Люциус Шепард - Eternity and Other Stories

Trembling and sweaty, Chemayev stared at the television set above the bar. A brown-haired teenage girl in a denim jacket and jeans was hitchhiking on a desert road, singing angrily—if you could judge by her expression—at the cars that passed her by. He watched numbly as she caught a ride in a dusty van. Then, astounded by the realization he was alive, that the girl was not part of the storm of memory that had assailed his dying self, he heaved up from the barstool and looked avidly about, not yet convinced of the authenticity of what he saw. About a dozen people sitting at various tables; the bartender talking to two male customers. The recessed door beside the fireplace opened and a woman in a black cocktail dress came into the lounge and stood searching the tables for someone. Still shaky, Chemayev sat back down.

All that had happened in the garden remained with him, but he could examine it now. Not that examination helped. Explanations occurred. He’d been given a drug in a glass of Yuri’s special reserve—probably a hypnotic. Shown a film that triggered an illusion. But this fathered the need for other explanations. Was the object of the exercise to intimidate him? Were the things March had said to him about Polutin part of the exercise? Were they actual admonitions or the product of paranoia? Of course it had all been some sort of hallucination. Likely an orchestrated one. He could see that clearly. But despite the elements of fantasy—March’s lyric fluency, the white trees, and so on—he couldn’t devalue the notion that it had also had some quality of the real. The terror of those last moments, spurious though they had been, was still unclouded in his mind. He could touch it, taste it. The greedy blackness that had been about to suck him under… he knew to his soul that was real. The memory caused his thoughts to dart in a hundred different directions, like a school of fish menaced by a shadow. He concentrated on his breathing, trying to center himself. Real or unreal, what did it matter? The only question of any significance was, Who could have engineered this? It wasn’t Polutin’s style. Although March surely was. March was made to order for Polutin. The alternative explanations—magical vodka, mysterious Lebedevian machinations—didn’t persuade him; but neither could he rule them out… Suddenly electrified with fright, remembering his appointment, thinking he’d missed it, he peered at his watch. Only eleven minutes had passed since he’d drunk the vodka. It didn’t seem possible, yet the clock behind the bar showed the same time. He had fifteen minutes left to wait. He patted his pocket, felt the airline tickets. Touched the money belt. Pay Yuri, he told himself. Sign the papers. There’d be time to think later. Or maybe none of it was worth thinking about. He studied himself in the mirror. Tried a smile, straightened his tie unnecessarily, wiped his mouth. And saw Niall March’s reflection wending his way among the tables toward the bar. Toward him.

“I was hoping I’d run into you,” March said, dropping onto the stool beside Chemayev. “Listen, mate. I want to apologize for giving you a hard time back there in the fucking ice palace. I wasn’t meself. I’ve been driving around with that bastard Polutin all day. Listening to him jabber and having to kiss his fat ass has me ready to chew the tit off the Virgin. Can I buy you a drink?”

Totally at sea, Chemayev managed to say, no thanks, he’d had enough for one evening.

“When I can no longer hear that insipid voice, that’s when I’ll know I’ve had enough.” March hailed the bartender. “Still and all, he’s a fair sort, your boss. We held opposing positions on a business matter over in London a while back. He lost a couple of his boys, but apparently he’s not a man to let personal feelings intrude on his good judgment. We’ve been working together ever since.”

Chemayev had it in mind to disagree with the proposition that Polutin did not let personal feelings interfere with judgment—it was his feeling that the opposite held true; but March caught the bartender’s eye and said, “You don’t have any British beer, do you? Fuck! Then give me some clear piss in a glass.” The bartender stared at him without comprehension. “Vodka,” said March; then, to Chemayev: “What sorta scene do you got going on here? It’s like some kind of fucking czarist disco. With gangsters instead of the Romanovs. I mean, is it like a brotherhood, y’know? Sons of the Revolution or some such?”

The bartender set down his vodka. March drained the glass. “No offense,” he said. “But I hate this shit. It’s like drinking shoe polish.” He glanced sideways at Chemayev. “You’re not the most talkative soul I’ve encountered. Sure you’re not holding a grudge?”

“No,” said Chemayev, reining in the impulse to look directly at March, to try and pierce the man’s affable veneer and determine the truth of what lay beneath. “I’m just… anxious. I have an important meeting.”

“Oh, yeah? Who with?”

“Yuri Lebedev.”

“The fucking Buddha himself, huh? Judging by what I’ve seen of his establishment, that should be a frolic.” March called to the bartender, held up his empty glass. “Not only does this stuff taste like the sweat off a pig’s balls, but I seem immune to it.”

“If you keep drinking…” Chemayev said, and lost his train of thought. He was having trouble equating this chatty, superficial March with either of the man’s two previous incarnations—the sullen, reptilian assassin and the poetic martial arts wizard.

“What’s that?” March grabbed the second vodka the instant the bartender finished pouring and flushed it down.

“Nothing,” said Chemayev. He had no capacity for judgment left; the world had become proof against interpretation.

March turned on his stool to face the tables, resting his elbows on the bar. “Drink may not be your country’s strong suit,” he said, “but I’m forced to admit your women have it all over ours. I’m not saying Irish girls aren’t pretty. God, no! When they’re new pennies, ah… they’re such a blessing. But over here it’s like you’ve got the fucking franchise for long legs and cheekbones.” He winked at Chemayev. “If Ireland ever gets an economy, we’ll trade you straight-up booze for women—that way we’ll both make out.” He swiveled back to face the mirror, and looked into the eyes of Chemayev’s reflection. “I suppose your girlfriend’s a looker.”

Chemayev nodded glumly. “Yes… yes, she is.”

March studied him a moment more. “Well, don’t let it get you down, okay?” He gave Chemayev a friendly punch on the arm and eased off the stool. “I’ve got to be going.” He stuck out his hand. “Pals?” he said. With reluctance, Chemayev accepted the hand. March’s grip was strong, but not excessively so. “Brothers in the service of the great ship Polutin,” he said. “That’s us.”

He started off, then looked back pleadingly at Chemayev. “Y’know where the loo… the men’s room is?”

“No,” said Chemayev, too distracted to give directions. “I’m sorry. No.”

“Christ Jesus!” March grimaced and grabbed his crotch. “It better not be far. My back teeth are floating.”

The walls of the corridor that led to Yuri’s office were enlivened by a mural similar to the mosaic that covered the bar in the lounge—a crowd of people gathered at a cocktail party, many of them figures from recent Russian history, the faces of even the anonymous ones rendered with such a specificity of detail, it suggested that the artist had used models for all of them. Every thirty feet or so the mural was interrupted by windows of one-way glass that offered views of small gaudy rooms, some empty, others occupied by men and women engaged in sex. However, none of this distracted Chemayev from his illusory memory of death. It dominated his mental landscape, rising above the moil of lesser considerations like a peak lifting from a sea of clouds. He couldn’t escape the notion that it had been premonitory and that the possibility of death lay between him and a life of comfortable anonymity in America.