The Mirror Thief

by Martin Seay

  The smoke chafes Stanley’s throat, making him lightheaded. His damaged leg is unsteady, trembling, and he steps back to lean against the wall by the café’s entrance. Another man—potbellied, ginger-bearded, middle-aged, wearing black-framed spectacles and a tweed driver’s cap—is standing on the doorway’s opposite side. The two eye each other for a moment. Then they turn and stare across the room again, motionless as telamons, the bass drum pulsing lightly on their guts and faces.

  Last night on Abbot Kinney Boulevard I met the archangel Sariel, Stuart is saying. Dead-ringer for Robert Ryan. Worn-out, in need of a shave. Up front, Lipton nods along to the music, punches his fist into the flesh of his palm. Alex has found Lyn along the left wall; his body eclipses her from view. Just ahead, Claudio sprawls between two hipster girls; he turns to give Stanley an easy grin. The kid has no recollection at all of why they came here tonight, Stanley realizes. Maybe he never really understood.

  The blond girl is moving across the room now, headed Stanley’s way, drifting between the tables like a paper cup down a rocky brook. She keeps her flat stare trained on him till she’s within a few feet. Then she veers to take the arm of the ginger-bearded man. She leans in as Stanley watches, resting a hand on his stomach, standing on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. Her posture—waist bent, black-sheathed knees locked, ass angled out—reminds him of a cheesecake pinup, and he wonders if the performance is meant for him. Aside from a few rapid blinks, the bearded man’s face remains static, vacant.

  When she’s done speaking she gives the man a peck on his ruddy cheek and returns to her spot at the far end of the crowded room. It takes her a while to get there. She doesn’t look back, at Stanley or at the bearded man. When she comes to a stop the man tips himself forward, turns, pulls open the café door.

  Stanley watches him between the backward letters painted on the glass. The man stands at the curb, filling and lighting a pipe. Then he crosses the street. On the opposite side a small bowlegged dog is tied by its leash to an ashcan; the bearded man unhitches it, and they walk toward the beach. Wispy tendrils of fog reach in from the ocean, and the man and his dog vanish before they reach the boardwalk.

  Inside the café the Negro trumpeter has stopped seeking openings between Stuart’s lines; he now plays an eerie looping riff under the poet’s chants, and the altoist follows suit with a moaning ostinato of his own. The bass drum hits grow more frequent and forceful until they merge into a great subterranean tremor, and now Stuart seems not to be speaking words at all, just a torrent of gibberish that sounds as if it should make sense but resolutely does not. Stanley’s eyes sweep the crowd—John standing on his chair, Alex sliding a hand under Lyn’s skirt, the blond girl sinking down the wall and disappearing—then close their lids. The music that comes across the room seems to pin him to the brick. He can no longer distinguish the sax from the trumpet, the trumpet from the drums, the drums from Stuart’s voice. And now all the sounds are gone, vanished into themselves, into a sheet of uniform noise that encompasses everything.

  A moment later Stanley’s on the curb outside the café, gulping cool air, uncertain of how he got here. Music comes from behind him in a muffled blur, clarifying briefly whenever the door opens. His fingers are curled around his bandaged leg; the gash on his calf has opened again. A brown shadow streaks the middle of the white bandage, wider and darker at the bottom.

  Dudley looks deserted all the way to the boardwalk. In the glow of beachfront streetlamps Stanley can see pedestrians in the gap between storefronts, none of them walking a dog. Fog spreads over the ocean, and the full moon slides behind it, smeared and haloed, as if wrapped in a nylon stocking. As Stanley watches, the promenade clears. No one is visible in any direction. The atmosphere is heavy, stagnant, like air trapped in an unlit room. Everything seems unreal: a movie set, built just for Stanley and the ginger-bearded man.

  His head swims as he rises from the pavement. He shuts his eyes and waits for the colors that swirl behind his lids to dim and slow. Then he opens them, and begins to limp as quickly as he can toward the beach.

  21

  The tips of breakers wink in the dark, copper-tinted by the light from shore, and the waves sound like the breath of hidden sleepers. Stanley’s skin is filmed with sweat by the time he’s reached the boardwalk, but his legs are firm beneath him and he’s making good time. The streetlamps shine through the fog—a string of dull rhinestones linking Santa Monica to the oilfield—and beneath them the ginger-bearded man and his dog are nowhere to be seen.

  Patchy crowds are gathered at Windward to the south and the Avalon Ballroom to the north, but this stretch of boardwalk is nearly empty. Two dismounted bikers in leather jackets and tight bluejeans come up on Stanley’s right, lapping at icecream cones, and one of them gives Stanley a long look as they pass. Fuck you, Stanley says.

  The biker shrugs, walks on, and now Stanley is alone. He wonders what time it is. Late, he guesses: after midnight. He wonders whether he shouldn’t go back to the café. Shoreline Dogs are bound to be in the neighborhood, cruising for trouble, and it’d be ugly to run across them in his current shape. Besides, the ginger-bearded man is probably asleep at home by now.

  Stanley takes a long look south, sifting figures on the boardwalk one by one to the limits of his vision. Dim green lights on the crowns of distant oil-derricks poke over the roofs of shops. Stanley hears the drone of twin engines, then sees landing lights angle toward the airport: backward comets streaking the fog. He watches the plane till it’s gone. Then he steps onto the beach, hooding his eyes to expand their pupils. The moon is a blue smudge high over the water, lighting up the whole western sky.

  When the sand feels firm and damp beneath his feet he sinks to his knees and sights up and down the shore, scanning the pattern of light at the sea’s edge: the white sand, the black water, the reflections splintered in the waves. This is a trick he has taught himself. As he kneels, he thinks of his long trip across the country, of a simple game he’d play to pass the time in boxcars. He’d look through the narrow gap of the sliding door and try to keep a count of what he saw: bridges, roads, barns, roosting hawks. At first, he played in competition with other bored hobos—it was something everybody did—but the game soon became frustrating, awkward. No one was ever any match for him. In fact, the other tramps were often unwilling to concede that things he spotted with little effort were possible to see at all. Stanley kept playing, but kept the game to himself, and over time he grew more ambitious, trying to count telephone poles, doves startled into flight, bathtub gondolas on passing trains—even, during one particularly slow stretch, all the crossties from Winslow to Flagstaff. The trick was to synchronize his vision to the rhythm of light as it flashed between objects. That pulse became a kind of code for Stanley. With it he could read just about anything.

  Early last September, over a Sunday poker game in the bunkhouse of a cattle ranch in New Mexico, or maybe Colorado, it occurred to him that there might be a way to apply this same idea to the shuffle of a deck of cards. So far he’s been lax about pursuing this theory, preoccupied by other concerns.

  The image of the full moon bobs on the water, multiplied into a lattice of ovals and oxbows, and Stanley’s eyes gradually translate it into a neutral screen. Two hundred yards south, maybe halfway to Brooks, a shapeless patch of black emerges: the ginger-bearded man and his dog. They’re meandering, changing direction. Stanley moves to put himself between them and the boardwalk, keeping them skylit as he goes. He can’t make out the man’s features but his outline is clear. The blackjack in Stanley’s pocket is chafing his thigh; he pulls it out, returns it to the small of his back.

  A thread of pipesmoke carries on the shifting wind. The man is singing to himself, or maybe to the dog, in a language Stanley can’t place. It’s not Claudio’s Spanish, nor the Italian of the neighbor lady back home, but it’s like them. The man is walking toward Stanley now, closing the distance. Stanley keeps silent, holds his ground. He can see the orange glow of the
man’s pipe as he sucks on it, the trail of smoke, the quavering air above its bowl. The night seems brittle, as if held together by an invisible armature of glass. A single word could shatter everything.

  When he’s about fifteen feet away, the man spots Stanley. He gasps, comes to a halt. The dog strains at its leash, snuffling, then springs as if snakebit and starts to bark.

  Hello, Stanley says. Excuse me.

  The man switches the leash to his left hand; his right hand goes behind his back. He wears a tweed jacket over a sweater, the textures of the fabrics barely discernable in the dark. Stanley swallows hard.

  I didn’t see you there, the man says. You gave me a start.

  It’s okay, mister. I don’t mean you no trouble.

  The man’s voice is tight, but steady. He seems scared. His right hand remains hidden. You shouldn’t be alone on this beach at night, he says. It’s not safe.

  Stanley holds his arms out, spreads his fingers, but the man isn’t relaxing. His outline is shrinking back, balling up, and Stanley is pretty sure he’s about to get shot. For so long he has thought of what to say at this moment, but now nothing comes. All words seem to flee from him. He feels his mouth opening, closing. Adrian Welles? he says.

  The man is stock-still, silent, an inert blot on the ocean’s silver curtain. The two of them stand there, not breathing, for what seems like a long time. Stanley is aware of the dog as it growls and paws the sand.

  Who are you? the man says.

  When Stanley speaks again, the voice that rises to his throat is utterly unfamiliar. In past moments of mortal terror his voice has sometimes reverted to that of his younger self; at other moments, when he’s been sad or tired, he’s heard his voice grow suddenly older, as if presaging a person he might one day become. But the voice that speaks now is neither of these. It belongs to someone unknown, from another life. Listen to it closely. You will never hear this voice again.

  Are you Adrian Welles? Stanley says.

  But he already knows the answer, and he is no longer afraid.

  22

  Welles is backing up, winding and bunching the dog’s leash. Trembling a bit. An old man in the dark. Don’t come any closer, he says. I have a pistol, and I will use it.

  I been looking for you, Mister Welles, Stanley says. I don’t mean you any harm. You or your dog. I just want to talk about your book.

  Welles takes a shallow breath, lets it out. My book, he says.

  Yes sir. Your book. The Mirror Thief.

  Stanley has never spoken the title aloud before. It feels clumsy in his mouth, and he regrets saying it. Loosed on the air, the words seem lifeless, insufficient for what they name.

  Who are you? Welles says. Who sent you here?

  This strikes Stanley as an odd question. Nobody sent me, he says. I just came.

  Welles adjusts his footing on the sand. Then he says something in a foreign language. It sounds like Hebrew. Pardon me? Stanley says.

  Welles repeats the phrase. It’s not Hebrew.

  I’m sorry, Mister Welles, but I don’t have any goddamn idea what you just said.

  What is your name, son?

  I’m Stanley.

  Your full name. What is it?

  Stanley can’t see the man’s face well enough to read his expression. His short fingers are still absently gathering his dog’s leash. His spectacles pick up the coppery glare from the boardwalk, and both lenses are split down the middle by a dark shape, like the pupil of a cat’s eye, which Stanley realizes is his own shadow.

  Glass, Stanley says. It’s Stanley Glass. Sir.

  Welles’s right hand comes back into view. He wipes it against his jacket, rests it on his hip, lets it drop to his side. I saw you tonight, he says. In the café. Why didn’t you say something to me then?

  I wasn’t sure it was you at first. I thought maybe, but I didn’t know. You, uh, probably oughta slack up on that leash a little bit, Mister Welles.

  The leather braid has spooled thickly around Welles’s first two fingers, and the dog is twisting and backpedaling, thrashing the air with its forelegs, winched partway off the sand. Its growls have faded to a jowly sputter. Oh, Welles says. Yes.

  Stanley looks out to sea, then down at the beach. He shuffles his feet, nervous again. He has so many questions, a labyrinth in his mind, one that seems at no point to intersect with the realm of normal human speech. This is much harder than he expected. I read your book, he says.

  Yes.

  And I have some questions about it.

  Yes. All right.

  I’m not real sure how to ask them, though.

  At Welles’s back, the waves mutter softly. Down the shore, the foghorn sounds. It must have been sounding all night, but Stanley hasn’t noticed it.

  Would you mind, Welles says, if we went back to the boardwalk? There are a lot of dope addicts and juvenile delinquents on this beach at night, and it’s better not to stay too long in the dark.

  Uh, sure. That’s fine.

  Welles sets out on a diagonal path away from the water; the dog scurries after him. Stanley follows, then pulls forward to walk by his side. I’m sorry if we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, Welles says. Recent events have made me preoccupied, perhaps overmuch, with my own safety. Although not without some justification. At any rate, I hope you’ll forgive me. My evening stroll is generally south to Windward Avenue, at which point I turn back. But tonight, provided Pompey will oblige us, I think we should walk through town. I can give you a little tour. What say you, old chum?

  Stanley’s opened his mouth to answer before he realizes that Welles is speaking to the dog. It marches on, not acknowledging the question, announcing every step with a tiny snort.

  As they approach the streetlamps Welles’s broad face takes shape: tanned, small-nosed, creased around the mouth and across the forehead. Large blue eyes. Hair and beard flecked with white. Nothing about him is remarkable. Stanley figures him for about fifty.

  They hit the boardwalk at the point where the storefront colonnade begins its long southward run. Welles stops, empties his pipe over an ashcan, and pulls a tobacco tin from an inside pocket. The dog pisses against the side of the can, stretching its hind leg skyward like a midway contortionist. Its fur is lustrous red and white; its small face is bug-eyed, short-snouted, terrifically ugly. It peeks from under velvety ears like Winston Churchill in a Maureen O’Hara wig.

  You say you’ve been looking for me, Welles says. I don’t think I’ve seen you in the café before. Do you live nearby?

  We’re staying in a squat off Horizon Court. Me and my pal. We been here going on three weeks now. We were working the groves in Riverside before that.

  But you don’t come from Riverside originally.

  No sir. My partner’s a wetback Mexican, and I’m from Brooklyn.

  Brooklyn! You’re a long way from home. How old are you, if I may ask?

  I’m sixteen.

  Do your parents know where you are?

  My dad died in Korea, Mister Welles, and my mother’s pretty well lost her mind. There’s nobody back home who’s missing me.

  I am very sorry to hear that. What branch of the service was your father in?

  The Army. Seventh Infantry. He fought the Japs in Okinawa and the Philippines, and he reenlisted. He got killed at Heartbreak Ridge.

  He must have been very brave. He must have loved his country.

  He was brave. He was good at being a soldier, and he liked it. He never said too much about his country.

  Welles smiles, puts the pipe in his mouth. He strikes a match, lets it burn for a second, and moves it in tight circles over the briarwood bowl. When the tobacco is smoldering, he tamps it out, packs it again. I was in the Army myself, he says. I was at Anzio, in the summer of 1944. But I was in payroll—I am by trade an accountant—so I was able to avoid the worst of the fighting. I was very glad when the war ended. It upset me profoundly.

  He looks up from the pipe and narrows his eyes. I met you once before, he s
ays. You were running a card game on the boardwalk.

  Yeah. That was me.

  I won a dollar from you.

  Stanley looks down, bashful. You were smart to quit when you did, he says. I don’t let nobody win more than a dollar.

  You’re a gambler! Welles says. You live by skill and fortune. Goddamn it, I’m intensely envious of you. That’s been one of my romantic fantasies, ever since I was a lad. To be a riverboat gambler. With a white linen suit, and a derringer in my pocket.

  You got me pegged wrong, Mister Welles. That boardwalk game is a straight con. I play cards a little bit, sure, but I’m no gambler.

  Oh, of course you are, Welles says. Of course you are. At any given moment, you may be certain of the cards, but the other man—your opponent, your mark—you can never be certain of what he perceives, what he thinks, what he will do. You still place yourself, more or less reverently, at Fortune’s behest. And that’s all gambling amounts to. Isn’t it?

  Stanley furrows his brow. I guess so, he says.

  Welles lights his pipe again, puffs to get it going, slowly shakes out the match. He drops the blackened curl of the matchstick in the ashcan, stares at the space where it fell, smoking intently. Then he takes the pipe from his teeth and points its stem toward the arches and columns of the penny arcade on the corner.

  This may be of interest to you, he says. These buildings along the boardwalk all date from 1905. Abbot Kinney’s original construction. They’ve changed quite a bit over the years—fallen into disrepair, as one says—but you can still get a sense of how it was. Notice the quaint approximation of Byzantine-Gothic architecture in the loggia. Done, if I’m not mistaken, in the style of Bartolomeo Bon. Shall we walk to Windward?

  The dog lurches ahead as if it knows the route. Fog rings the streetlamps with aureoles; a few figures huddle beneath them. Two blocks up, a group of five bored Shoreline Dogs is playing mumbledypeg in the sand. Some look familiar: from the Fox theater, or maybe from the chase through the neighborhood, Stanley can’t be sure. They sneer and glare at Stanley as he and Welles pass, but Welles seems not to notice.