by Yoav Blum
Alberto insisted that he wasn’t interested.
Don Ricardo cited a sum.
Alberto was resolute.
Don Ricardo made a long speech about fulfilling potential and exploiting opportunities, and even quoted Thomas Alva Edison.
Alberto still refused.
Don Ricardo said the pistol that Alberto took the previous time, the one he held in his hand, leaving fingerprints on it, and which he had left in Don Ricardo’s possession—was the same pistol Johnny had used to kill three people.
Alberto was silent.
Don Ricardo said it would be a shame if the police found this pistol.
Alberto remained silent, and Don Ricardo again cited the sum.
Three days later, Alberto lay in the mud and aimed his new sniper’s rifle at a bend in the road where an accountant for a small crime organization was supposed to pass in his car. Alberto’s employer suspected that the man was close to talking to the police. It was necessary to silence him.
Alberto lay in wait for a white Toyota. The front of a white car appeared at the bend of the road, and the moment his finger started to squeeze the trigger, a small rabbit jumped into the road and froze in front of the approaching car. The Toyota’s driver, a fervent vegetarian and fragile soul, yanked the steering wheel to avoid hitting the rabbit, lost control of the vehicle, and crashed into a large oak tree.
The rabbit hopped to the other side.
Alberto took his sniper’s rifle and left.
And it continued this way.
Alberto planted a bomb under a businessman’s car. But on the way to the car, the businessman fell down the stairs and sustained a fatal blow to his head. Alberto quickly dismantled the bomb and got out of there.
The senior police officer who was planning to conduct a raid the following day was in Alberto’s crosshairs when the microwave he was using to heat up some chicken exploded. A small bone penetrated the man’s right eye and went out the back of his head.
Alberto Brown became the most successful hit man in the Northern Hemisphere, and he never even hurt a fly. In time, he simply got used to it. He just had to prepare everything—set up the weapon, arrange the trap, organize the hit, and almost carry it out. His victims simply died on their own. The people who hired him were happy, and he himself slept very well at night.
It was wonderful work for him, and it didn’t demand any sort of violence.
Sometimes he felt lonely. So he bought a hamster.
And now, Pierre said, he had come here.
“Here?” Guy asked.
“Yes,” Pierre said. “He has to kill a certain businessman. This case is a bit strange because it doesn’t involve something criminal. It’s more . . . personal.”
“And how is this connected to you?” Guy asked.
“Who do you think arranged for all these people to die precisely at the right time?” Pierre asked.
“You’re joking.”
“Definitely not,” Pierre said.
“But why, in fact? What’s the logic?”
“Alberto has a very important role in foiling a terror organization in another fifteen years,” Pierre said. “We must develop him correctly so that he can reach the spot where he makes the decision that will defeat this organization.”
“And for this, all these people are being killed?”
“That’s the interesting part,” Pierre said. “All of the people Alberto was sent to kill were supposed to die anyway. Don Gustavo, the accountant—all of them. The coincidence that I was supposed to create was to commission the murder—that is, to make the right people want someone to die exactly when that person was slated to die anyway.”
“That sounds complicated.”
“Yes,” said Pierre. “But I prefer that kind of complication to handling the current case.”
“What do you mean?”
“The businessman he’s supposed to murder now isn’t actually supposed to die anytime soon.”
“It’s not something you organized?”
“No. It’s an authentic hit,” Pierre said.
“So what happens now?”
Pierre shook his head sadly. “If we don’t want to break the streak, we need to arrange a coincidence that will kill the man. And at the right time, so that it’ll look like all the rest. I raised this issue with the higher-ups. We have all the required approvals.”
“You want me to . . .”
“You have to bring the man to a particular place at a particular time to make it happen.”
“For a simple timing mission, you came to me?”
“You could say that, yes.”
“Why don’t you do this yourself?”
“It’s a bit complicated to explain,” Pierre said. “But there are matters here that require me to organize other things at the same time.”
“But why me?”
Pierre brushed an invisible speck of dust from his pants and refrained from looking at Guy. “You know the man,” he said. “You were his imaginary friend once. I think we can make use of that connection.”
Guy swallowed and tried to smile indifferently.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“You know him as Michael,” Pierre said.
A slight shudder ran up Guy’s back. Michael. It was thanks to him that he had met Cassandra.
15
It was a Tuesday.
Michael was playing in the park with two of his green toy soldiers, assigning them attributes that were not very militaristic—such as the ability to glide through the air or remain with their heads stuck in the ground for particularly long periods of time. Guy sat on the bench next to him, his legs and arms crossed, his thoughts wandering. Sometimes the only thing Michael wanted him to do when he imagined him was sit there.
When two of the soldiers started to chase each other, Guy wasn’t able to understand who was doing the chasing and who was being chased—not that this was really important. But when Michael started to get carried away and wandered off making various heroic sounds, Guy called him and told him not to go too far.
A child who is too far away forgets that you exist. A child forgetting you exist means you no longer exist.
Guy actually wanted to sit there a bit longer. He hadn’t experienced existence for quite a few days. He longed for himself, to a certain extent.
And besides, he wanted to keep an eye on Michael, to make sure he didn’t go into the street. At least that’s what he told himself.
A girl and a woman entered his field of view.
The girl was small and blond, her long hair almost reaching her waist; purple eyeglasses with a thick frame were tied with a red string behind her head. The woman was tall and elegant. Long braids ran through her red hair, covering her head like a crown, and her eyes followed the girl with tender love.
They sat on the bench opposite him, not far away, but they couldn’t see him, of course.
He took another look at the woman. Something in her movements pulled at his heart. A thought crept into his mind: how rare it was to meet someone who looked like she knew what she was doing, in the broad sense of the word. So many people moved their bodies only in order to take up space, in order to do something that made them feel that they were indeed changing something. They waved their hands, shook their heads, and shifted their legs anxiously. If movements made sounds, how much noise most people would create around them, just to show their presence. She, on the other hand, was so much truer—the way she sat on the bench, the way she tilted her head to the right and looked at her girl, the way she allowed her red-and-white dress to rest upon her without concealing her identity. Why weren’t all people so relaxed?
“I like your dress,” he said.
She didn’t notice him, of course. But that had never bothered him in the past. He would speak with people, tell them things, share with them, even if they weren’t the children imagining him, even if there was no chance of them seeing or hearing him.
“I know you don’t know I’m her
e,” said Guy, “but who knows, perhaps in some mysterious way my words will affect you somehow. And perhaps not. It doesn’t really matter. Sometimes you need to speak to someone who isn’t listening, just so you won’t go crazy.”
The girl sat at the foot of the bench, playing with two dolls dressed in the best doll fashions. Every once in a while, she lifted them up and said something to the woman on the bench. The woman nodded with a smile and said something in reply.
Guy could have heard what they were saying if he’d wanted to. They were close enough. But what was the point?
“I’m John,” he said. “At least, at the moment I’m John. In another hour, I might be François, and then Genghis Khan, and tomorrow I’ll be Motke the painter. It’s a bit confusing, perhaps, but these are the demands of the job. Because what am I if not a mirror of what someone else asks me to be? My name, my personality, my desires—everything is designed only to rescue other people from their loneliness.
“You’ll never understand what I mean,” he said, leaning forward a bit, trimming a few inches from the distance between him and the unknowing queen as she gazed at the treetops. “You’re too connected to yourself. I envy people like you. Well, the truth is that I envy nearly everyone. You’re living your lives without hiding behind a role that someone else writes for you. You see that boy there? The moment he comes closer, he just needs to pay a bit more attention to me and I’ll again have to be entirely John. I won’t be able to talk with you—or deliver a speech to you. I’ll be his again, completely.
“I’ve seen so many ordinary people who do what I’m doing. Them, I don’t envy. They’re in a worse situation than I. At least I need to wear just one mask each time, because only the one who imagines me can see me. But they’re the imaginary friends of everyone, covering themselves with masks provided by everyone who looks at them, until one day they become people seen by everyone, only they don’t really exist.
“But you’re different. I see this. You are who you are. People like you are so rare. I hope you know how lucky you are. How different you are.” He got up from the bench, stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at the ground, and moved a bit closer. “And also beautiful, if you don’t mind me saying so. . . .
“In any case, if you’re ever lonely and would like to imagine someone lonely like yourself, I’d be happy to appear in front of you and get to know you a bit better. You know, it’s not so awful to be the creation of someone’s imagination. You can do this for example.”
He pulled his hands from his pockets and stretched them out in front of him. “Ta-da!” he said.
Three small balls of fire appeared in the air, and he began to juggle them.
“This is something that is very easy to learn,” he said, his eyes glued on the balls. “The first principle is not to look at your hands. You need to follow the balls in the air and try not to see how you catch them. You can also do it with four;”—a fourth ball appeared—“it doesn’t matter. Of course, the fire part is a nice privilege that comes with being an imaginary friend. All the rest is simply an acquired skill. I think. I don’t remember ever acquiring it, of course. But from your perspective, it’ll certainly be acquired.”
He continued to juggle a little longer until he felt tears welling up in his eyes without knowing whether it was because of the faint spirals of smoke rising from the fireballs or because of something else that was gnawing at him. The fire balls were extinguished and disappeared in mid-flight, and his hands dropped to his sides.
“And that’s it,” he said quietly, lowering his head in embarrassment. How stupid it was to speak this way to himself. He looked up. The girl still played with her dolls on the grass, orchestrating a quiet tea party, and that wonderful woman sat on the bench and looked at him. That is, right at him.
He felt like he was frozen for a moment, and his eyes gazed into her eyes.
A moment before he got up to leave, convinced that it was only a coincidence that she was staring in the direction where he stood, she said, “Why did you stop? It was actually beautiful.”
A few seconds went by and he still couldn’t manage to speak. Michael was a bit far away. Please don’t stop imagining me now, just don’t stop now, Guy thought.
“You . . . you see me?” he asked.
“Aha . . .”—she nodded her head, smiling—“and apparently you also see me.”
“It’s . . .”
“Quite surprising,” she said. “I didn’t know exactly how to respond when you started to speak to me.”
“But why . . . ?”
“I’m Cassandra,” she said and pointed to the girl playing alongside her, “and this is Natalie, the girl who imagines me.”
“It’s really, that is . . . I didn’t expect . . .”
“Yes, me either,” Cassandra said. “But it turns out we’re able to see each other.”
They were silent for several seconds and then Cassandra asked, “Do you come here a lot, you and your boy?”
“Not so much,” he said. “Usually Michael prefers to play in his room.”
“It would be nice if you started to come more often,” she said. “They can play and we’ll be able to talk a little.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll try to persuade him. If I can.”
“Great.” She smiled. A shiver ran along the inside of his skin.
And that’s how he met Cassandra.
“I’m John, by the way,” he said.
“I know. You already said.”
“Yes,” he managed to say before Michael took his mind off him completely, and he disappeared.
16
Emily was still lying in bed and looking at the square of light cast by the window as it slowly advanced toward the ceiling.
So why was she still lying there?
At this stage, after nearly ten hours of lying in bed, was she really staying there because she was depressed, or was she doing this because lying in bed with her eyes open was something that depressed people were supposed to do, and she was declaring herself depressed?
And what would be the next stage? Drinking? Chain-smoking while standing on a balcony and staring with burned-out eyes at the rooftops of the city? Where do you draw the line between actions carried out due to an internal need, and actions that were nothing more than a version of one ceremony or another that help us define our emotions?
How many people actually cried at weddings or shouted in frustration or tossed their heads back when laughing or grasped a partner’s face when kissing because something inside them compelled them to do this, and how many did those things because it was something they needed to do?
She turned over and looked at the clock by her bed. If you’ve started to think such thoughts, then apparently you’ve really gotten over it, she thought to herself. No excuses.
Let’s go, get up.
When she washed her face, she nearly smiled at herself over the dramatic gesture of the previous night. The cathartic weeping, declaring that she realized he didn’t want her and never would, the weakness in her legs, the collapse into a self-pitying heap on the sidewalk, the long, long fall into bed, still in her clothes, the feeling that there was no reason for tomorrow to come.
It’s strange, she thought, how we’re able to turn one specific thing into everything that drives us in life, and how we convince ourselves that without this thing there is no meaning in anything. And it’s even stranger how quickly we get used to the opposite thought.
She leaned against the sink and felt choked up. Tears crept up into her eyes, waiting for the right time to flow outward. She swallowed and took a deep breath. Yes, yes, the choking feeling was real, that part of her brain still thought; there was no ceremony in this.
She hadn’t planned it this way. She didn’t think such a situation was possible. A situation in which, within herself, she was really giving up on Guy. And here, it was happening. She was in unfamiliar territory, in which the color of the air was a bit different and light traveled at a differen
t speed. Her heart pounded at an unfamiliar pace. And Guy wasn’t hers at all anymore.
No, no, that’s not the way it was supposed to be.
She planned successes. She planned that everything would work out as it should.
Not only yesterday evening, but in general. Her life was supposed to happen in a different way, wasn’t it?
What, in fact, was choking her now? The thought that she really was giving up, or the change in plans that was imposed upon her, a control freak like her?
Perhaps smoking a cigarette and gazing upon the city’s rooftops wasn’t such a terrible idea. She looked at herself in the mirror. An urge to get a bucket of black paint and splash it all over the walls in the other room washed over her. She wanted to cover this pathetic attempt of bringing them together, to erase everything, anything, get rid of the ability to dream itself.
It wasn’t enough to wash her face. She needed to wash everything.
When she came out of the shower wrapped in a towel, a bit better prepared for the rest of the day, she discovered the envelope waiting for her by the door.
Nearly involuntarily, she immediately turned to her room to get dressed and to devote a few more minutes to herself before having to return to the real world, in which there were real “things” she needed to do.
The new envelope could mean only one thing: her accountant had started to write poetry.
It was a bit strange, considering that she had done nothing special during the past twenty-four hours. Perhaps something from all of her earlier actions finally got through to him.
This was a viable coincidence-making technique, she knew. In this approach, small events in varying frequencies were not intended to lead to a particular instant where the change would occur. Instead, these events created an ongoing process under the surface, resulting in a quiet and almost imperceptible impact.
This kind of coincidence was considered of a higher quality and more elegant than most, primarily appropriate for rank three. Eric would take pride every time he managed to create this type of coincidence. “Untraceable” he called it, as if it were executed on a private and secure phone line. It’s very hard for a client to understand how tens and sometimes hundreds of events had gradually changed his life.
