Peter Abrahams - Lights Out

Eddie went to the sideboard, got the Armagnac bottle, poured himself a glass. “Ever had Armagnac?”

“Of course.”

“Every night in the dining halls of Groton,” Eddie said.

“If you want to think in stereotypes.”

“I wouldn’t want to do anything like that.” Eddie was starting to feel manic, as though something exciting were about to happen and he couldn’t wait. He raised his glass.

“Here’s to USC,” Eddie said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a toast, to a fine institution.”

Raleigh took a sip. “That’s where I went to college.”

“I almost went there myself.”

“Did you?” Raleigh took another sip, bigger this time.

“Things didn’t work out. There was a whole chain of events, if you follow me.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“Would it help if I said that the first link in the chain was something that happened between you and Jack?”

Raleigh was still. “What do you mean?”

“You tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“What happened between you and Jack.”

Raleigh took a big drink. “Why don’t you ask him?”

“He’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“I told you-out of town.”

“Out of town where?”

Eddie was silent.

“Why are you covering for him? You should be on my side. He’s such a bastard.”

“Watch it.” The warning came from Eddie’s own lips, but it took him by surprise.

Raleigh looked surprised too. “Watch what?”

“Watch what you say about him.”

Perhaps this time he didn’t say it with enough conviction. Raleigh started to laugh. He was still laughing when the door opened and Jack walked in.

He had on a long coat of somewhat Western cut-the kind a rich cattleman might wear-and he was smoking a cigar. “What convention is this?” he asked.

“Convention?” said Raleigh.

Eddie wasn’t sure what the remark meant either, but if the reference was to ex-cons he didn’t like it. Jack took off his coat. Underneath he wore faded jeans, a polo shirt, and Topsiders with no socks.

“Been away, Jack?” said Raleigh.

Jack didn’t answer the question. Instead he eyed Raleigh’s face and said, “What the hell happened to you?”

“Nothing.”

Jack’s gaze went from the pink-stained towel on the table to Eddie. Eddie smiled a noncommittal smile.

“Been away?” Raleigh repeated.

“Away?”

“Your brother here mentioned you were out of town.”

“You said that, Eddie?”

Eddie nodded.

Jack puffed his cigar. “Does Brooklyn count?”

Raleigh stood up. “I want to talk to you, Jack.”

“Talk.”

“In private.”

“How ill bred.” Jack smiled around his cigar. Eddie could see he was in a good mood. Jack came over to him, gave his shoulder a little squeeze. “You don’t mind, bro?”

Eddie shook his head. Bond peered doubtfully at a glass of red wine. Jack picked up the remote and switched him off.

Jack and Raleigh went in the bedroom. The door closed. They talked in low voices for a few minutes. They came out. Now Raleigh was smoking a cigar too.

“How about a celebration?” said Jack.

“Of what?” Eddie asked.

“You being here. Good enough?”

“Isn’t it a little late?”

“In this town? Let’s show him the kind of fun you can have in the city that never weeps.”

“Whatever you say,” said Raleigh.

“As long as we don’t leave your ankling area,” Jack added. Eddie saw that his brother was a bit manic too.

Raleigh almost managed a smile. He drained his glass and said: “Let’s go.”

“This is supposed to be the latest,” said Jack, as they entered a club; so new that the sign was still clad in protective canvas.

Inside was a world of light, without fixed boundaries or dimensions. Floors, walls, ceilings didn’t exist; there were only curves, rounding into one another. And everything had a glow: pearly in the lower regions, shading up through greens and blues to indigo above.

A man dressed in a silver space suit greeted them. He spoke through a speaker in his helmet. “Welcome to Brainy’s,” he said. “Fifteen-dollar cover, two-drink minimum. The official opening’s not till tomorrow, so please bear with us.”

He led them to a table with a translucent surface that flickered in black and white, like snow on a TV screen. They sat in almost invisible clear-glass chairs. Mounted on the tabletop were concave viewers, the size of a human head. “Look in those,” said the man in the space suit. “Maneuver by sticking your right hand in those slots and experimenting. The waiter will be around to take your orders.” His gaze lingered on Eddie for a moment before he left.

“What the fuck is this?” said Raleigh.

“Five million dollars’ worth of software,” Jack replied.

Eddie put his face in the viewer. It was more than a viewer; it wrapped around his ears as well, covering them with perforated foam pads. He was in a place of total darkness, total silence. Nothing happened. He felt for the slot in the side of the table, stuck his hand inside a hand-shaped hole that felt like rubberized plastic. He fitted his fingers in the right openings. Something happened.

First came a strange noise, an eerie whine, like interstellar wind. It filled his head. Then the sun rose, so bright it hurt his eyes. He moved his fingers. That turned him slowly around, and away from the glare of the sun. Now he was soaring through a blue sky. He tried pressing his thumb on the rubberized plastic. That tipped him forward, made him look down, down at a green jungle. He fell toward it with sickening speed. He moved his hand again, pressed with different fingers. That slowed his descent. He drifted down, closer and closer to the trees, then right into them, through a gap, down, down. Below was an emerald-green pond with a waterfall cascading into it. It roared in his ears. He fell into the emerald-green water; the roaring turned to pounding. He fell deeper and deeper, down to the gurgling dark bottom, toward a pool of light. In the pool of light was a bare-breasted mermaid. She smiled and said, “May I take your order, sir?” He shifted his hand to try to get a little closer. Everything went black.

Eddie drew back from the viewer. The mermaid was talking to Jack: “Heineken, Beck’s, Beck’s Light, Corona, Sam Adams, Moosehead, Bass, Grolsch-”

“New Amsterdam.”

“We don’t carry it.”

“Bass, then.”

“And you, sir?” she said, turning to Eddie.

Not the mermaid, of course, and not bare-breasted and fishtailed, but the woman who had played the mermaid, if played was the word, down in the emerald-green pond. She wore a tiny silver space dress but no helmet.

“I’d like water,” Eddie said, wanting all at once to be sober.

“Evian, Perrier, Volvic, Contrexeville, Saratoga, San Pellegrino, Ramlosa, Poland Spr-”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She went away. “Mine was the wild west,” said Raleigh. “What was yours?”

“Skiing in Zermatt,” said Jack. “Eddie?”

“Falling.”

Jack glanced into his viewer. “There’s a pissload of money to be made in this, if you knew who to back.”

“To be made in what?” asked Raleigh.

“Virtual reality.”

The words almost triggered a memory in Eddie’s mind. He came close to dredging it up, a worrisome, champagne-drenched memory, but Raleigh broke his concentration by getting up to go to the bathroom. Eddie found himself gazing at his brother.

“Something on your mind, bro?”

“I don’t know. Does an albatross have a mind?”

Jack smiled; that flashing smile, but his eyes were blank. “Run that by me again.”