And Junior? Is he doing some project with his crossbow about now, or what?
He is not. Not at this moment, anyway.
Likewise, it is also possible to think you have touched a thing when you have not, and to believe you have remained untouched when this is not the case.
“At that moment,” the Captain says, “Ali Khan looked up at me. ‘My dear Captain,’ he said, accompanying his words with a sort of smirk, ‘forgive me, but I just remembered. It seems I have a certain successful cousin whose specialty is surgery of the brain, and most important, in terms of our current problem, he is at present under disciplinary suspension for neglecting to wash his hands before he operates. I have known my cousin — Piggy, as I call him — since we both were children, and in addition to being a surgeon, I can promise you he excels at filling out government forms. What do you say I ring him up and see if he has any free time?’
“‘That would be excellent,’ I told him.
“‘In that case, there is one small matter we need to discuss,’ said Ali Khan.
“I pretended I didn’t already know what he had in mind. ‘What is that?’
“‘It is this,’ he said. ‘While I am sure your initial estimate of one or two hundred dollars an hour is more than generous for an ordinary person — indeed, it would seem a fortune to a person such as myself — for my cousin, who is a professional man and whose usual fees are far greater, he would surely consider such a modest amount to be an insult.’
“‘How much do you think he would consider fair?’ I asked.
“‘To take just one example,’ said Ali Khan, ‘his fee for a simple lobotomy, which takes only about thirty minutes, start to finish, is the equivalent of five hundred US dollars and, even as quickly as Piggy works, it is my professional opinion you will need a minimum of five hours to complete such paperwork.’
“‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And Piggy, when he performs his surgeries, does he give his patients any anesthesia?’
“‘Of course,’ said Ali Khan.
“‘In that case,’ I said, ‘assuming that the anesthesiologist charges three hundred dollars an hour, then wouldn’t Piggy’s rate actually be closer to seven hundred dollars per hour?’
“‘An interesting point,’ Ali Khan replied. ‘Let me discuss it with Piggy.’ And from somewhere beneath his papers he pulled out a black, old-fashioned dial telephone, dialed, spoke an incomprehensible dialect into the receiver, then listened, spoke, and listened again. At last, putting a hand over the mouthpiece, he turned to me and said, ‘Piggy says his anesthesiologist only charges one hundred an hour.’”
The Captain pauses and looks out over the crowd. They are mine, he thinks, my audience, with the possible exception of one agitated individual, a bearded throwback from another era wearing a kind of lumberjack shirt of black-and-red plaid who is pacing in the back of the room. Possibly some kind of psychopath? The man looks slightly familiar, but the Captain has no idea where he’s seen him — if he has. He stands up straighter, then delivers the one line that never fails to elicit applause, a line that has already made its way into the public discourse even though most of its users are unaware of the source: “‘Then you tell Piggy he should get a better anesthesiologist.’”
Laughter. Applause. Death Quotient: practically zero.
But never zero, because a thing can’t be zero, can it?
Can it?
At this very moment Jeffery is alone in his room at the Burrow, listening to the faint sounds of grinding and thinking about the deep sadness of all stories, including his own life’s narrative. A story is born — his own — a trajectory begun; and presto, in that instant a death foretold: the spot where the bullet of his existence will strike the earth is preordained. So every person’s story, he thinks, ends in the murder of its hero and his, alas, is no exception.
Far better for Jeffery on nights such as these, is the freedom of confusion, of incoherency, even outright dementia and Alzheimer’s, where, taking a seat on a train with one’s back to the locomotive, a person looks out on an endless expanse of receded time, stares at shabby neighborhoods, looks down on people picking their noses in cars beneath the window, or gazes overhead at the incomprehensible schedules, the public service announcements, but never, never can see forward to a final destination. No, best of all is the rider who dozes, perhaps waking for a moment to say a word or two to the passenger next to him or to nobody, then falls again to sleep until the station arrives, or rather the rider comes to the station, and is taken by surprise because here it is — as if by magic — the city, the house, the Burrow.
What a pretentious fuck you are, Jeffery thinks. But still, if a person knows he is pretentious, then maybe he’s not.
So the words have done their magic once again. The crowd comes to its feet with laughter and applause, and the Captain concludes his story by telling how he had to pay the so-called neurosurgeon only eight hundred dollars an hour, thus saving the shipping company a whole thousand dollars. His ship sailed that same afternoon and the cargo of precious tuna was saved.
After that, the usual Q & A follows without a hitch until the man wearing the lumberjack shirt, the same one the Captain noticed pacing in the back of the hall earlier, raises his hand and will not lower it until he is recognized to speak. “Yes?” the Captain finally asks. “What is it? Do you have a question?”
But instead of staying where he is, this man with beady blue eyes, who sports a beard that looks like a lemming has seized his lower jaw and is hanging on for dear life, walks straight to the front of the hall, not ten feet from the lectern where the Captain stands, and plants himself there, apparently struggling to say something that’s important. For a fleeting second the Captain regrets having left the Walther back at the house.
But no, this is no ordinary assassin. There is no homemade bomb, no bullet, no knife. Instead, the question turns out to be much more dangerous. The stranger waits a moment longer, opens his mouth: “Is it true that in the year 1994 you were arrested on the set of an obscure television situation comedy called Mellow Valley for acts unbecoming a sea captain?”
Another theory is that the Burrow is not at all unique, but one of many such places. That unbeknown to the general public, several “outside parties,” in some kind of a franchise operation, have quietly been purchasing any available small hill or mound of earth that might be easily turned into tenant housing, and then renting out apartments cheaply to occupants who are actually only “placeholders” until the actual intended tenants are moved in, a sort of Trojan horse, or series of Trojan horses that one night will open to reveal their true purpose.
But then, what is the true purpose of anything?
To the St. Nils Eagle
Dear Editors,
I wonder if your readers have an extra crossbow or two resting in a closet or stored on a shelf in their garage. If the answer is yes, here’s a chance to bring that old friend back to life!
As most people know, there are scores of former military personnel who, in the course of their service to this country, were injured either by an explosive device or maybe even friendly fire, and as a result have an understandable aversion to loud noises. Yet these brave men and women still possess the “killer instinct” and, finding nowhere to use it in a supportive environment, are often forced to resort to senseless violence and the like.