fluctuations. The depression and the hostility, especially—they’re not me. Nor is this strange complacency I keep falling into, as though it’s simply not worth the trouble to confront Devlin and take back what’s mine, so why make the effort?

  But right now it’s the anger that’s got hold of me. I’ve got so much anger in me at the moment that someone’s going to get hurt. I can feel it building and I can’t seem to control it. That’s why I’ve decided to go after Devlin. If someone’s got to be hurt, then let it be him. Not people I like. And speaking of people I like...

  I wish there were some way to avoid seeing Nia right now, but she’s already running up to me, looking so pleased with herself. I hope to god she got through to her mother and worked stuff out.

  “Look at these,” she says when she reaches us.

  Buddy’s still a little skittish around her, but he seems interested in what she’s holding out. He moves a bit closer, body still pressed tight against my leg, neck stretched out, nostrils quivering. Nia’s showing me a handful of flat, rounded pebbles with animals and designs drawn on them. Wolf, crow, what might be an otter, turtle. The borders are simple knotwork or reminiscent of Southwestern sand paintings.

  “I got this permanent black marker at the art shop,” she’s saying, “and then I collected these stones down by our camp and drew on them. Aren’t they neat?”

  I don’t want to bring her down, but I can’t be around her right now.

  “I thought we could sell them with your carvings,” she adds.

  “We’ll talk about it,” I tell her. “Later.”

  She gives me a questioning look. “What’s happened? You look so mad.”

  “Now’s not a good time for us to be together,” I say.

  “But—”

  I don’t let her finish. “Look, there’s something I’ve got to do and it’s better if I do it on my own.”

  “I don’t understand. What do you have to do?”

  What am I going to tell her? That I’m going to go beat on Devlin’s head until he gives me back my life? That I think I’m turning into Devlin, another scummy loser who just drifts through life, using people, never caring about how they feel?

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.

  “But maybe I can help you.”

  “I don’t want your help.”

  I regret the words as soon as they come out of my mouth and I see the hurt they wake in her. But it’s too late to call them back and I can’t have her tagging along.

  “Here.” I hand her Buddy’s leash. “Take care of him for me. He needs a friend as much as you do.”

  She takes the end of the leash automatically and I leave her standing there with the dog, Buddy whining, straining to follow, while she’s only just managing to hold back her tears.

  “But...but, Max...”

  I don’t turn, I don’t even look back. I can’t. I have to get out of here. I need to hit something so bad I can taste it and I want it to be Devlin’s face. There’s a smoldering burn deep in my chest and I mean to use it to give me the courage I need to confront him. I won’t back down this time.
He can threaten to call the cops, but I won’t let him. I won’t give him the time.

  I walk fast so that Nia won’t be able to catch up with me, but it’s Bones who stops me before I leave the park. He’s got this inscrutable expression on his face, but I know he’s going to get on my case. I try to be polite.

  “I’m in kind of a hurry,” I tell him.

  “I can see that.” That scary look drifts into his eyes again, part clown, part wise man, the one that makes it seem as though he can see right into my head and read what I’m thinking. “I just want to collect my knife before you go.”

  I shake my head. “I think I’m going to need it for a little longer.”

  Could I use it on Devlin? I don’t know. But I can threaten him with it. “I’m not asking for it,” Bones says. “I’m telling you. I didn’t lend it to you for what you’re thinking of doing with it.”

  I shake my head again. “You’ll get it back.”

  He sighs. “I know that. It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “Thought you told me that all you do is let people know where they stand. If they don’t take your advice, then you’re finished with them.”

  He nods. “So here’s where you stand: You’re carrying a shaman’s knife and you’re thinking of spilling blood with it. I’m telling you, don’t. You piss the spirits off and they’re going to want payback—big time—and blooding that knife is going to seriously piss them off.”

  I can’t believe this line he’s taking.

  “Hey, save it for your customers,” I tell him. “Maybe they buy into your mumbo jumbo, but I sure don’t.”

  He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just looks at me, studies me, as though he wants to remember my face. I’ll give him this: he’s good at what he does. I can’t shake the eerie feeling that comes creeping up my spine, but I’m not letting him stop me either.

  “If you blood that knife,” he says finally, “I don’t want you coming around me with it later—understand? I’ve got enough problems with my own without dealing with the spirits that’ll be looking for you.”

  “Let it go,” I tell him. “The only spirits in this park are what the winos are brown-bagging.”

  “If it’s all such bullshit,” he asks, “then what’re you doing in that skin?” He knows. I don’t know why I’m surprised. My situation is right up his alley. Or maybe Nia’s right. Maybe what’s happened to me has happened to other people. Maybe it happens all the time and we just don’t know it. Doesn’t make the regular papers, but you can read all about it in the tabloids, just saying you actually get past the headlines in the supermarket and pick one up to read. Or you can talk to the self-proclaimed mystics like Bones here. Doesn’t change what I have to do.

  “You told me to take my life back,” I say. “Remember?”

  “But I didn’t tell you to take somebody else’s in the process.”

  He thinks he’s helping, like he’s going to talk me out of this, wave his hand, throw those bones, declaim a little mojo and everything’ll be better, but all he’s doing is fanning the anger that’s smoldering away inside my chest. “All Devlin’s got to do is give me back what’s mine.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” Bones asks. “If he can’t?”

  Like he knows everything. He doesn’t know who Devlin is.

  “Are you saying this is my fault?”

  “How satisfied could you have been with your life,” he says, “if someone else could step in and take it away so easily? This guy who’s living your life— he wanted a change. But you’ve got to have wanted one, too.”

  “What the hell do you know about any of this?”

  “I’ve seen it before,” Bones says.

  So Nia was right. I’m not the only one to lose my life.

  “So who’s behind it?” I ask. “Aliens? The government? Your spirits? Maybe you?”

  “Nobody’s behind it,” Bones says. “Not the way you’re thinking. It’s more like you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone’s got a jones for a new life and you get caught in the cross fire. Or maybe you’ve both got a need and a kind of magic takes over, something connects. These things happen.”

  “These things happen? Christ, could we touch base with reality here.”

  “What’s happened to you is part of reality—it’s just a part of it that most of us don’t understand yet.”

  “Happens all the time, does it?” I want to laugh, but all I can do is shake my head. “What? When the stars are aligned just right?”

  “No. Mostly it’s when the need is great enough.”

  “Get this,” I tell him. “I had a good life. I didn’t give it up. Someone took it from me.”

  He gives me the look you give a child when you think you’re talking about something they couldn’t possibly understand.

  “Just leave the knife,” he says. “You don’t want to hurt anybody.”

  “Fuck you,” I tell him. “You don’t know what I want.”

  I leave him them, leave him and Nia and Zeffy and the park all behind, because I’ve got nothing else to say and I don’t want to listen to any of them anymore. I don’t have the patience left. All I’ve got is this anger and I don’t care where it comes from—me, or some residual piece of Devlin that he didn’t take with him when he discarded this body and assumed my life. It doesn’t really matter, so long as it does the job and keeps me primed.

  I look down at my clenched hands as I stalk across town. They’re funny tools, these. They can create and heal, but not so easily as they can hurt and destroy. It’s not the kind of thing I ever think about much. But Janossy did. Janossy thought about everything. The way he looked at it, everything has a philosophy, every little forgotten piece of the world and what’s in it has its own gossip and history, stories big and small that connect it to the rest of the world. Understand that connectedness and balance, and a piece of wood can explain the secrets of the universe to you. You just have to be patient. You just don’t force it, but let it come to you instead and then act appropriately.

  Wu-sei.

  That’s what Bones doesn’t understand. Right now, I am acting appropriately, doing what I should have done the first time I saw Devlin looking out at me from my own face. And I’ll use whatever tool that comes to hand to do it.

  24 TANYA

  Tanya and Jilly had a busy time of it in the café that morning. With both Wendy and Anita calling in sick Wednesday, they had to work twice as hard covering the extra tables, but Tanya didn’t mind. She liked it when it was busy. It made the day go quicker and besides, sharing a shift with Jilly was always entertaining. She was the most efficient waitress Tanya had ever worked with, but never seemed to be too busy to share a joke or a bit of gossip. One of her favorite pastimes was constructing elaborate life stories for the customers she didn’t know, dropping a new outrageous tidbit Tanya’s way whenever they were together behind the counter, or passing each other between the tables.

  This morning she’d been convinced—or at least had tried to convince Tanya—that the man sitting by himself at table seven was a spy.

  “Watch him reading the classifieds,” she said when they were both getting fresh pots of coffee. “I swear he’s using a decoder ring as he goes down the columns, reading secret messages in between the lines or something.” Tanya had glanced at the slightly overweight, balding man and had to smile. He leaned forward over his paper, his attention equally divided between the personal classifieds and this large ring on his right hand that he kept twisting, back and forth, back and forth. He couldn’t seem to stop blinking either, though whether it was because of what he was reading or simply the early-morning sunlight, Tanya couldn’t have said.

  “Spies always eat a continental breakfast,” Jilly confided. “It’s like it’s in their contract or something.”

  “He’s not exactly James Bond material,” Tanya said.

  Jilly pretended to look carefully around her before she leaned close and whispered, “Have you ever heard the te
rm ‘mole’?”

  Tanya had to stifle a giggle. With the shape of his body and the way he sat there blinking, he looked exactly like one—the small mammal, that is, not a double agent.

  The spy was gone now, his table taken by a pair of morose young women obviously nursing hangovers—“The one on the left writes a humor column,” Jilly informed her, “while the other’s a stand-up comic.”

  “Okay,” Tanya said. “I’ll play straight man. What gives them away?”

  “Sad clown syndrome. Professionally funny people are almost always glum when they’re offstage, as it were.”

  She left Tanya smiling over that nugget of questionable wisdom to take her break. Tanya cleaned the table of her last customer, pocketing the meager twenty-five-cent tip, then went to put on another pot of coffee. She was wiping down the counter when a new customer came in and took a table across the café from where the two women were sitting. He was lanky, just this side of thin, light brown hair tied back in a ponytail, not exactly handsome, but friendly-looking. Casually dressed—jeans, plain shirt, a cotton sports jacket.

  Tanya tried to make up a story about him as she went to bring him a menu, but she didn’t have Jilly’s knack.

  “Hi,” she said when she reached his table. “Can I get you a coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  She left the menu and fetched the coffeepot, returning to fill his cup. “I’ll let you look over the menu for a few minutes,” she said, “then I’ll be back to take your order.”

  “Actually,” he said. “I’m here to see you, Tanya.”

  Tanya sighed. It didn’t happen very often, but every once in a while some guy who’d seen one or more of those awful films she’d been in managed to track her down. Video stores were to blame. In the old days, B films headed straight out to the drive-ins and then thankfully disappeared into the limbo realm of late, late, late movies. But no more. Now every bozo with a VCR could rent your career mistakes and watch them over and over again, ad nauseam. And then, of course, they knew you, didn’t they? There was a connection between you—they could always feel it.