I had known Ms. Green intimately, I thought as I walked along through the bright sunlight and clean, cool air. That was part of the case. As was John’s involvement in it. Clearly, I would have to pay another visit to the boss.
I did (I imagined).
So you’ve come, he said. You could hear a faint electric whirring. See the occasional electric flash.
I’ve come about Ms. Green, I said. In relation to the case.
The case? he said.
I have been engaged.
By who?
By you.
Was it me?
Yes, I believe it was you.
Look at my train.
Yes, I see your train. There were others in his office. There were always others. John was there. But John wasn’t important, not at this moment; at this moment the boss was important. Ms. Green, Lyla Green, was important.
Tell me about your relationship with Ms. Green, Mr. Smith, I said.
Are you calling me Mr. Smith?
I am.
Good, very good. I sent her to see you, he said.
Which time?
He laughed. He stepped out into the light beside a small mountain just as the silver train swept by.
Each time, he said.
I’ve been shot, I said.
I know.
Is he here too?
The boss gestured. The individual with the cracked tooth came forward. He smiled. He lifted a finger to his mouth and blew on it.
It was you I followed, I said, speaking to the boss, Mr. Smith. You were my first client’s husband. I followed you to a house, your home.
The boss, Mr. Smith, nodded (I speculated).
I had reached my office.
My secretary greeted me with donuts and bandages. I accepted a donut but not the bandages.
Bandages are no good, I said.
Well then let me clean it, he said.
I allowed him to daub my neck with iodine.
This hurt.
They paid me too well not to go along with them, he said.
Who paid you?
They paid me too well to tell you.
Has Ms. Green been here this morning?
No.
Please call her.
Certainly.
Please also call John.
Why John?
It occurs to me that John may have killed me.
But of course John hadn’t killed me. Or so he said when he came into my office a little later.
Come on, would I hit my best friend repeatedly on the head with a blunt instrument?
I was almost at my office and I wasn’t thinking quite as clearly. My cognitive powers were fading. The pain in my neck was reasserting itself. Aware that whatever reprieve I had been granted was ending, I redoubled my efforts — this time focusing my speculations on the missing part of the evening I tailed my first client’s husband.
He had knocked on the green metal door and had entered. A moment later I had followed. It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the gloom and for my mind to accept the chaos of ruined machines and sickly blinking lights. When I could both see and make sense, or some sense, of what I was seeing, I made my way through the machines (I had no idea what they were for) to a point of great light, an emanation within the darkness, a lamp-lit clearing at the center of the machines. Within that emanation (I stayed outside of it, neatly hidden, or so I thought, behind an enormous coil of wire) I perceived, and the sight was horrifying … but even speculation couldn’t take me that far.
Now, of course, I can see quite clearly what I couldn’t even imagine then. But now it doesn’t particularly help me to do so. Nothing, in fact, particularly helps me, so it is not at all surprising that I have so much trouble in carrying out even the smallest tasks.
Take for instance my latest assignment, which, with the aid of charts and texts, is to peer into a telescope pointed up into the night sky, and to make notes on what I see. It is information for an equation, I am told, but I have not been told what the equation is for. The equation is part of another equation, being the only explanation I have yet received. Be that as it may, I am unable, I am told, even to correctly fulfill this task. Just as, all those years ago, I was unable to correctly solve my case and later, when I joined the other organization, this organization, having been forced to leave the transactions firm, to carry out what should have been the simplest of assignments.
I have just recently had my legs broken and set. This event has sparked my thinking on this subject, these subjects.
I am recuperating. My hours in the observatory, while I do so, have been cut back. I am allowed to lie in my bed and look out the window. It is winter again. My bed has been pulled back far enough away from the window so that, lying here, I cannot see the people below on the street, though I can hear them. They are always speaking, these people, there is always sound. When I am here I am connected to several machines, which blink dully. I am not, of course, connected to any machines when I am in the observatory. Unless you count my oxygen canister. But that is a contraption, not a machine. Incidentally, all those who have not had the benefit of cool oxygen from a canister should indulge themselves. I sit by the telescope and peer into it and make my notations and, cannister on a stand beside me, breathe. I am not, you see, entirely sure what it is I am looking for, what I am meant to detect. This despite many explanations and threats of further punishment.
It is not as though I have never spent time looking at the stars. I used to spend whole evenings lying in the yard. We had dogs then. Or a dog. The dog would lie in the dirt beside me. It was as I was lying there in the dirt beside the dog looking up at the stars that they first, they claimed, found me keening. Any excuse would do. I mean for the accusations, not for the keening. I couldn’t move, this was true. I couldn’t speak, this was true. But I didn’t keen. And my immobility was due only to the fact that I had ceased to be able to recognize what was spread above me as the night sky filled with stars. There were no stars. No sky. There was some black with imprecise white marks on it. White smudges. Nothing moved, nothing gleamed. It was as if the entire night sky had died. Or as if I had died. Am I dead? I was finally, when the sky began to seem to move again, able to ask them. Which no doubt contributed, once this remark had circulated, to the rumors.
What I am discussing now is context, clearly. Dirt and immobility and stars.
Mr. Smith, I said.
He was waiting for me on one of the chairs in my secretary’s little room.
I have come, he said, to see what progress you have made on the case.
Quite a bit, in fact, I said. I’ve just been engaged in the most fruitful speculations. Let’s go into my office and discuss it.
I ushered Mr. Smith into my office and shot my secretary, who was all smiles and insistent gestures of contrition, a meaningful look. Meaning, don’t move, I’m going to come back out of this office and fire you.
Mr. Smith took his seat and I took mine and we both smiled at each other.
Shall I begin? I said.
Please do, he said.
But before I could begin talking, he had begun talking.
I see, I said. After a certain interval I said this again.
Now you, he said.
What should I tell you?
Anything you like.
So I told him about the years I had spent on the farm after my father had died, about the small bedroom in the attic, about the books, about the basement, about the blue jay that used to screech in the fruit trees.