Dagger Key and Other Stories

by Lucius Shepard

  You’re becoming accustomed to her use of homespun aphorisms, but still it tends to piss you off, as do the lectures that invariably follow. But you’re too worn out by the reasoned exercise of passion to do other than listen.

  “People today are like tigers who’ve forgotten how to be tigers,” she says, moving toward the door. “Which explains why everything’s so fucked. We have to teach ourselves to be tigers together. That’s how we’ll last. I realize I haven’t been forthcoming with you, and I realize that makes you crazy, because you’re the inquisitive type. We have to push back the limits slowly, gradually reveal our natures. You’ll learn everything about me in time. And about yourself. Until then we need to snarl and claw on occasion, and let sex heal us.” She pauses in the doorway, gives her sash a final tug. “Want something to eat?”

  Each Friday you catch an early bus to the U District and prepare for your 11 o’clock seminar in one of the coffee shops along the Ave. One morning in late May, while you’re poring over an article on protozoan genomes amid conversational clutter and the smells of exotic grinds, a little man stops beside your table, bracing on his cane. He’s got snappish blue eyes edged by crowsfeet and deep lines bracketing his mouth and unkempt reddish-brown hair and beard that make it seem he’s peering at you through a hedge. It’s an odd face, an old young face like a leprechaun’s. Hard to put an age to him. He could be in his late twenties or, just as easily, in his forties. He has on scruffy jeans and a denim jacket covered in patches that celebrate Jimi Hendrix, marijuana, Peter Tosh, and a sampling of leftist political causes. His torso is twisted—there appears to be something wrong with his spine. With a labored movement, he lowers himself into the chair opposite, draws a deep breath and releases it unsteadily.

  “So you’re her latest,” he says; then he cocks his head and says in an altogether different voice, a reedy British voice, “Latest what?, you might ask. Lover? That would be the obvious assumption.” He leans forward, pushing into your space. “Perhaps he’s referring to something else. Something more sinister, eh?”

  You’re accustomed to being approached by whack jobs—the U District is their natural habitat—and experience has taught you to be brusque. Yet in this instance, you’re pretty sure that “she” refers to Abi and you ask him what he’s talking about.

  “About Abimagique.” He stares at you intently. “Your fat whore. Are you aware you’re sleeping with a fucking monster?”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  “It cost me a lot of pain to come here today, man. You need to hear this.”

  You begin stowing books and papers in your pack.

  “My name’s Richard Reiner,” he says, and tries to connect with your eyes—you look away, make a pretense of signaling the waitress. Maybe he knows Abi, but he’s still a whack job.

  You tell him your name’s Carl, thinking it would be unwise to tell this madman your actual name. His face tightens, he swallows dry. Managing his pain, you suppose.

  “I met her five years ago,” he says. “She wasn’t my type, but there was something about her. You know what I mean. Once you hook up with her, it’s like an addiction.”

  You say, “Yeah,” to keep him moving along, certain that his experience with Abi—if, indeed, he had one—could have nothing in common with yours, though his reference to addiction strikes a chord.

  “She lived in the same house, wore the same clothes. Looked the same. Nothing ever changes for her. Anyway, I moved in with her. Just like you.”

  “How do you know that? About me moving in?”

  “Because I been checking you out, Carl,” he says, giving the name a sardonic emphasis. “You want to be Carl, that’s fine with me. But don’t think…”

  You zip up the backpack, scrape back your chair.

  “Hey! Where you going?” Reiner grips your forearm, but you shake him off. You’ve heard enough to validate your judgment. The guy’s a flake, possibly a dangerous stalker.

  “The thing she does when you fuck,” he says. “The thing with your lower back? You don’t want to let her do that anymore.”

  That surprises you. Angry at Abi for using that trick, one you’ve come to relish, with another man, and angry at Reiner for forcing you to confront what seems, against ordinary logic, an intimate betrayal on her part, you ask, “Why not?”

  “She’ll turn you into a cripple, man. Before she did it to me, my spine wasn’t a fucking corkscrew. I could walk more than ten steps without having to stop. That shit she makes you eat…all that fucking seaweed and algae and herbs. I think that’s tied with it. I think it makes you susceptible. Or maybe there’s drugs in it and that’s how she keeps you under control.” He grabs your arm again as you try to stand. “It’s the truth!! I was her first…”

  The waitress materializes and you order another Americano, tell her you’ll pick it up at the counter. She asks Reiner what he’s having and he says impatiently, “Nothing, okay?” and glares at her until she walks away. “I was the first,” he goes on. “But she’s done it to six other guys. There might be more, for all I know. Here…” He two-fingers a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and pushes it toward you. You unfold the paper and look at the six names and addresses written thereon. One, belonging to someone named Phil Minz, sticks in your mind, because it’s in a building where you used to live.

  “She must have fucked it up with me,” Reiner says. “Punched the wrong buttons. Or maybe she just needed more practice, because the others are all in wheelchairs.”

  “I have a class,” you say.

  “You’re not hearing me!” Reiner slaps the table, frustrated. “I used to be into it, man. Way she’d slip her hands down there and start poking around. I was like all…” He puts on a show of panting rapidly, like a dog. “I couldn’t wait for her to set me off. And then this one day, it was like she hits me with the A-bomb. I was fucking drooling. In a stupor. Jesus couldn’t have made me feel any better. The next morning, I was all seized up. Not like I am now. It got worse over a period of about six weeks. But she did it to me. The doctors, they can’t say what happened. When I tell ’em, they don’t come right out and laugh, but…” Reiner leans back and rests his cane across his knees. “You’re not laughing. You know what I’m talking about.”

  His manner seems rational, though what he’s telling you does not. Yet you’ve had a recurrence of back trouble since you and Abi became lovers, and you’ve been blaming it on too much sex. “Why would she do that?” you ask. “Even if she could…which I’m not buying.”

  “You want to understand her motivations, ask her. I thought maybe she’d messed up with me. Y’know, like it was some kind of dangerous technique and she went too far. But six other guys, that tells me different.”

  You stand and shoulder your pack.

  “C’mon, man! Talk to her! If it’s bullshit, what’s the fuck’s the harm in talking?”

  The waitress pops back over and cautions you to keep it down or you’ll have to leave.

  “I’m leaving,” you say.

  Reiner struggles to his feet. “You want to end up like this…or worse? Do you?”

  You make silent apology to the waitress, slip her a couple of dollars.

  “What do you think I’m doing here?” says Reiner as you head for the door. “I’m trying to break you two up? I want to spare you from suffering my fate? I’m crazy but well-intentioned? Fuck you! I want you to make the bitch pay! After that you can fucking die!”

  That night before making love, lying with Abi in bed, you tell her about Reiner and show her the list of addresses. Her silence makes you feel contrite, as if you’re confessing, as if you’re guilty for having listened to Reiner. When you’re done, when she says, “I’m sorry,” it’s like she’s bestowing a benediction.

  “What’re you sorry for?” you ask. “Some whacko running around saying shit? I shouldn’t even have told you.”

  “You needed to tell me,” she says. “Otherwise I couldn’t clear things up.”

  “Y
ou don’t have to clear anything up. I only told you because I thought you’d want to know.”

  She shifts closer, a breast nudging your arm. “Richard was a client. He’s right about one thing. I did make a mistake with him, I got too involved. When I broke it off, I tried to maintain the friendship, but…I should have seen how psychologically damaged he was. He became irrational. He accused me of making him worse. Now he’s taken it a step further.”

  You rush to assure her everything’s cool, you didn’t give what Reiner said any weight, but she goes on as if she hasn’t heard.

  “The diet,” she says. “I’m trying to keep us healthy. I realize it’s not what you’re used to, but…I don’t know. I can try fixing you a separate meal. I won’t cook meat, though. I don’t even want it in the house. If you need meat, you’ll have to get it somewhere else. This…” She reaches behind her and fumbles for the list. “These are some of my current clients. They are in wheelchairs, but all of my clients are incapacitated in some way. I’m not sure how he got their names. Perhaps he followed me.” She lets the scrap of paper fall between you. “If you don’t want me to manipulate your back when we make love, I understand.”

  “No, I mean, if you want to, it’s all right.” You’re eager to compensate for the weakness you’ve shown, for half-believing a lunatic, for injuring her.

  “I do it to increase our pleasure. To hurry you, so you’ll come when I do. I like it when we finish together.”

  “I do, too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  You kiss, you apologize for doubting her, she apologizes for getting mad, you say you didn’t notice, her anger as mild as her passion, and you kiss again, a deeper kiss. Soon you’re moving together and the shadows crouched in the corners, the hum and gurgle of the pump on the empty aquarium, the candle flames on the night table flickering…you’re aware of these things as extensions of her. They’re her shadows, her flames, her humid breath. Even you are in process of becoming her, an immersion in another human being such as you’ve never known before, and when her hands slide down to the small of your back, her touch tentative, you encourage her, you submit to her. Afterward, dim with pleasure, you recall what Reiner said, how he didn’t notice any ill effects until the next day. But you’re secure in the moment and, holding Abi spoon style, you indulge in one of those passages that come to lovers during which they ask questions that seek to annotate their relationship, trivial questions like, When did you know? and What did you feel then? and When was the first time you looked at me…I mean really looked? You find yourself asking what was it that attracted her to you? She says it wasn’t anything specific. But you insist, you say, “There must’ve been something you noticed first.”

  “Your eyes,” she says. “Your beautiful blue eyes. I’d like to have babies with those eyes.”

  This being the first mention ever of babies, you’re a little uneasy, but you decide she’s speaking more-or-less in the abstract.

  “Yeah,” you say, trying to sound on the positive side of neutral. “That’d be nice someday.”

  She makes a forlorn noise and says, “I don’t know if there’ll be time.”

  After puzzling over the comment, you realize it probably refers to her sense of foreboding about an imminent doomsday. You’ve begun to think that her obsession with the end of the world is responsible for her emotional detachment and that she doesn’t allow herself to become exuberant about anything, because she sees the inevitable downside. You don’t know what to tell her, so you hold her more tightly. Ten or fifteen seconds flow past and she says, “I don’t believe you understand how serious things are.”

  You’re astonished that she wants to get into this now, that she’s willing to trash the afterglow in order to pound on the lectern and talk about the death of nations. You start to say as much, but she cuts you off.

  “No, listen! It’s very important that you listen,” she says. “Our future depends on it.”

  You tell her, grumpily, to go ahead.

  “I know you think I’m a nut…”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is.” She disengages from you, rolls onto her back and locks you with her eyes. “You humor me. You love me in spite of it. But you think I’m nuts. That’s all right. I’m used to it. And I realize nothing I say now is going to change things. But I want you to try, hard as you can, to give me the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Of course I will. You know…”

  She puts a finger to your lips. “Just listen. I want you to try to accept that I know certain things, things you don’t know. And I want you to try to accept that this knowledge has an important application. You won’t be able to do it right away, but I want you to try in any case, because there’s going to come a moment when you’ll have to trust me. And if you don’t, everything we’ve working toward will be destroyed.”

  “I’m…What am I supposed to trust you about?”

  “Everything. You’ll have to place your trust in me completely. Do you think you can do that? No matter how things look? I think you can. I think we have that kind of potential.”

  “It sounds like you’re talking about something dangerous.”

  “Love’s dangerous,” she says. “And these are dangerous times to be in love. Do you believe that?”

  How can you disbelieve such a melodramatic challenge, with her eyes boring into you and her breath heating your skin?

  “Promise you’ll always remember this conversation,” she goes on. “If you do, if you can remember us, the way we are this minute, everything will be all right.”

  The pump gurgles loudly, the hum cycles down, and the damp smell of the firs is carried inward on a breeze “Do you trust me?” you ask.

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Then why not tell me what’s up? And this stuff about you knowing things I don’t…what do you know? What’s the situation going to be when I have to trust you completely?”

  “I think for us,” she says, “trust has to be like when we make love. It has to come together, you giving your trust and me giving mine, at the moment when we want it the most.”

  You’re uncertain of the metaphor, but you think you understand what she means.

  “Promise me,” she demands, pressing her body against you.

  Though you’re no longer clear as to what you’re promising, you promise. She clasps your head in both her hands and looks at you for a long time, searching below the surface glints and gleams for whatever hides in you from ordinary light. At last, apparently satisfied, she pulls you close and tells you all the things she wants you to do to her, whispering them sweetly, almost demurely, as if concerned that God and his angels might overhear.

  Over the summer, you give up hamburgers. You’ve become so accustomed to Abi’s food that even the smell of a burger makes you nauseous. It’s a small thing to have given up—you’ve never been so happy. The way things are going, if you and Abi were traditional types, you’d be renting out a church and looking into rings. You run into Reiner occasionally and whenever he tries to accost you, you sprint away, leaving him to yell some madness about Abi in your wake. One day in the fall, you’re coming back from a meeting with your thesis committee, a distinctly unpleasant meeting, your work’s been slipping badly, and Reiner limps from the doorway of a used CD store directly into your path. Your temper flares and you push him back into the doorway and tell him to keep the fuck away from you or you’ll bring in the cops.

  His laughter has an unsound ring. “You can’t threaten a dead man.”

  You become aware again of your surroundings, of passers-by slowing their pace and staring, of two long-haired guys inside the CD store who appear ready to intervene, to rescue the cripple, and you take a step back.

  “Those addresses I gave you…you never checked them out, did you?” Reiner asks. “You haven’t done anything.”

  You start to turn away, but he grabs a handful of your jacket and hangs on. “What’ll it cost you to
check ’em out? Just check out one of ’em!”

  “They’re her clients, man!”

  “She made them her clients! She crippled them.”

  You twist free of his grasp.

  “You still have the addresses?” Reiner asks.

  You tell him you do, you’ll check them out, and hurry off.

  “Didn’t she even leave you one ball?” he shouts.

  The scrap of paper bearing the addresses is long gone, but you still remember the one, the building you used to live in, and a month later, walking past that building, you have a what-the-hell moment and stop to inspect the directory. Phil Minz, 1F. Once inside, you walk down a corridor past apartments A through E, and catch sight of a harried-looking gray-haired man wearing a coverall coming out of F, preparing to lock the door. You inquire of him and he tells you that Minz moved out last week. They took him, he thinks, to a clinic somewhere. Maybe in California. He’s only now getting around to inspecting the place.

  “The apartment’s available?” you ask.

  “Yeah, but I won’t be showing it until after it’s cleaned.”

  “Can I take a look?”

  He hesitates.

  “You know how hard it is to find an apartment this close to the campus,” you tell him. “Let me take a quick look?”

  A beat-up sofa in the living room, some paper trash on the floor. The back room is empty but for a queen-sized bed stripped of covers and, on a counter recessed in the wall, an aquarium filled with greenish water, pump gurgling, empty of fish.

  “Guy left his fish tank behind,” the super says unnecessarily.

  “What kind of fish did he have?” You peer into the tank, searching for signs of habitation, for algae, fish grunge, food debris. Thoughtful of them to clean a tank that was going to be abandoned.

  “Hell, I don’t know.” The super joins you at the tank and for a second you’re both peering into it, like curious giants into a tiny lifeless sea. “I never had to come into the apartment when he was here.”

  The presence of an empty fish tank is an odd coincidence, but you doubt it’s other than that. It’s conceivable that Abi thought the sound of the pump might soothe her patient, and it’s more likely that she had nothing whatsoever to do with it, that there were fish in the tank and someone did a cleaning. You promise yourself that you won’t let Reiner undermine your feelings anymore. Abi’s flaws aren’t mysterious or sinister. They’re human flaws and if they have an underlying explanation, it must have something to do with her past, with whatever secret she’s keeping. She says that someday she’ll tell you about it. Someday when the two of you are closer.