Wakefield
Page 29
Françoise, Cybelle, and the bartender are already paddling naked in the pool when he returns to the suite, their snifters of Corbu on the glass table with the towels. Wakefield strips down and joins them. The water is bathtub warm, vibrating with the energy of their bodies.
“Water,” says Cybelle, swimming up to him, “is such a perfect medium. It’s the origin of our bodies.”
After some playful foolishness—the women become water-spouting sprites, the men sea monsters—they pad back into the suite wrapped in hotel towels. The night passes in lovemaking, their bodies fluid, familiar; aural, visual, and tactile senses joined. In the dark, Wakefield is no longer invisible.
Dawn slips tentatively through the fog, and there is a soft knock on the door. The guard is back from his errand.
“It’s done.”
Wakefield finds his pants and rummages through his pockets, taking out the Greek coin Redbone gave him in the bunker and pressing it into the guard’s palm. “Look it up on eBay, it’s not a fake.”
“You sure about that?” he asks, examining the little disc of gold.
“Believe me. It’s authentic.”
When it’s fully light outside Wakefield gathers his friends at the window overlooking the madman’s house.
“In a few minutes, that door will open,” he tells them, “and a man who is Daedalus will come out through it.” Wakefield readies his opera glasses.
The monster appears before he can finish speaking.
“C’est lui?” whispers Cybelle.
“Le monstre, le minotaure, l’hypocrite lecteur!” says Françoise.
“Mr. Termite, we’re ready for your closeup!” commands Wakefield.
The madman opens the courtyard gate, and they watch him studying the brick wall adjoining Wakefield’s bedroom. Wakefield can feel his dissatisfaction with the wall, his neurotic compulsion, and knows that he intends to take it down again. So strong is their psychic connection, Wakefield wonders if the madman can feel him watching. His enemy climbs to the top of the scaffolding and, as usual, sits down on his chair to survey his work.
The chair buckles under him like cardboard. They watch him fall in slow motion and hit the flagstones near a pile of bricks.
“Mon dieu,” Françoise cries, “he’s dead.”
Cybelle is very pale but calm. “What have you done, Wakefield?”
His horrified paramours rush from the window, pulling on their clothes as fast as they can. Wakefield doesn’t move, and he does not go with them when they all burst out the door.
Wakefield remains motionless at the window for a long time. Then he gathers his belongings methodically, packs his toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream, and razor in his travel case, and returns to his empty apartment.
The room is quiet; there is no more hammering, no sound at all. “I have killed the monster,” he says aloud, and he stretches out contentedly on his curtained bed. He hears sirens in the street, then voices in the courtyard next door, and promptly falls asleep.
He wakes in the afternoon to silence. He takes a long shower, then goes to the bar. Ivan Zamyatin is not in his seat at the window. A stranger is sitting in his place, drinking vodka on the rocks. Wakefield sits next to him and the bartendress brings his usual whiskey without a word.
“I enjoyed the way you handled the situation next door, but it wasn’t really necessary,” the Devil says. “I hope you didn’t do it for my sake.”
Wakefield turns to the stranger, an old man wearing a ski cap and smelling to high heaven. “Self-defense. I just reacted. And what do you mean ‘it wasn’t really necessary’? When I heard that hammer, I went for my bugs. It was a shootout.”
“The hammer wasn’t the starter pistol, you know,” the Devil says.
Wakefield is calm. “Really? Then I still have some time before my quest begins?” But he has a sinking feeling, made worse by the Devil’s grudging approval. You’d think His Holy Hoof would approve murder as a proper conclusion, or at least a deal sweetener.
“I don’t honestly know,” the Devil says, only slightly amused. “They keep changing the agenda on me. Your case has been shelved, for the time being. There’s a big deal brewing and I’ve been called up. Don’t know when we’ll talk again.” But he doesn’t want to hurt Wakefield’s feelings, so he adds, “I did enjoy our travels, I really did.”
“What’s that ‘we,’ white man? I didn’t see you around.”
The Devil chuckles. “You saw me all right, but you were too busy paying attention to ‘important’ things, haha. Remember the geezer at the desert roadhouse? ‘I shot a sonofabitch for playing bad music next door.’”
“That was you?”
“How about that beefy bodyguard stage left in Wintry City?”
“That creep was you, too?”
“Sunglasses, gun, and bulk, my favorite getup. I was also a projectionist and a few other folks you either ignored or forgot. Don’t feel bad about it. I’m all about amnesia.”
Wakefield is speechless. He had felt so free, so at liberty.
“Ah, well, all good things must come to an end. At least you get to keep mucking around until we activate your file again. Adios, amigo. Adiablo is over for now.” The stranger extends his hand, and Wakefield holds it for a moment, palming the old man a twenty.
“Thanks, man,” the old guy whispers.
Wakefield doesn’t even finish his drink. He heads home, to read. What else could a silence-loving man do in a hammer-wielding world?
About the Author
Andrei Codrescu (www.codrescu.com) is the editor of Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Books & Ideas (www.corpse.org). Born in Romania, Codrescu immigrated to the United States in 1966. His first collection of poetry, License to Carry a Gun (1970), won the Big Table Younger Poets Award, and his latest, So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems: 1968–2012 (2012), was a National Book Award finalist. He is the author of the novels The Blood Countess, Messi@, Casanova in Bohemia, and Wakefield. His other titles include Zombification: Essays from NPR; The Disappearance of the Outside: A Manifesto for Escape; New Orleans, Mon Amour; The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile’s Story of Return and Revolution; Ay, Cuba!: A Socio-Erotic Journey; The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess; Whatever Gets You through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments; The Poetry Lesson; and Bibliodeath: My Archives (With Life in Footnotes).
Codrescu is the recipient of an ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry, and the Peabody Award for the movie Road Scholar. Until retiring in 2009, he was the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Andrei Codrescu
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1988-0
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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