Jonathan Lethem - Gun, with Occasional Music

When I finally looked at my watch, it was a quarter to one. I was shamed into action by the thought of Orton Angwine holed up in some bar or cafeteria, the last hours of his current life ticking away while I sat in the sun reminiscing about the drugs I used to take as opposed to the ones I take now. I eased my foot off the brake and let the dutiframe roll backwards out of the cul-de-sac, found my way out of the maze of winding roads that laced the hills, and drove back down to the flats.

My impulse was to maximize what little momentum I might have by appearing in person at the Cranberry Street house. The cobwebs cleared as I hit the breeze on the freeway, and I went back to puzzling over the case. The make effects receded—the upfront ingredients like Acceptol and Believol and Avoidol always do—but I was left with enough in my bloodstream to keep me comfortable. Scratch the surface of any blend and underneath you found the same thing, the ingredient all make has in common: addictol. The rest is just icing on the cake.

When I pulled up in front of the house at the end of Cranberry, I didn’t bother hiding my car or concealing my intention of walking up to the door and ringing the bell. There were cars on the street, but none of them were familiar, so I had no way of knowing who, if anyone, was home. That was okay. No matter who I found, I’d have something to talk about, and if no one was in, I might be able to find some way of entertaining myself.

I rang the bell and waited, but nobody came to the door, and when I tried the handle it practically opened itself. I could see through the foyer to the living room where I’d sat yesterday and chatted with the kitten and then Celeste, and it was empty. I went inside, shut the door, and looked around.

Everything downstairs was neat, too neat, more like a museum exhibit than a lived-in house. The windows were designed to maximize the sun, and they were busy doing that; the house looked painted with light. Nobody had mentioned to the windows and the sunlight that there wasn’t anybody home and they could relax.

I went into the kitchen. Nobody there either. I poked through the refrigerator and pantry; they were well stocked, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to eat anything. I went back into the living room and faced the picture window. After all the time I’d spent peering in, being on the inside made me feel visible. I spent a long minute looking at the view, past the monorail trestles to where the fog clung to the beach. Then my focus changed, and instead of looking through the glass I was looking at it, at the reflection of me in my shabby coat and hat standing in the fancy living room getting romantic about a view of a cold, wet beach. Who was I trying to kid? The bay was a five-minute drive from my apartment, and it was a five-minute drive I never bothered to make.

When I started up the stairs, the carpet muffled my shoes, turning me into an inadvertent sneak. Everything about the house made me feel out of place. I went into Celeste’s room first, lowering the shade to make myself more comfortable. The bed was unmade, and a shirt was spread out across the pillows; otherwise the room was all tucked away and tidy like downstairs. I went to the chest of drawers and pulled the pair on top open, but it was all socks and underwear. The bottom drawers were more clothing, the middle drawer almost empty. Celeste had only been living in the room a couple of weeks, and it showed. It was a guest room, and she was just passing through, and if she had secrets, she still kept them in some other place. The clothes smelled nice, and I let myself linger over them, but only for a minute, then I turned out the light and went back out into the hall.

There were three other rooms on the upper floor. I looked quickly into a messy room that must have belonged to the babyhead, and a neat one that must have belonged to the kitten, both empty. By this time I was pretty certain I was alone in the house, and I wasn’t taking any particular pains to keep quiet.

When I opened the door to Pansy Greenleaf’s room, it took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the gloom and make out the faded figure lying on the bed. She was bundled in bedclothes, asleep or unconscious, and her black hair, splayed out against the pillows, was the only way I could tell she was something more than an arrangement of laundry on the bed. I went inside without turning on the light.

The table by the bed was littered with piles of make, plus the equipment necessary to prepare it for intravenous injection. The needle was beside her on the bed. It was all very competently laid out, suggesting this was not the first time she’d taken it in the arm. I was reaching for her neck to feel for a pulse, when her eyes rolled mechanically open. She blinked a couple of times, and then she closed her mouth and worked up enough spit to talk.

“You’re the inquisitor,” she said. She didn’t move a muscle. The voice was strained up from some small reservoir of life inside an otherwise dead husk.

I told her she was right.

“I knew you would come,” she said. “My card is on the dresser.”

“I’m not going to take any karma off your card,” I said. “I’m not that kind of inquisitor.”

Her eyes closed again. She was like a part of the room, gray and dim, flickering only accidentally into persona and then receding again into the grayness and pallor. I took the needle off the bed and put it on the table with the make so she wouldn’t roll into it.

She was obviously an experienced mainliner, but it was equally obvious she wasn’t in very good shape right now. I didn’t like the idea of her dying while I was in the house. I went over to the dresser where her card was and experimented with making a lot of noise opening the drawers, but she didn’t respond.

The drawers were full of papers. I started leafing through them, without any particular goal in mind. It was all bills and receipts and direct mail, until I came across a folder full of architectural diagrams and a written proposal. I glanced at the blueprints in a perfunctory way, and I probably would have forgotten about them if I hadn’t noticed that the proposal was for an additional structure on the Cranberry Street lot. That sent me back for another look.

I wasn’t much for reading blueprints, but the diagram of the upper floor was easy to read. It showed a wall of bunk beds, like a barracks-style sleeping quarters for an army of evolved animals. I looked closer. The beds were stacked in pairs to fit eight against the northern wall, if I was holding the diagram right. The measurement for the north wall was only twenty feet total, an allotment of less than three feet per bed. It was a funny idea, all those animals bunked up like soldiers, and it was even funnier to think of it in the backyard of the Cranberry Street house. I noted the architectural firm and slid the papers back into the drawer.

“That’s my stuff,” she said, while my back was still turned.

“I’m looking for a birth certificate,” I said.

“For Barry…” There was a note of panic in her voice. “You won’t find one.”

“I don’t care about Barry. I was thinking of you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m a friend of your brother’s, Ms. Greenleaf. I was just wondering what happened to the name Angwine. Who was Mr. Greenleaf, and where is he now?”

She gripped the sides of the bed and turned her head towards me. “There isn’t one.” Her voice was a whisper.

“I see. Pansy Angwine? That’s a little discordant.”

“Patricia.”

“Never married?”

“No.”

I shut the open drawers of the bureau and went back to the side of the bed. Pansy just watched me, hollow-eyed and quiet, as I ran my fingers through the make on the table and held them up to my nose to sniff.