Trader

by Charles de Lint

  “Whatever movie you saw me in,” she said, “I’m not that person. Okay?” She’d never met him before, of that she was sure. But when he smiled, there was something about that smile, the slight smirk that dropped one corner of his mouth, the accompanying look in his eyes, that seemed oddly familiar. “Feeling a little touchy this morning, are we?” he asked.

  Why do I have to get them? she asked herself.

  “Look, mister. I just work here, okay? If you want to order something, fine. Otherwise—”

  He didn’t let her finish. “Relax,” he told her. “You should be happy to see me. I brought you a present.”

  She stiffened as he reached into the inside pocket of his sports jacket, but all he took out was an envelope. When he laid it on the table she made no move to pick it up.

  “It’s the money I owe you.”

  “You can’t owe me anything. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

  “Not looking like this, maybe. But you know me.”

  An eerie feeling came whispering up her spine. He was a complete stranger, yes, but at the same time she couldn’t shake the sense that she did know him.

  “Who...who are you?” she asked.

  “That hurts, sweetheart. I know I look a little different, but are you telling me you really don’t recognize your old lover Johnny Devlin?”

  “J-Johnny...?”

  He leaned back in his chair, hooked an arm over the back. The body language was so impossibly familiar.

  Tanya had to sit down. She put the coffeepot down on the table beside his envelope and pulled out a chair. Sat. Couldn’t take her gaze from him. It was the other morning, all over again, except in reverse. Then it had been a stranger with Johnny’s face. Now it was Johnny, wearing a stranger’s features as casually as if he’d put on a new set of clothes.

  “Hey,” he said, leaning forward. “Are you okay?”

  Tanya took a steadying breath and slowly let it out. “What do you think?”

  “I know. It’s weird, isn’t it? Creepy weird. I’ve been walking around, looking like this, for a couple of days now and I still can’t get used to it.”

  “It’s not possible...”

  “Two days ago, I’d’ve been agreeing with you, babe. But now...” He spread his hands between them, palms up. “Hey, I know who I am and this is definitely me—no matter who I look like.”

  “But...how?” The “how” came out in a kind of a squeak.

  “That’s the funny thing. I’ve been working on that—kinda hard not to. I mean, something like this happens and how can you stop thinking about it?” Tanya didn’t trust her voice anymore so she simply nodded.

  “The way I see it,” he said, “I just wanted out so bad, that something happened and I got out. I mean, I’d pretty much screwed up my life. No decent job and no real chance of getting one. I was about to lose my apartment. No real friends. And then there was you.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, I screwed that up, too, didn’t I? Treated you like shit when really, it was the last thing I’d ever want to do. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself. It’s like, when things are going bad and you start to brooding on them, they just seem to get worse, you know? All I ever wanted was to have something to offer the world that was different—something that could only come from me. I didn’t want to be one more drone. I wanted to be something special. Because you deserve something special.”

  Tanya had been nodding along with what he was saying, because she understood all too well that need to leave one’s mark, but he lost her at the end.

  “What...” She cleared her throat and tried again. “What’ve I got to do with what’s happened to you?”

  “I think it happened because of you. I knew it was over between us, but I couldn’t help but feel if things were different, if I was different, we could make a go of it.”

  “But—”

  “So I fall asleep,” he continued, cutting her off, “and all of that’s floating around in my head—that need—and when I wake up, I am somebody different.”

  Tanya was coming to accept that this really was Johnny sitting across the table from her, but at the same time the rational part of her mind couldn’t believe it.

  “This isn’t possible,” she said.

  It all came back to that. No matter what her senses told her, no matter what she’d experienced the other morning.

  “I agree,” he said.

  “But—”

  He smiled. “But here I am all the same. It’s like God, or whoever’s in charge, gave me that second chance, Tanya.”

  “What about the guy whose body you’ve taken?” she asked. “What about him?”

  “I feel bad,” Johnny said. “And that’s the truth. I mean, it’s not right—I get the new life and he gets stuck with the mess of mine. But I tell you, I’ve been trying my damnedest to set things right—I mean, it’s only fair, right? Except the deal only seems to work one way. I can’t get back to my body.” He paused for a long moment. “Or maybe he just won’t let me back in.”

  Tanya was starting to feel dizzy. She knew that if she tried to stand up, she’d probably fall flat on her face. So she gripped the edges of the table.

  “Just tell me why you’re here,” she finally said. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want to know if you’ll give me another chance.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You and me, babe,” Johnny said. “This is the way I see it: We have to liquidate all of this guy’s assets and the best way to do that is if we turn them into joint accounts—you know, we’ll tell the bank that we’re engaged or something. We wait a few weeks, then you can withdraw the money—see, your signature’s going to stand up to the kind of scrutiny they’d give it like mine wouldn’t because it’ll be real. I don’t have the knack of faking a signature and believe me, I’ve tried.”

  Tanya shook her head.

  “I know what you're thinking,” Johnny said, “but we’re not cutting the other guy out. We divvie it up, give him a chunk of cash and take the rest to make a new start of it somewhere else.”

  This was giving her a headache.

  “Why would anyone settle for part of what already belongs to them?” she asked.

  “But it doesn’t—not anymore. I’m Max Trader now and everything’s in my name.”

  “Because you took it from him.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t plan this. How could anybody plan something like this? But the way I see it, he can’t have been very happy with the way his life was going, or why would he buy into the switch?”

  “Maybe he didn’t have a choice.”

  “I swear,” Johnny said. “I didn’t run roughshod over anybody. And I tried to put things right. Now either it only works one way, or he’s blocking it. I’ve been trying to find him, but it’s like he took a hike. Just vanished.”

  Tanya shook her head. “Zeffy’s met him. In fact, just last night she told me about going to your, I mean, to this Max guy’s shop to check things out. She came back convinced he was who he was and Johnny was Johnny and it was all a scam.”

  She paused then, thinking. No wonder Zeffy had been so taken in. It really hadn’t been Johnny she’d been talking to. Now she felt even worse about last night.

  “Yeah,” Johnny was saying. “I got a little freaked when she came in.”

  Tanya brought the jumble of her thoughts back to the conversation at hand.

  “So why didn’t you say something to her?” she asked.

  “I don’t think Zeffy should know.” Johnny gave her one of his trademarked people-always-do-me-wrong looks and sighed. “You know how she feels about me. Even when things were good between you and me, she was always cutting me down.”

  Tanya nodded, remembering. Except Zeffy hadn’t been very far off the mark, had she? Johnny had treated her badly.

  “Now all I want to do is make things right,” Johnny said. “We’ll give the guy a decent cut, and then we’ll go make
our own start someplace else. I know we can do it, Tanya.”

  He looked so sincere it was hard not to believe him. People could change, couldn’t they? She wasn’t attracted to him anymore, but she was willing to hear him out. Only now she didn’t know what to think. Maybe he was right about Max Trader. Maybe, for whatever reason, he didn’t want his old life back either. Except...She sighed. She couldn’t believe she’d been having this conversation. Couldn’t believe she was really buying into it—and thinking of helping him.

  “I need a smoke,” she said.

  She got up before he could say anything, collected the coffeepot and headed back to the counter. Leaving the pot on the counter, she went into the kitchen and fished a package of cigarettes from the pocket of her jacket. But then, instead of taking them back out into the café, she sat down on a wooden fruit crate and lit one up. She took a couple of long drags, tapping off the ash into her palm for later disposal.

  She started when the screen door at the back of the kitchen opened, but it was only Jilly returning from her break with Frank the cook in tow. Frank went to check on his soup of the day—an organic vegetable broth—while Jilly joined Tanya, pulling up another crate.

  “Kitty’s going to kill you for smoking in here,” she said.

  Tanya sighed. “Only if she finds out,” she said, then she gave Jilly an exaggerated look of fake panic.

  Jilly laughed. “I won’t tell her.”

  Tanya smiled with her, but then the momentary good humor ran away again. She sighed and took another drag of her cigarette.

  “So what’s the matter?” Jilly asked. “And don’t say ‘nothing,’ because you wouldn’t be sitting here smoking if it was nothing.”

  “It’s Johnny.”

  “What about him?”

  Tanya jerked her thumb back toward the café. “He’s in there.”

  “Well, we’ll just get rid of him,” Jilly said. She stood up and peeked through the small oval window in the door separating the kitchen from the rest of the restaurant. “You’re okay. He’s gone.”

  Tanya shook her head. “He...he doesn’t really look like himself anymore.”

  Jilly turned her back on the door and sat down on the crate again. She leaned forward, eyes shining with excitement.

  “You mean all that stuff about Johnny switching brains with somebody else is true?” she asked.

  “Seems like it.”

  Tanya filled her in on the very weird conversation she’d just had with Johnny. As she spoke, she began to have her doubts again.

  “Maybe he’s trying to drive me crazy,” she said. “He could’ve just gotten this guy to go along with it.”

  “That makes no sense. Why would he bother?”

  “Don’t forget,” Tanya said. “This is Johnny. Do things ever make sense around him? Here’s a guy who let his whole life go down the tubes because he couldn’t be bothered to get it together enough to take care of regular business—the stuff everybody else has no problem dealing with.”

  “So test him,” Jilly said. “Make him tell you something that only Johnny could know.”

  Tanya smiled. Of course. Why couldn’t she have thought of that?

  She took a last couple of drags from her cigarette and threw it out the back door, then returned to the café to sit back down at Johnny’s table.

  “I thought you’d deserted me,” he said.

  She made no response to that. “Tell me something that only you and I could know,” she said.

  “A test,” he said, nodding. “That makes sense. Except I think you should ask me something that only I should know. I mean, if this is all faked, I would’ve prepped the guy, right?”

  “Um, right.”

  Ask him what? she thought, her mind suddenly blank.

  “Well?” he asked after a moment.

  “What’s my mother’s maiden name?” she asked, saying the first thing that came to mind.

  Johnny frowned. “Aw, come on. How am I supposed to know that? The only time I ever met the woman, she had this huge mad on, like who was I to be hanging around with her perfect daughter. So I was supposed to ask her her maiden name?”

  That was actually a better response, Tanya realized, than if he’d been able to answer her question. Her mother had not been impressed with Johnny that day. But then her mother was never impressed with any of her friends.

  “Okay,” she said, “then how about...”

  But before she come up with something else to ask him, the front door of the café opened and Geordie came sauntering in, fiddle case under his arm. He looked around the café and waved a greeting to Jilly behind the counter. When he spied Tanya, he smiled and came over to the table to join them.

  “You’re Max Trader, right?” he said to Johnny as he sat down beside Tanya. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Johnny frowned. “How’d you know my name?”

  Geordie looked from him to Tanya, then back again.

  “I just saw that piece on you,” he said. “The one in The Daily Journal, and everybody knows your guitars.”

  When Johnny made no reply, Geordie turned to Tanya.

  “So,” he said. “Are you getting off soon?”

  “This is a private conversation,” Johnny said before Tanya could reply.

  Geordie turned to him, his confusion obvious.

  “I’m sorry?” he said.

  Johnny gave an exaggerated sigh. “Do I have to spell it out for you? Take a hike, pal. We’re talking.”

  “Johnny!” Tanya cried, mortified at his rudeness.

  “Johnny?” Geordie said.

  “Work it out someplace else,” Johnny told him.

  Geordie looked from her to Johnny, still confused, but flushed now. He looked a little angry, Tanya saw, but a little disappointed, too. Disappointed in her. She couldn’t blame him.

  “Maybe this is a bad time,” he said.

  “Now you’ve got it,” Johnny said. “Go hit on somebody else’s woman already.”

  “Will you just shut up,” Tanya told him.

  Johnny feigned being hurt, laying the palm of his right hand over his heart. How could she ever have been attracted to him?

  “What’s going on here?” Geordie asked.

  “Yeah, what’s going on?” Johnny repeated. He spoke in whiny, mocking voice that deepened the flush on Geordie’s cheeks.

  Geordie stood up. “Okay,” he said. “I can tell when I’m not wanted. Seems like I’ve stumbled into the middle of some old business and it’s definitely not mine. See you round, Tanya.”

  “No, wait,” Tanya said, but Johnny grabbed her arm before she could follow Geordie out the door.

  The shock on Johnny’s face when she slapped him almost made the whole awful mess of the past few minutes worthwhile. He let her go and sat back in his chair. This time she was able to get up from the table. She shot a glance at Jilly.

  “Go on,” Jilly told her. “I’ll hold the fort.”

  Smiling her thanks, Tanya hurried out the door. She saw Geordie down the block and called after him. At first she thought he wouldn’t stop, that he wasn’t going to let her explain. But she waited for a bus to go by, then called after him again in the relative quiet that followed in its wake. This time Geordie paused. When he turned to look back at her, she jogged down the street to where he was waiting.

  “I’m really sorry about what happened back there,” she said. “He can be such a pain.”

  “That’s okay. You don’t have to explain.”

  “But I want to. It’s just...” Tanya sighed. “It’s all so weird, I don’t know where to start and you’re never going to believe me.”

  “Try me,” Geordie said.

  He took her hand and led her off between a couple of stores to the grass verge that ran in back of the café and the other buildings fronting Battersfield Road. There they sat on a low stone wall overlooking the river and Tanya talked. She thought it’d be hard, but Geordie gave her his undivided attention, encouraging her whenever she
began to falter, and the whole story came out. And strangely, considering all the stress of the past hour or so, she didn’t even find herself wanting a cigarette.

  25 JOHNNY DEVLIN

  Back at his table in the café, Johnny gingerly touched his cheek where a red welt was forming. He stared at the envelope of money he’d laid on the table earlier.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  Picking it up, he stuffed it into his pocket, then lifted his head. The two women sitting at a table across the café quickly looked away when his gaze went to them. Then he saw Jilly leaning on a nearby table, arms folded across her chest.

  “Yup,” she said. “You really are Johnny Devlin. Or as close to an asshole as he ever was to make no difference.”

  Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “What’s it to you?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Jilly said, smiling. “I’m just going to stand back and watch you make a mess of this life, too—that’s all.”

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  Jilly shrugged. “So it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “Christ save us from flakes and do-gooders,” Johnny muttered.

  “What was that?” Jilly asked.

  He didn’t bother answering. Instead he got up from the table and headed for the door.

  “That’s a buck fifty for the coffee,” Jilly called after him.

  He turned, some choice retort sitting there on the tip of his tongue, until he caught sight of the café’s cook leaning against the wall by the kitchen door, watching him. He pulled a handful of change from his pocket and dropped it on the nearest tabletop.

  “Happy now?” he asked.

  “I’m always happy,” Jilly said. “It’s like this gift I have.”

  “Yeah, well, fuck you, too,” Johnny told her, but he couldn’t muster much conviction in the sentiment.

  He turned and left her to collect the change he’d tossed on the table. Once outside, he looked up and down the street, but there was no sign of either Tanya or the guy with the fiddle.

  Okay, he thought. Fine. I can do this without her help. It would’ve been easier, putting her name on Trader’s accounts and having her withdraw the money. Would’ve been nice having someone help him sell off all this crap Trader owned, too. But he could do it on his own. No problem.