Jonathan Lethem: Gun, with Occasional Music

I rode up in the elevator with an evolved sow. She was wearing a bonnet and a flowered dress, but she still smelled like a barnyard. She smiled at me and I managed to smile back, then she got off on the fourth floor. I got off on the seventh and pressed the doorbell at the offices of Testafer and Stanhunt, urologists. While I waited, I mused on the ironies of life. When I walked out of this office two weeks ago, I hadn’t expected to set foot in it again, or at least not until I developed prostate trouble. The buzzer sounded, and I went in.

The waiting room was empty, except for a guy in a nice suit and a big square haircut who might or might not have been from the Inquisitor’s Office. I considered the possibility and withheld judgment. He looked quickly up at me and then back down at his magazine. I shut the door. No one was behind the reception desk, so I sat, down on the sofa across from Mr. Suit.

Testafer and Stanhunt, like any practice which dealt with problems of a confidential nature, charged top-dollar rates for unexceptional treatment and downright indifferent reception. The customers slunk in and out quietly enough, grateful the office was clean and that their problems went away. Stanhunt was the new boy, or was until yesterday. Testafer had already made his bundle and gotten out, except to leave a shingle hanging. His specialty had probably been no different from Stanhunt’s: the radical walletectomy. I’d managed to visit the office five or six times without meeting him, but I was going to meet him now if anyone could.

A door opened in the back and the nurse came out. She was a redhead with a pair of alert breasts that always managed to appear slightly akimbo, as if she shopped for her underwear in a discount irregulars place. Recognizing me, she turned down the corners of her mouth. I dredged her name up from the murk of my consciousness, but she spoke before I could use it.

“You can’t be here looking for more work—you’re not that tasteless and you’re not that stupid. Close, but not quite.” She was good at her job. I had to give her that.

“I didn’t realize I’d made such an impression on you, Princess. I came here looking for a friendly face, actually. I realize I may have to settle for Dr. Testafer.”

“If I tell Dr. Testafer what you do for a living, he’ll tell me to tell you he’s not here. So he’s not here.”

“You’re a sweetheart, I’ll admit it. Now find your appointment book”

“We’re closed for the next forty-eight hours. I’m sure even you can understand why.”

I decided to turn on the heat, or what little I had that could pass for it. “Tell Testafer I want to return some materials I assembled while working for Maynard.” It was pure bluff. “I was holding out, but there doesn’t seem to be any point in that now.”

“You’re going to—”

“I’m going to see the doctor at four-thirty, baby. Write it down. Tell him I have a terrible pain right here.” I showed her with my hand.

By this time we’d gotten the attention of Mr. Suit. He put down his magazine and stood up, rubbing his jaw with his big beefy hand as if considering the possible juxtaposition of jaw and hand, generally; mine and his, specifically.

“I’m trying to figure you out, mister,” he said. “You seem pretty rude.” If he was an inquisitor, he wasn’t tipping his hand with a question.

“Don’t try to figure me out,” I said. “It doesn’t work—I’ve tried it myself.”

“I recommend you go home and work on it some more. Come back maybe when you’ve figured out how to apologize. But not before.”

I marveled at his swagger. His eyes were unclouded by intelligence. I wanted to see him as an inquisitor, but I still wasn’t sure.

“Apologies aren’t something you want to get in the habit of practicing in the mirror,” I said. “But from the look of you, I guess you wouldn’t understand what I mean.”

I let him chew on that—it was obviously going to take a while.

“Write it down,” I said again to the girl. “I’ll be on time—make sure the doctor gets the message, so he can be too.” I turned to the door, deciding to quit while I was ahead. The Suit didn’t try to stop me.

I got into the elevator and played back the scene in my head while I watched the buttons light up. I’d been my usual sweet self with the girl, but that didn’t bother me anymore. I was at permanent war with members of the fair sex because of what they’d cut out of me, dripping blood and still beating. I preferred to keep them hating me, because if they liked me, there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. I wasn’t a man anymore. That was Delia Limetree’s fault, and I would never forgive her for it Not that she ever came back to ask forgiveness.

Delia Limetree and I had undergone one of those theoretically temporary operations where they switch your nerve endings around with someone else, so you can see what it feels like to be a man if you’re a woman, a woman if you’re a man. It was supposed to be a lot of fun. It was, until she disappeared before we could have the operation reversed.

She didn’t even leave a note. I never learned whether she was so sickened by the experience of having a penis that she slipped away into an asylum or convent, or whether she liked it so much that she didn’t want to give it up. All I know is that she still had the male set to that day, and I had—well, you know what that left me with. It still looked like the male apparatus, and still functioned that way as far as the other party was concerned, but the sensations from my end of things were the female ones. The doctors offered me the generic male package, but what I wanted were my own personalized nerve endings, the ones Delia was out using or not using who knows where. Someday I was going to catch up with her and take back what was mine, but until then I’d sworn the whole thing off. It was okay. I’d always liked drugs better anyway.

All of which meant I got down to the lobby feeling pretty good about the interaction upstairs, especially how I handled the Suit. Which is when a couple of guys from the Inquisitor’s Office stepped up on either side of me and seized my arms.

“You should go back to your apartment, flathead,” said the one on the left. “We’ll be sending someone up to have a chat with you. Until then you should sit tight.”

“Coming here was a mistake, Metcalf,” said the other. He aimed his magnet at my pocket, and I heard the telltale digital bleep. “Fifteen points of karma, gumshoe. Now go cool your heels.”

I put my hand in my pocket and wrapped my fingers protectively around my card. “Fifteen points is rough, boys. I’ve got a license.”

“You didn’t show it to the folks upstairs.”

“That your boy? He’s got a nice pair of matching brain cells.”

The one on the right grabbed me by the collar and tried to slap my face. I squirmed and ended up with a mouthful of wrist. “Don’t question us, flathead. You should know better.” They shoved me forward, at the revolving door. “Get lost.”

I bustled through the revolving door, my hand up over my mouth. An evolved dachshund was in the compartment across from me, waddling his way into the building, and when I pushed on the glass, he was ejected into the lobby faster than his little legs would carry him. He fell in a sprawl across the tiles in front of the two inquisitors, and as I looked back, they were helping him to his feet. A warm little scene. I went around the corner to the parking lot. My mouth hurt, but when I took my hand away, it was wet with drool, not blood.

I had two hours before my appointment with Dr. Testafer, and I didn’t know what I was going to ask him. I didn’t currently have a client, and I didn’t have any other leads. What else? Well, it sounded like the inquisitors would be waiting at my apartment, and maybe at my office as well.