Jonathan Lethem - Motherless Brooklyn

“We’re almost the same age, Julia,” I said lamely. “I mean, you and me, we were teenagers at pretty much the same time.” She looked at me blankly.

“I met a woman, Julia. Because of this case. She’s like you in certain ways. She studies Zen, just like you did when you met Frank.”

“No woman will ever want you, Lionel.”

“WantmeBailey!”

It was a classic tic, honest and clean. Nothing about Maine or Julia Minna or my profound exhaustion could get in the way of a good, clean, throat-wrenching tic. My maker in his infinite wisdom had provided me with that.

I tried not to listen to what Julia was saying, to focus on the far-off squalling of gulls and splash of surf instead.

“That’s not really true,” she went on. “They might want you. I’ve wanted you a little bit myself. But they’ll never be fair to you, Lionel. Because you’re such a freak.”

“This person is different,” I said. “She’s different from anyone I’ve ever met.” But now I was losing my point. If I made the distinction between Julia and Kimmery plain to Julia, to myself- she’s not as mean as you, could never be so mean -I would only be sorry I’d spoken at all.

“Well, I bet you’re different for her, too. I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.” In her mouth the words happy together came out twisted and harsh.

Crappy however .

Slappy forget her .

I wanted to call Kimmery now, wanted to so badly my fingers located the cell phone in my jacket pocket and began to fondle it.

“Why was Tony coming to Maine?” I asked, running for cover back to the plot we’d begun spinning together, which suddenly seemed to have little or nothing to do with our miserable fates, our miserable lives exposed out here in the wind. “Why didn’t you just get away from here? You knew Gerard might kill you.”

“I heard Fujisaki was flying up here today.” Again she struck with the lighter against her cigarette, as if it were going to ignite like a flint against a rock. It wasn’t just the wind she was fighting now. Her hands trembled, and the cigarette trembled where she held it in her lips. “Tony and I were going to tell them about Gerard. He was going to bring some proof. Then you got in the way.”

“It wasn’t me that stopped Tony from keeping the date.” I was distracted by the phone in my pocket, the prospect of Kimmery’s soothing voice, even if it were only the outgoing message on her machine. “Gerard sent his giant after Tony,” I went on. “He followed Tony up here, maybe figuring to take out two birds with one flick of his big finger.”

“Gerard didn’t want me killed,” she said quietly. Her hands had fallen to her sides. “He wanted me back.” She was trying to make it so by saying it, but the words themselves were nearly lost in the wind. Julia threatened to recede into the distance again, and this time I knew I wouldn’t bother trying to bring her back.

“Is that why he had his brother killed? Jealousy?”

“Does it have to be one thing? He probably figured it was him or Frank.” The cigarette still dangled in her mouth. “Fujisaki required a sacrifice. They’re great believers in that.”

“Did you talk to Fujisaki just now?”

“Men like that don’t cut deals with waitresses, Lionel.”

“It’s rotten for Tony the killer found him before he found Fujisaki,” I said. “But it won’t save Gerard. I made sure of that.” I didn’t want to elaborate.

“So you say.” She paced away from the railing, gripping the lighter so tightly I expected her to crush it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that I’m not acquainted with this giant killer you keep talking about. Are you sure you’re not imagining things?” She turned and handed me the lighter, plucked the cigarette from her lips and held it out. “Would you light this for me, Lionel?” I heard a weird vibration in her voice, as though she were about to cry again, but without the anger this time, maybe begin to mourn Minna at last. I took them away from her, put the cigarette in my own lips, and turned my back to the wind.

By the time I had it lit she’d taken her gun from her purse.

I put up my hands instinctively, dropping the lighter, to make a pose of surrender but also of self-protection, as though I might deflect a bullet with Frank’s watch like Wonder Woman with her magic wristbands. Julia held the gun easily, its muzzle directed at my navel, and now her eyes were as gray and hard to read as the farthest reaches of the Maine horizon.

I felt jets of acid fire in the pit of my stomach. I wondered if I would ever get used to facing gunpoint, and then I wondered if that was really anything to aspire to. I wanted to tic just for the hell of it, but at the moment I couldn’tlignk of anything.

“I just remembered something Frank once said about you, Lionel.”

“What’s that?” I slowly lowered one hand and offered her the lit cigarette, but she shook her head. I dropped it on the lighthouse deck and ground it under my shoe instead.

“He said the reason you were useful to him was because you were crazy everyone thought you were stupid.”

“I’m familiar with the theory.”

“I think I made the same mistake,” she said. “And so did Tony, and Frank before that. Everywhere you go, somebody who Gerard wants dead is made dead. I don’t want to be next.”

“You think I killed Frank?”

“You said we’re the same age, Lionel. You ever watch Sesame Street?” she said.

“Sure.”

“You remember the Snuffleupagus?”

“Big Bird’s friend.”

“Right, only nobody could see him except Big Bird. I think the giant’s your Snuffleupagus, Lionel.”

“Shockadopalus! Fuckalotofus! The giant is real, Julia. Put the gun away.”

“I don’t think so. Step back, Lionel.”

I stepped back, but I pulled out Tony’s gun as I did it. I saw Julia’s fingers tighten as I raised it to her, but she didn’t fire, and neither did I.

We faced one another on the lighthouse rail, the vast sky dimming everywhere and perfectly useless to us, the ocean’s depths useless, too. The two guns drew us close together and rendered the rest irrelevant-we might as well have been in a dingy motel room, with an image of Maine playing on the television set. My moment had come at last. I had a gun in my hands. That it was trained not on Gerard or the giant or Tony or a doorman but on the girl from Nantucket who’d grown into Frank Minna’s bruise-eyed widow, who’d chopped off her hair and tried to retreat to her waitress past and instead been cornered by that same past, by Gerard and the giant and Tony-I tried not to let it bother me. I’d been wrong, Julia and I had nothing in common. We were just any two people who happened to be pointing guns at one another now. And Tony’s gun had object properties all its own, not a fork nor a toothbrush but something much weightier and more seductive. I slipped off the safety with my thumb.

“I understand your mistake, Julia, but I’m not the killer.”

She had both hands on the gun, and it didn’t waver. “Why should I trust you?”

“TRUST ME BAILEY!” I had to scream it into the sky. I turned my head, bargaining with my Tourette’s that I could let the one phrase fly and then be done. I tasted salt air as I screamed.

“Don’t scare me, Lionel. I might shoot you.”

“We’ve both got that same problem, Julia.” In fact my syndrome had just discovered the prospect of the gun, and I began to obsess on pulling the trigger. I suspected that if I fired a shot out into the sky in the manner of my verbal exclamation, I might not survive the experience. But I didn’t want to shoot Julia. I flicked on the safety, hoped she didn’t notice.