Jonathan Lethem: Gun, with Occasional Music

Still, I had managed to shave that burdensome fifteen-point surplus off my card.

STANHUNT HAD ORIGINALLY HIRED ME TO KEEP AN EYE on his wife. Now I had to wonder whether that was just the cover story, whether my peeping had been to set an alibi for someone somewhere, whether I’d been playing a patsy even before he requested strong-arm services and I said no. Nonetheless, I had spent a week trailing her around, and that probably made me the current authority on the subject. I decided to stop in. She and Stanhunt had been freshly separated, and the electricity between them had still been going strong—back when Stanhunt was still capable of generating electricity. Now there was a blackout. I wondered if the lady behaved any differently in the dark I wondered if maybe she was the one who cut the wires.

She’d met me once, as a guy who sidled up to her in a bar with liquor on his breath and a quick lay on his mind. Stanhunt suspected his ex was fooling around, so I thought I’d check. To make the pass more realistic, both the drunk and the lust were authentic. I was a method actor. Celeste Stanhunt was a nice-looking woman who became something more when you were being paid to peek through her windows. To put it simply, there hadn’t been any need to undress her in my mind.

The problem I wrestled with now was whether to pick up where I left off playing peeper, or to cast myself against type and knock on the door. I decided on the latter course. If she recognized me, I could come clean about working for her husband—it was bound to come out anyway, during the investigation.

I drove up into the hills, past quiet tree-lined streets with space between the houses. The streets were a bit too quiet for my taste; I would have liked it better to see kids playing in front, running, shouting, even asking each other innocent questions and giving innocent answers back. That’s the way it was before the babyheads, before the scientists decided it took too long to grow a kid and started working on ways to speed up the process. Dr. Twostrand’s evolution therapy was the solution they hit on; the same process they’d used to make all the animals stand upright and talk. They turned it on the kids, and the babyheads were the happy result. Another triumph for modern science, and nice quiet streets in the bargain.

Celeste Stanhunt was staying in a big house at the end of Cranberry Street, where the monorail tracks intersected almost at a right angle the hill behind the trees. The house was perched on rocks like a bird of prey with a toehold over a fresh carcass. It was going to be a lot easier to walk up to the front door than it had been to find a way around the back to a good view of the bay window.

When I rang the doorbell, the other woman opened the door. I still didn’t know her name, though I’d seen a lot of her when I cased the house in my stint as Celeste Stanhunt’s shadow. She was thin and pale, with a cloistered air, as if she never left the big house. I’d certainly never seen her leave. She was playing mother, both to a babyhead who was in and out, mostly out, and to a young, newly evolved kitten who was home all the time except when she was out selling cat-scout cookies door to door. The woman doted on them both, but the kitten appreciated it a lot more than the babyhead did.

Celeste Stanhunt had fled to the Cranberry Street house when she left Maynard. My impression was that this was a temporary measure, until she found somewhere else to live or went back to her husband, and that she and the pale woman were just friends. I probably should have been more curious, the first time. I’d catch up now.

She didn’t say anything, just stood there, the usual way. It would have been impolite to ask me who I was.

“I was looking for Mrs. Stanhunt,” I said.

The woman knit her brow. There weren’t many walk-up visitors on Cranberry Street.

“My name is Conrad Metcalf,” I said gently. “I realize this is a difficult time, but that’s what I’ve come about.”

She took a tentative step backwards into the house. My sympathy made things difficult. I was still unsavory-looking, but she was going to have to meet me halfway.

“Come in,” she said. “I’ll tell her your name.” I followed her through the foyer.

The house was elegant, high-ceilinged, spotlessly clean—but I knew that already. My hostess pointed to the couch, and I went and sat on it while she vanished upstairs. This wasn’t a house where you yelled upstairs from the bottom step. It was a house where you walked all the way up and said there was a guest in a low, even tone, and she was going to make sure I knew it.

I sat there and tried to puzzle out what I would ask Mrs. Stanhunt, and what I would do with what I learned, if I learned something. I was playing this case existential, maybe a bit too existential. I needed a lead. I needed a client. Hell, I even needed a sandwich. There was probably little chance of Celeste Stanhunt coming downstairs and offering me a sandwich.

I didn’t hear the pitter-patter of little cat feet coming up behind me, but all of a sudden the kitten was there at my side, in a red-and-white dress, carrying an armload of notebooks like a schoolgirl. She smiled through her whiskers and looked at the floor.

“Hello, little girl,” I said.

“I’m learning to read,” the kitten announced. She put the books down on the coffee table, sat on the carpet, and pulled off her little shoes.

“Learning to read,” I repeated. “I didn’t realize they still taught that.”

“At growth camp. I go every day. I go to the library with my mother.”

“Celeste is your mother,” I suggested, keeping it a statement. I could get in trouble busting into houses and questioning defenseless little cats.

“No, silly. Pansy is my mother.”

An alley cat is your mother, I thought, but I didn’t say it. “Pansy and Celeste live together,” I tried.

“Celeste is visiting.”

“Celeste never visited before.” This was too easy.

“No, silly. Celeste visits a lot.”

I thought about the possible relationships: sisters, lovers, employer and employee. In my line of work you start to sort people out that way, and there weren’t really all that many categories.

“Don’t call me silly,” I said. “You and Pansy live alone.”

“No, silly.” It was a fun game. “Barry lives with us sometimes.”

“Don’t call me silly. Barry is a rabbit.”

“No, silly. Barry is a boy.”

“Barry is a babyhead, Mr. Metcalf,” said Celeste Stanhunt from the middle of the stairway. “Sasha, you should go upstairs and leave me alone with Mr. Metcalf. Pansy is waiting for you.”

“Okay,” said the kitten, but she wanted to stay and play. “Mr. Metcalf is silly, Celeste.”

“I know he is,” said Celeste cleanly. “Now go upstairs.”

“Good-bye, Sasha,” I said.

The kitten scrambled up the stairs, on all fours at first and then, self-consciously, back on two feet. I heard a muffled voice and the shutting of a door upstairs.

Celeste looked good. I had to admire her composure. It was obvious she had recognized me and didn’t know what to do about it. Her lovely bottom lip was trembling—but just a little. It was the only flaw, and it was a minor one.

“You’ve gotten my attention, Mr. Metcalf. I suppose it’s time you introduce yourself.” She paused gravely. “You work for Danny.”

Danny. I jotted the name down mentally on that tattered notepad I call a memory. The pen skipped. “No, I’m afraid not. Or would that be good news?”

“I’ve answered enough questions today to last a lifetime. Let’s see some identification, or I’m calling in the heat.”

“The heat?” I smiled. “That’s ugly talk”