Gun, with Occasional Music

by Jonathan Lethem

  The babyhead with the dark glasses had taken them off and clipped them onto his collar. He and the one in the sheet stared up at me together, hollow-eyed and vaguely bemused despite the eddies of emotional turbulence stirring the air in the room. The two faces created a kind of stereophonic effect, the woofer and tweeter of eeriness.

  I turned back to Pansy. "I'm looking for Celeste," I said. "Have you seen her?"

  "You're too late," she said. "She was here this morning, but she left."

  "Did she say anything about where she was going?"

  "She was upset. She said you refused to help her. She wanted to call Inquisitor Morgenlander and tell him Orton was innocent."

  "What did you say?"

  Pansy's hand gripped the back of the chair, and her eyes sought the floor. Then she looked up at me resentfully. "I said it was stupid. That it was obvious Orton had done it." Her cheeks turned red, but she didn't look away.

  "That was brave." I sort of meant it.

  "Go to hell," she said, and turned and walked out of the room. I listened and could just make out her footfalls on the carpeted stairs. Then the squeak of a bedspring, upstairs.

  Barry looked smug, as though he'd choreographed Pansy's actions and was pleased to see them performed so precisely. Woofer and Tweeter just rolled their eyes like spectators at a tennis match.

  "Why'd you come back?" I asked.

  "I haven't been here in weeks," said Barry. "From what you said, it sounded like it was getting interesting."

  "What do you think?"

  "I was right. It is interesting."

  "Do you love your mother, Barry?"

  "I don't love anything." He spoke the word as if he knew what it meant and I didn't.

  "Then what I'm about to tell you won't matter."

  "Nothing you've said has yet."

  I took a deep breath. It mattered to me. "Celeste Stanhunt's your mother, not Pansy Greenleaf. It took a while, but it all came clear. Pansy works for Danny Phoneblum, but no one will say what she does. She's a nanny, Barry. Or she was until you left the nest."

  Barry just smiled. "You can't imagine how little this interests me."

  "I don't believe you."

  "My motives are beyond your comprehension."

  "I guess." I went behind the kitchen counter, found a drinking glass on the sideboard, and filled it with water at the tap.

  "You never answered my question," said Barry.

  "What's that?"

  "How it felt to be what you are."

  "The question wasn't quite that simple, when you asked it," I said. "You used some words I didn't understand."

  "You're an asshole," said Barry. "The worst kind. You think you represent Truth and Justice, or something."

  I took a big drink of water before I answered. I was getting a little steamed, even if he was just three years old. "Truth and Justice," I said. "I wonder if you really know what the hell it is you're talking about, or whether words just keep pouring out because of the thing they did to your brain. Truth and Justice. Nice, easy words."

  I caught myself. The speech was wasted on babyheads—maybe wasted on anybody.

  Then I made the mistake of deciding to give them something to think about. "What if I told you I thought Truth and Justice were two completely different things?"

  Woofer liked that a lot. He turned to Tweeter and said: "What if I told you I thought Truth and Justice were four different things?"

  Tweeter chimed in right on cue. "What if I told you Love and Money were six different things?"

  "Some other time," I said. "I'm not in the mood." I put the glass of water back on the counter and went to the door.

  "What if I told you I thought Time and Mood were twelve different things?" said Barry behind me.

  CHAPTER 23

  I'D BEEN TO THE FICKLE MUSE ONCE OR TWICE AS A CUStomer, to take advantage of the late hours they kept, and a couple of other times to track someone who burned the bottle at both ends and didn't mind sitting in a dirty little hole of a bar to do it. I'd even heard about the back room, but I'd never been in it. The name Overholt was new to me. I got into my car and drove there now, though I wasn't sure the place would be open this early.

  It was. In fact, stepping into the Fickle Muse from the parking lot was like stepping through a miniature time machine that took you from six o'clock to sometime long after midnight. The guys at the bar looked like they'd already made the rounds and ended here only by default, and the floor already had a night's worth of cigarette butts marinating in puddles of whiskey and melted ice. The jukebox was playing that kind of lugubrious one-last-drink song, where everybody at the bar mumbles along with the chorus, only you knew at the Fickle Muse there was no last drink Or if there was, it wasn't one, it was several.

  I went and sat down as close as I could get to the door to the back The barkeep was a big hulk of a guy who probably did his own bouncing, the few times the sight of him didn't keep bouncing from having to be done. It took him a while to get around to taking my order, and another little while for him to bring me the drink. I didn't mind. I should have felt worried, and pressed for time, but here in the Fickle Muse I felt enclosed in a pocket of timelessness and anonymity. Who needed karma, anyway? I drained the glass and slipped fifty dollars more than it cost under the coaster.

  When the barkeep looked at the money, his eyebrows moved, but just a little. He probably would have kept the extra without even asking if I hadn't crooked my finger and hissed at him.

  He put his head near mine.

  "I want to talk to Overholt," I said.

  "Maybe Overholt ain't here yet." He said it so fast and smooth it was like a pilotfish riding on the back of what I said. He was almost finished before I was.

  I took out one of the ripped hundreds that now littered my pockets. He mistook it for the whole thing until he got it in his hand. His eyebrows moved again.

  "I'll fix it after I see Overholt," I said. "I'll make it good as new."

  "I don't care about new," he said. "Just good." His eyes flickered over to the door on the back wall.

  "Thanks," I said.

  "Don't thank me," he said. He picked up my glass and took it to the row of bottles against the mirror, then brought it back full. "You don't owe me no thanks. You like to pay big for your drinks, that's all." He went back to his regulars.

  I took the drink and went through the door. The back room was nothing more than a pool table with walls around it, so close on three sides you could tell it ruined shots. A dark hallway extended off the rear wall. The one light dangled down from the ceiling to hover a foot above the balls—a bad hop, and you could break the bulb. There was a big guy and a small guy, both leaning on cues while they studied the table. I shut the door behind me and set my glass on the felt.

  When the big guy looked up at me, I knew the small one was Overholt. Some people have things written all over their faces; the big guy had a couple of words misspelled in crayon on his.

  But he had grace. He stepped over and took my glass off the table and put it back in my hand. Then he made his shot. It was good, and Overholt and I stood in silence while he ran a series of balls. He only butted his cue into the wall a couple of times, and it never threw him. He just angled the end of the cue upwards and made the shot anyway.

  When he missed one, he just grunted. The cue went end down on the floor again, and he went back to leaning on it. For a minute I thought I was going to have to wait the game out. Then Overholt spoke.

  "This isn't the way to the bathroom," he said.

  "I'm looking for a guy named Overholt," I said back.

  Overholt smiled a little. His lips were cracked, like he licked them too often. He ran his hand over his hair and then put it back on the cue. "I'm him," he said.

  "Good," I said. "I heard you could get me some things nobody else could get me." I didn't know exactly what I was talking about.

  "It's been known to happen," he said. It was like an admission of a habit he couldn't brea
k.

  "I'll pay to have it happen now," I said.

  "Maybe." He looked me over. "I need to know your name, and how you got mine. I need to see your card."

  There was no bluffing. I could only hope he didn't know my name from Phoneblum. I tossed my card out under the light, careful not to displace the balls. "I met a guy named Phoneblum," I said. "He recommended your services." Overholt leaned over and read my name. "Big fat man," I continued, nervous. "No offense."

  Overholt smiled grimly and put my card in his pocket. I got ready to bolt. I could leave without my card if it meant preserving my neck The card only had twenty-five points on it anyhow.

  "He's a big fat man, all right," said Overholt. "Doesn't get out much."

  There was a moment of silence. I watched Overholt as carefully as I could without looking like I was doing it.

  He patted the pocket with my card in it. "Don't worry," he said. "You'll get it back Security."

  I realized I was holding my breath. I let it out slowly. "He said you could help me get hold of some Blanketrol."

  He looked over at the big guy. I looked too, but there wasn't anything to see. Then he looked back at me, and met my eyes for the first time. "Sometimes," he said.

  "I want it"

  "You don't want to use that stuff. That's bad stuff." The concern sounded almost genuine.

  "That's my business. I want it."

  He sighed. "I'll need five hundred dollars."

  I laughed to myself. I had one like that left from the envelope Angwine had given me in the bar at the Vistamont. There was something funny about spending it on drugs I'd so recently dumped into the mud by the side of the road. It didn't make sense that it should cost so much, and I wondered if I was buying more than just the drugs. I couldn't answer that question without spending the money, though.

  And what would I do with the new packet of Blanketrol? Maybe I was ready to use it.

  "No problem," I heard myself say.

  "Okay," he said. "Let's go upstairs. I'll make a call."

  He handed the cue to the big guy, who looked only a little peeved. He'd been winning, but there were obviously plenty of rounds of pool in his past, and plenty more in his future. Business came first.

  "Follow me," said Overholt. He went into the dark of the hallway behind the table. I followed, and he led me up a short flight of stairs to a little smoking room with a television and a phone and a couple of chairs. He told me to have a seat, and I had one.

  "Money," he said. I got it out. He looked it over and said: "Good."

  I felt stupider and stupider. I wasn't learning anything. I tried to think of a way to eke out a little more for my five hundred dollars, but nothing came to mind. I'd followed the lead like some kind of automaton and confirmed theories that didn't matter in the first place. I was wasting time.

  I was about to make a scene and get my money and my card back when Overholt spoke again. "She's in through there," he said, pointing. "If you like it, there's more."

  I didn't want Overholt to register my confusion, but I guess it must have shown.

  "Danny told you—"

  "Yes," I assured him. "Danny told me." I got up and went through the door.

  It was a bedroom. The light was dim, but not so dim that I couldn't see the way the walls were rotting at the baseboard. The place smelled of mold, and I figured a pipe somewhere was leaking into the walls. The girl was already undressed. She was lying on the bed, and when I came into the room, she turned and smiled at me and beckoned with her white arms. She was beautiful to look at, but there was something clumsy in her movements. I had a bad feeling right away. I closed the door behind me and went over to the bed and let her put her arms around me.

  I took her head in my hands and held it close to mine so I could look into her eyes. She was smiling with her mouth, but the eyes were blank. They were pointed at me but focused somewhere in the middle distance, about where I'd been standing when I first entered the room. I waited, but she didn't make the adjustment. She was looking right through me. When I moved my hand up the back of her scalp, I understood why.

  The slavebox was buried in her hair, a little cluster of wire implants soldered together with a glob of plastic. It didn't seem to hurt her when I touched it, but her arms fell away from me to rest on the bed when she realized I wasn't paying any attention to her body. Things got through to her, to some operative fraction of her consciousness, but it took a while. Given the way she was spending her time, and the place she was spending it in, it was probably just as well.

  I pushed her back on the bed. All I meant to do was get away from her, but I guess I pushed a little harder than was necessary, and she giggled. It stirred up an old memory in me, something bitter, and involuntary, something I'd have thought was completely gone by now. I guess the act of pushing a naked woman back on a bed is always going to contain a sexual element—whether playful, hostile, or both—no matter how long it's been.

  I got up from the bed. Through my haze of disgust some things were finally making sense. Phoneblum's allusions to the slave camps fit in nicely now, and I understood why he needed to maintain a relationship with the Office. He needed to be tipped off when a nice-looking body was getting iced. The girl on the bed was all I needed to picture how it worked. And I could think of dozens of unpleasant reasons why Phoneblum might need the part-time services of a doctor or two.

  I opened the door and went back out to where Overholt was waiting. He looked at me questioningly, almost sympathetically. "Something went wrong," he said.

  "No," I said. "It's okay."

  "We got all kinds, you know. Men, women, groups. Any age you like. Don't be shy."

  "Right."

  "We're always here." He furrowed his brow, truly concerned. I was touched.

  "Okay," he said, after a minute. "Here." He handed me an envelope, too flat to hold drugs. "Take this to the makery on Telegraph and 59th. They'll give you what you want."

  I stuffed it into my jacket pocket.

  "We don't handle the drugs out here," he said. He wouldn't stop talking now. "Too dangerous. It's just a sideline, anyhow."

  "I understand."

  "Okay." He went behind the little table with the phone. He seemed disappointed I wasn't more interested in the girl or the talk.

  He held my card out to me. "We ran this through our decoder," he said. "Twenty-five is real low. I can help you with that..."

  "No," I said. "But thanks no. It wouldn't work. The Office is watching me close right now. They'd catch on."

  He smiled broadly, like a pitchman who'd been fed a line by his shill. "You don't get it, Mr. Metcalf. The karma we sell is good. The Office can't touch it. I've got an inside line." He paused. "And frankly, you have a bit of leftover credit with us here."

  The sick irrational part of me that was still trembling in fear at how low my karma had gotten made me stop and think it over. But it didn't take a lot of thinking to realize it really wouldn't make any difference. Overholt didn't know who I was, or he wouldn't be offering.

  "Thanks, really," I said, trying to put some heart in my voice so he wouldn't feel too bad. "It just wouldn't work in my case."

  "Okay." He threw his hands open in a gesture of resignation. I took my card back.

  I left him there sitting behind the phone, and went out alone. When I was out of his sight on the stairs, I stopped and leaned back against the wall and caught my breath. The thing with the girl had shaken me. It was easier for me to think of all the people, dozens, maybe hundreds, Phoneblum had taken out of the deep freeze than it was for me to think of this one girl smiling blankly, holding her arms up in a cold damp room, with a clump of wire and plastic in her hair. I couldn't banish the image, so I let it sit there for a while and tried to get used to it.

  After a couple of minutes I went the rest of the way down the steps, and passed back through the room where the big guy was lurching between the pool table and the wall. He was setting up shots now, moving the balls around, hol
ding three of them easily in one of his big flat hands. I looked at him and he smiled. I guess I'd been upstairs long enough for him to think I'd had a quick one off with the girl. I tried to feel angry, but I couldn't muster it up. I smiled back and went into the bar.

  Things had progressed as usual in the Fickle Muse, which is to say the air was thick with the unique perfume of men sweating out alcohol and breathing out cigar smoke. The music was louder but it wasn't any more lively. I wanted a drink, but the room was full enough that I couldn't get to the bar without pushing and shoving for a place. It wasn't worth it. A line of make in the car would do fine.

  As I shouldered through the crowd, making my way to the exit, I heard the voice of the big barkeep, the one with the half hundred in his pocket. I didn't turn around to look. I just somehow wasn't in the right mood to pay up. I figured he'd have as much trouble getting through the crowd as I had, and if there was one thing I'd gotten good at in this life, it was starting a car in a hurry.

  I went to the exit and put my weight behind it, but it turned out I didn't have to. Somebody pulled the door from outside, and I almost stumbled into his lap. I started to mutter and curse at the guy, then saw who it was. Standing in my way like a cowardly, red-faced linebacker was Grover Testafet It wasn't funny, but I wanted to laugh. A second later, when the kangaroo stepped up behind him like the punch line of the joke, I did.

  CHAPTER 24

  THEY MADE A PRETTY HUMOROUS PAIR. TESTAFER WAS nominally in charge, I guess, but when he saw me, he turned to Joey for his cue. The kangaroo just screwed up his face. I quit laughing and pushed out between them to go to my car, knowing as I did it that it wouldn't come off. And sure enough, before I got my key in the lock, I heard their footsteps behind me, and a shadow passed between the moon and its reflection in my window.

  "Hello, Grover," I said as I turned around, but it was the kangaroo who stood closest to me, and he had the little black gun in his paw again.

  "Hello, Metcalf," said Testafer, a little weakly. He just wasn't used to this much action, I could tell. He stepped up closer but kept behind the kangaroo and the gun.