Richard Burgin - The Best American Mystery Stories 2005

It was cold, even for New York in December. The wind was unusually strong and seemed to blow through him as if he were hollow. It was odd how people often said that because New York had so many people you often felt anonymous or alone but to Remy that night, the abundance of people simply increased the odds that one of them was following him. And if he thought about it he could always feel that someone was, simply because it was numerically impossible to keep track of everyone walking near him.

In his apartment again, Remy went back to the aquarium and to his fish-like movements through it. He hated the aquarium, especially since he felt so feverish, but it kept him from thinking, which would be still worse. He must have stayed in it pacing for hours, sleeping only for an hour or two on his sofa in the early morning. Fortunately he had saved up all his sick days and could now call the secretary at the agency and tell her, quite honestly, that he was too ill to come in.

After making the call, Remy went to his room and lay down, too dizzy to keep moving around. But as soon as his head hit the pillow he was assailed by a steady procession of thoughts, images, and snatches of dialogue about the club. He saw the hard look in Evans’s eyes as he said, “I really think it’s too late for that.” The worried look (the first time he’d ever seen that expression on Eugene’s face) as he said, “I’m just making this as a general statement, OK? I’m not saying anything about your club specifically.” He saw the horrified expression in Bernhard’s eyes in the hallway and heard his coughing fit again. He should have waited till the fit ended, he thought, and gotten some kind of definitive answer from him. Then he saw an image of Poe’s face as he stood in front of his apartment the night of Evans’s party, heard him say again “something is preoccupying you.” Was Poe in on it too? Should he try to inform him? It seemed some members knew more than others. Perhaps there really was a secret membership within the membership that had the real knowledge of what the Identity Club truly believed and what it was prepared to do to enforce its beliefs.

Remy stayed in his apartment the entire day, eating Lean Cuisines and canned soup. Intermittently he tried watching TV or listening to the radio but everything reminded him of the club, as if all the voices he heard on TV and the radio were really members of the club. He no longer was as frightened of the streets the next morning since nothing had proved to be more torturous than the last sleepless hours in his apartment. Instead he was almost happy to return to the agency and certainly eager to immerse himself in work. Somewhat to his surprise he found himself whistling a bouncy jingle in the elevator, which, in fact, was the theme song for the new toothpaste campaign he’d worked on with Eugene.

The mood in the office was decidedly different, however. The receptionist barely acknowledged him, and when he looked at her more closely, appeared to be wiping tears from her eyes. Little groups of silent, stone-like figures were whispering in the hallway as if they were in a morgue. Remy took a few steps forward toward his office, hesitated, then walked back to the receptionist’s desk and stared at her until she finally looked at him.

“What happened?” Remy said.

“It’s Eugene,” she said tearfully. “He died last night. Here, it’s in the paper,” she said, handing him a Daily News.

“Oh my God,” Remy said, immediately tucking the newspaper inside his briefcase and walking soldier straight down the rest of the hall until he reached his office, where he could close his door and lock it. On page seven he found out everything he needed to know. Eugene had fallen to his death from the balcony of his midtown Manhattan apartment. At this point, the article said, “it was yet to be determined if foul play was involved.”

Remy let the paper drop on his desk, looked out his window at the maze of buildings and streets below, and shivered. Everything was suddenly starting to fall into place like the pieces of a monstrous puzzle. That so many people in the club came from the agency, that Eugene was so obviously nervous when he obliquely spoke against it, that Evans said he was “taking a risk” talking to him two days ago at Coliseum Books. Obviously, Eugene’s death was no accident. He’d been punished for trying to dissuade potential members from joining, either for the warnings he gave him, Remy, or perhaps for other warnings to other people in the agency Remy didn’t know about.

He nearly staggered then from the pain of losing Eugene, who’d meant so much to him and could have meant so much more not only to him but also to the world, but when he looked out the window his mood turned to terror so complete it virtually consumed his pain.

What had he done? He’d locked himself in a virtual prison near a window on the twenty-ninth floor — but surely the higher-ups in the agency had master keys that could open it and ways to open the window and arrange his fall or some other form of execution.

There was no time to do anything but leave the building, no time even to go home, for his apartment would be the most dangerous place of all, and so no time to pack anything either. The world had suddenly shrunk to the cash in his pockets, the credit card in his wallet, and the clothes on his back. His goal now was simply to get a taxi to the airport and then as far away from New York as he could. He picked up his briefcase and overcoat, then stopped just short of the door and put them down on the floor. To leave his office with briefcase in hand, much less wearing his overcoat, might well look suspicious. He had to appear as if he were merely getting a drink of water or else going to the bathroom, then take ten extra steps and reach the elevator.

He counted to seven, his lucky number, and then opened his door thinking that he could probably buy a coat in the airport. The huddle of stone-like figures was gone. He walked directly toward the elevators, eyes focused straight ahead to reduce the chance of having to talk to someone. Then he saw an elevator open and his boss, Mr. Weir, about to get out. Before their eyes could meet, Remy turned left, opened a door, and ran down a flight of stairs, then down two more flights. He thought briefly of running all the way down to the street, but if someone spotted him he’d be too easy a target. Besides, he was quite sure no one from the agency worked on the twenty-fourth floor. He stopped running, opened the new stairway door, and forced himself not to walk too fast toward the elevators. Once there he pressed the button and counted to seven again, after which an empty elevator (an almost unheard-of event) suddenly appeared.

On the ride down he thought of different cities — Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. — where he had relatives. But would it be a good idea to contact any of them? He had the feeling that the agency not only knew where his parents and other relatives lived, but who his friends were and where they lived too. It would be better to make a clean break from his past and reinvent himself — assume a new identity, as it were, and go with that for a while.

Outside the wind had picked up and it was beginning to snow slightly. Fortunately a cab came right away.

“To LaGuardia,” he said to the driver, who was rough-shaven and seemed unusually old for the job. Seeing the older man, Remy thought, the old are just the reincarnation of the young. In fact, strictly speaking, each moment of time you reincarnated yourself, since you always had to attain a balance between your core, unchanging self and your constantly changing one. But when he tried to think of this further, his head started to hurt. Looking out the window to distract himself he noticed a black line of birds in the sky and thought of Eugene’s falling and then thought he might cry. A man was a kind of reincarnation of a bird, a bird of a dinosaur, and so on. But it really was too difficult to think about, just as infinity itself was. That was why people wanted to shape things for themselves; it was much too difficult otherwise. And, that’s why the club members wanted to act like God, because it was much too difficult to understand the real God.