There Are Doors

by Gene Wolfe

  North was speaking to Joe in a low, crisp voice that seemed to imply that they were the only significant people in the room, the only people who mattered an iota. “Meet your new handler,” he said. “I’ll be in your corner with Walsh tonight, and believe me, my being there is bound to bring you good luck—the greatest fight of your entire career. You know who I am?”

  Joe did not reply or change his expression even slightly. The big hand he held out to W.F. neither moved nor trembled; the blank, blue eyes stared sightlessly at something far away. If the fighter was thinking about anything at all, it appeared to be utterly unconnected with the events taking place in the room. A saint contemplating God or a gourmand contemplating Dinner might have worn the same open, empty face.

  “We’ve got a couple of dozen men up there,” North told him. “Not because we need that many, but because I want them to see you in person. They’ll be watching you before you get into the ring, and they’ll watch you fight, and they’ll still be watching you when you come out, memorizing the way you look and the way you move. Four men in two cars are watching your car, just in case you’re dumb enough to try to use that. You may get home okay, if you’re God-damned lucky. Maybe. But either you play along, or you’ll be dead by this time tomorrow night. Her too.” North jerked his head to indicate Jennifer. “Maybe these two nobodies from noplace you’ve been carrying, if they happen to get in our way. But you for sure. You and your wife, and you can take that to the bank.”

  Joe’s voice was as slow and big as he remembered. “You want me to throw the fight.”

  “Hell, no,” North said. “You can fight as good as you want to. I don’t care whether you win or lose. But I’m going to be one of your handlers.”

  “Bullshit,” Walsh told him.

  There was a knock at the door, a nearly inaudible tap. Walsh hurried over to open it, and Lara came in.

  Prelims

  Walsh cleared his throat, looking slightly embarrassed. “Laura, this is North, the guy I told ya about. My lawyer, Miss Nomos. This other guy—”

  Lara nodded frigidly. “Mr. Green and I have already met.”

  North nodded too. “This isn’t a matter for attorneys. I didn’t know you were a fight fan, Miss Nomos.”

  “There are a great many things you don’t know, Mr. North.”

  North whirled on him. “So—you know her. Are you working for her?”

  He nodded. “I’d do anything in the world for her.”

  North’s hand drew back, then inched forward. It seemed to him that the entire world had gone to slow motion. He clenched his fist, knowing he could hit North—a dozen times if necessary—before the blow landed.

  Lara’s eyes stopped him. They were brilliantly blue-green, matched aquamarines set in her lovely face, brighter far than the stained-glass eyes of the church window. They told him that this was not the moment to resist.

  North’s open palm smacked his cheek, jerking his head to the right. He felt a flash of pain, but it was no more than pain—millions endured far worse every day. Backhanded, North’s knuckles raked his mouth, splitting his upper lip.

  Walsh stepped between them. “’At’s enough!”

  He got out his handkerchief and dyed it at his lip. Above their heads, muted by two feet of concrete and steel, the crowd growled low.

  Lara said, “Exactly what is it you want, Mr. North?”

  North was glaring at the bald man. “Walsh told you.”

  “I prefer to hear it from you.”

  North turned to face her. “Simple. Tonight I want to be out front where everybody can see me. I want to be associated with a popular male figure—a truly masculine man. I want the best seat in the house for the title fight.”

  “And that is?”

  “Joe’s allowed two handlers in his corner. I’m going to be one of those handlers.”

  Lara shook her head. “That would be extremely irregular. The Boxing Commission—”

  “God damn the Boxing Commission! I told you what I want. You know what’s going to happen if I don’t get it.”

  Unexpectedly Jennifer asked, “If you do, are you going to hurt Joe anyway?”

  North shook his head. “Not if I get what I want.”

  Lara said, “Then tell me what you’ll do if you don’t get what you want, Mr. North. Again, I prefer to hear it from you.”

  “To start with, I’ll tell the police about Walsh. He’s an escaped mental patient. You know that—so do I. He hasn’t been picked up because you’re his lawyer and Secretary of Security Klamm’s supposed to be your stepfather.” One corner of North’s mouth went up. “You think anybody really believes that?”

  Lara said, “He and I do. It happens to be true.”

  “Then you wouldn’t want to see him hurt. Or the President, and anything that hurts Klamm is going to hurt her politically. The papers haven’t connected the little bald guy who broke out of United with Joe’s manager; but they’ll sure as hell connect Walsh with you, and you with Klamm. With a little help, they might even connect Walsh with Green here, and he’s as crazy as a blue crab.”

  He shook his head, thinking how tired Lara must be getting of being threatened with the media. First him, now North.

  She said, “Eddie, you were correct to ask me to come. I’m supposed to protect you, and he’s using me to get at you.”

  “’At’s not it. I was hoping you could see a way out.”

  Lara turned back to North. “All you want is to be one of Joe’s handlers?”

  North nodded.

  “But we have no assurance you won’t use the same threat again and again.”

  “I’m going to give it to you now,” North told her. He took a folded paper from his pocket. “This is a confession of murder, to be signed by me.”

  It had seemed that nothing could surprise Lara, but that did; for an instant her eyes opened wide. “May I ask who you murdered?”

  North nodded. “A doctor named Applewood. The police were about to get him, and he would have talked. He was a low-level man, but because he was a doctor he knew more than a low-level man should have.” North had taken a pen from his pocket. “That was about four months ago. Maybe you read about it.”

  To him, Lara said, “You knew him—Dr. Applewood.”

  He nodded. “Years ago.”

  Walsh was staring at North. “Ya really going to sign that thing?”

  “And give it to you,” North said, “or rather to Miss Nomos to hold in trust for you, when you agree to let me act as one of Joe’s handlers. You’re going to be the other, and do the actual handling.”

  Slowly Walsh shook his head.

  Lara said, “In other words, you trust us.”

  W.F. had finished with Joe’s hands. He said, “But we don’t trust him. No way!”

  North shrugged. “Naturally not. That’s why I wrote this. You have to promise me, on your honor, that you won’t use it or talk about it unless I threaten Walsh again. I know you won’t break that promise. But if you do, I’m free to tell the papers what I’ve told you I’d tell them. I might add that some of my friends will see to Joe and Jennifer for me.”

  The noise of the crowd above them had become so constant that he had ceased to notice it. Now those thousands of throats fell suddenly silent, so that when Lara spoke her voice seemed unnaturally loud. “I think we should do it,” she said.

  Walsh glanced at her incredulously. “Let this guy handle Joe?”

  North said, “I’ll do whatever you tell me. You have my solemn word.”

  Walsh shook his head. “It won’t be me telling ya. It’ll be W.F.”

  W.F. yelped, “Wait up!”

  Walsh said, “W.F., ya not losing ya chance t’ second the champ ’cause of me.”

  “Hold on—Joe need you. You got strategy for him, all that stuff.”

  The big fighter, who had been listening (as it seemed) with no more interest than an ox, nodded emphatically.

  Lara asked, “Would you like a ringside seat, Eddie?
Close to Joe’s corner? I can get you one if you wish.”

  “Yeah,” Walsh told her gratefully. “Yeah, I sure would.” Sweat beading the small man’s head vanished before a yellow handkerchief.

  “Perhaps when Mr. North has been seen sufficiently, you and he might change places.”

  North nodded. “Perhaps. But the decision must be mine, not Walsh’s.” There was triumph in North’s voice.

  “That’s understood. Sign that paper, then, and it’s all arranged.” Lara turned to him. “You look doubtful.”

  He asked, “Aren’t you going to read it?”

  “What would be the good—”

  Someone pounded on the door. A voice called, “Time, Joe! You ready?”

  Like a lion, Joe slid from the masseur’s table and drifted toward the door. W.F. followed, carrying a red-and-white kit as big as a small suitcase. “You a handler now?” W.F. asked North. “Okay, you fetch the waterbucket and all them towels.”

  “Sure thing.” North signed the paper and gave it to Lara.

  She unfolded it and glanced at it. “Jennifer? A seat for you? It’ll be no trouble.”

  The blonde shook her head. “I never watch. I’ll wait right here.”

  Lara nodded to him. “Then come along.”

  He wanted to say that it had not been “come along” when she had left Mama Capini’s. W.F. opened the door for Joe; there was a thunderclap of questions from the reporters and an incessant lightning from the flashguns of the photographers. Walsh was walking on tiptoe and talking rapidly to Joe, lips as close to Joe’s ear as possible. Joe pounded glove against glove.

  He was going with them, but Lara held him back. “They’ll ride up in the same elevator,” she said. “Eddie, Joe, and W.F. That’s their privilege. North too, I’m afraid, but that can’t be helped. When they reach the ring, Eddie will have to leave them. That will be hard enough.” After a few seconds, they stepped out into a corridor that was now empty, and she pulled the green door shut behind them.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “To join my stepfather. Two of his guards will have to surrender their seats to you and Eddie. They won’t be happy about that, but they can stand in the aisle.”

  “May I ask a few questions?”

  “Certainly.” Lara sounded preoccupied, and he was as much astonished as delighted when he felt her hand slip into his.

  “It was lunch time—almost one—when we left Capini’s.”

  “Lunch for us,” she said. “Some other people were having dinner. You didn’t notice.”

  “My watch,” he glanced at it, “says it’s a little past two. What time is it here?”

  “After ten. Why should you expect it to be the same time in different places? If you’d called London after lunch, would you have expected them to tell you they’d just sat down to tea?”

  “It’s been years for me.” He tried to count them, but he could not. “How long for Eddie and Joe and W.F.?”

  “What does that matter?” They had reached the elevators. Lara pushed the button with the hand that held her purse.

  “How long?” he insisted.

  “About four months, or so North said.”

  “You’re a goddess.” It took an effort for him to force the words to his lips; he made the effort, and they came. “You live forever?”

  As they entered the elevator, Lara turned to look at him. For once there was no hint of mockery in her eyes. “There are many forevers,” she said. The elevator rose.

  He took her in his arms, not suddenly or violently, but enfolding her as a flower would enfold a bee, if the bee were indeed its lover and no mere go-between. Her kiss stung his lips, smooth and sunwarmed.

  Tightly pressed between their bodies, Tina yelled, “Hey!” They ignored her.

  The elevator doors slid back. “I am Laura Nomos,” Lara told him. “I am an attorney, and the stepdaughter of a cabinet officer. You are an acquaintance.” In a lower tone she added, “You needn’t wipe your mouth—women paint theirs to look like me.”

  The whisper was no more necessary than the wiping of his lips; Sailor Sawyer had grabbed the ropes and vaulted into the ring, and half the audience was on its feet, cheering wildly.

  “They applaud him now,” Lara murmured. “But in a few years he will be dead, and so will they. Let them all engage with Death, an opponent worthy of any strength.”

  “I thought you liked Joe,” he said as they made their way down the aisle.

  “I do. He’s like a big, solemn child, so eager to please and to do what is right. And Eddie, because he’ll reshape the world to fit his dream or die. And W.F., because he loves them both.”

  Klamm had already taken a seat in the first row when they arrived; there was an empty seat to his right. Lara gestured to the man on the other side of it, who rose and went to the aisle. She sat down beside Klamm and patted the now-empty seat next to hers.

  He sat. She said, “Stepfather, this is my friend Adam K. Green. Adam, Adalwolf Wilhelm Klamm.”

  The old man leaned across her to shake hands, eyes stupid as though with sleep. “A great pleasure, Herr Kay.” The words were thickly accented.

  He said, “It’s a very great honor, sir.”

  “So,” Klamm remarked to Lara, gesturing toward Sawyer. “You t’ink still your Joe will beat him?”

  With mock firmness Lara announced, “I know it.”

  “Then I bet you. Theater tickets, any play you wish. Or any play I wish, which is how it shall be.”

  Lara said, “Never give a sucker an even break,” and they shook hands solemnly.

  Tattoos covered every visible inch of Sawyer’s skin from the neck down, pictures and bannered inscriptions that writhed and flowed with the muscles beneath them.

  Tina said, “That dragon’s alive!”

  He looked down and saw that she had clambered far enough out of his pocket to peep past the lapel of his coat. “It’s just a picture somebody drew on his skin,” he told her.

  “I’m a doll, but I’m not just a doll.”

  Joe’s robe was off. Eddie Walsh, who had replaced the other guard, had it in trust. As the referee reached for the microphone lowered to her from the rafters of the arena, W.F. opened the red-and-white kit on the canvas just beyond the ropes. North stood to one side, incongruous in a three-piece suit.

  Lara whispered, “Do you want to read this?” and handed him North’s confession.

  This is to state that I, the undersigned Wm. T. North, did upon the morning of January 21 shoot and kill Dr. Cecil L. Applewood in his office in the concourse of the Grand Hotel. I acted in self-defense only in that I feared disclosures Applewood might make to the police. I had been observing a confederate and saw he was being followed by an officer. My confederate visited Applewood, whom he knew to be one of us, and the officer overheard their conversation. When they had gone, I entered Applewood’s office and shot him twice in the chest, knowing that he was not the man to withstand a sustained interrogation. I then entered the hotel room occupied by my confederate, intending to kill him when he returned, but he did not return.

  {William T. North}

  “I was the confederate,” he whispered to Lara.

  She nodded. “I thought you were.”

  The bell rang. Joe and Sawyer left their corners, circled, and jabbed. An indescribable sound filled the arena, the whine of a huge animal about to be fed.

  Main Event

  At the end of the first round, he felt Joe had gotten the worst of it, despite a few good punches. Joe had fought defensively, covering up, edging away, keeping Sawyer at a distance. Vaguely he recalled a night in Walsh’s room. Joe had said his opponent had been an expert boxer but, “I had the reach.” Something like that. Joe had the reach again now, by an inch or two; or so he thought. Was that really so important here? An inch or two?

  As the death of a parent or a summer job awakens a boy to manhood, as the accidental lifting of a theater curtain shows us the hurrying stagehands and the s
weating actor behind Lear or Willy Loman, so these dim musings gradually permitted him to see Joe and Sawyer. He had always supposed boxing a mere matter of someone strong and brave clubbing someone else who was less so. Thus had his schoolyard defeats been, or thus he had judged them.

  It was not true. Joe and Sawyer played a game as complex as chess, and played it with the unequal pieces awarded each by birth and time.

  The bell rang, and the fighters rose at once. For half a minute, both appeared to feint and circle as before. Quickly the dragon closed, wrapping Joe in golden scales. They were so near he could hear the smack-smack of their punches through the roar of the audience; yet he could not see … did not see what had happened. They separated, circling as before; there were fiery splotches on Joe’s chest; Sawyer’s head was shaking as if the champion sought to clear it.

  Lara freed her breath in a deep sigh. “I thought that was it,” she said. He asked what she meant, but she only shook her head like Sawyer.

  The fighters closed again toe-to-toe, and this time he had a better view. Sawyer’s head was bent over fists pounding like pistons. Joe’s head and shoulders held Sawyer away while Joe’s muscled forearms absorbed the blows. As they separated, one of those arms flew out, driving a brown-gloved fist where Sawyer’s chin met the collar bone.

  Now it was the champion who was backing off and jabbing, while Joe advanced with little bobbing steps, swaying to right and left as Sawyer tried to circle.

  “Look ’at ’im weave,” Walsh shouted to Lara. “God, ain’t he beautiful!”

  The bell rang, Joe rejoined W.F. in the corner, and three things happened at once. Walsh sprang from his seat and rushed to Joe’s corner. W.F. yelled, “Water!” to North. And North flourished both hands, somewhat like a stage magician, somewhat like a small girl fastidiously wiping her soiled fingers on her pinafore; this last caused a blue-black automatic to appear in each hand.

  For a moment North posed with these pistols, an actor in the spotlight. During that moment, Klamm dove to the floor and Lara screamed. It occurred to him that neither had much reason to be afraid; North’s guns had already swung toward him. They went off together, deafeningly loud. He grabbed the ropes as he had seen Sawyer do a few minutes earlier, vaulted clumsily, and used his momentum to drive his foot into North’s groin.