Jonathan Lethem - Gun, with Occasional Music

He’d always looked to me like he’d been fifty years old since adolescence, and six more years didn’t really make him look any older. He was still red in the face, as if he’d been running up stairs, and there might have been fewer of the wisps of white that were trying to pass for hair, but given what little he was working with, he looked good, surprisingly good. Last I’d seen him, he was hiding between two parked cars, dodging bullets, a fish out of water. Up here in the doorway of his house, he looked more comfortable.

“Hello, Grover,” I said.

He looked at me blankly.

I felt a fist of sudden anger curl in my stomach. He was going to pull a Pansy on me.

“Inside,” I said, growling it. I put my hands on his chest and pushed him backwards into the house, and kicked the door shut behind me. “Get the memory.”

His eyebrows arched incredulously. “Go,” I said. I pushed him, and he stumbled ahead of me into the living room. The whole thing stank to me all of a sudden, stank terribly. I wanted to hit him, but he was too old to hit, so I reached down and swept my arm across a table covered with glass and ceramic baubles, and they crashed into a thousand pieces on the floor. Testafer just kept backing up until he fell into the couch. I turned to pull down the shelf of old magazines, but it wasn’t there anymore.

“Where’s the memory?” I said. “Get it out.”

The door to the kitchen swung open and a guy came out with a drink in each hand—gin and tonic, if Pansy’s memory had it right. He was about as old as Testafer, but he was as thin and white as Grover was fat and red. It didn’t take me any time to figure it out. Testafer had a boyfriend. It wasn’t a surprise. After he quit the practice, he must have missed handling penises. In a funny way I understood.

I stepped up and took the drinks. “Take a walk,” I said.

The guy let go of the drinks like he’d made them for me. Grover spoke, and it came out a whisper.

“You’d better go, David,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

David picked hi? way quietly through the broken glass and pottery strewn across the doorway and obediently disappeared. Grover had switched from sheep that walked like men to men that walked like sheep.

When I turned back to him, he had his memory out on the couch beside him, the mike cord in his hand. I’d learned fast to despise the sight of the things. He looked at me with desperate eyes, and for an odd moment my anger abated and I felt sorry for him, but it didn’t last.

“Metcalf,” I said.

He knew what I wanted. He said it into the memory. His voice came back out quiet and slow, as if he’d spent a lot of time on this particular entry.

“The detective,” it went. “A dangerous, impulsive man. Maynard made the mistake of bringing him in, and he wouldn’t go away. Danny Phoneblum’s oppositional double, and a fundamentally undesirable presence.”

Testafer looked up at me blankly, his mouth tight, while his voice poured out of the machine. I found myself smiling. I sort of liked the description. At the very least it was reassuring to find some trace of my work left somewhere. I handed Testafer one of the drinks, and he sipped at it nervously while we waited to see if the entry was exhausted. It was.

“That’s a very old memory,” he said softly, his eyes full of fear. I studied him for some sign of genuine recollection, some hint of hostility or guilt, but it wasn’t there.

“That’s okay,” I said. “It’s up to date.”

He didn’t get it, or maybe he did and it scared him. Either way the effect was the same: he sat staring at me, blankly astonished, like a baby when you make faces at it. I sat down in the chair across from him and took a pull at the drink in my hand. Gin and tonic, all right. I was running out of steam, and the liquor tasted awfully good. I couldn’t feel my anger anymore, and I wasn’t particularly trying. It seemed too much to stay angry at a guy who didn’t have the faintest idea what I was talking about. I felt the weight of the past like bal-last, something only I was stupid enough to keep carrying, and I began to wonder if it was time to cut loose. Testafer made it look sort of good. For a moment I envied him, and began patting the pockets of my coat to locate the little envelope of make.

For a moment. Then I thought about what I was thinking, and took a deep breath and put the drink on the floor and licked my Lips clean of the taste of alcohol and forgot about the make. I carefully curled the fingers of the fist of my anger, got up from the chair, and went over and picked up Testafer’s memory. The cord to the mike stretched out between us. Testafer looked up at me, eyes wide, his mouth a little open. I felt my anger now, felt it clear and cold, and I wanted him to feel it too. I hoped it made him feel vulnerable to see his memory in the palm of my hand.

“Dulcie the sheep,” I said through my teeth.

His eyes showed maybe the first glimmer of something more than funhouse feat.

“Say it,” I said.

He said it.

“Your steadfast companion,” came his voice out of the memory. “Her life was tragically cut short. The murder remains unsolved.”

“That’s a lie,” I said. “Orton Angwine was pinned with the sheep’s killing.”

Testafer looked extremely uncomfortable. The hand that held the mike was shaking. “Angwine was convicted of killing Maynard only,” he said.

“Who killed the sheep?” I said.

His eyes closed.

“Who killed the sheep?” I said again.

He leaned over and pursed his Lips into the microphone.

With his eyes closed he looked like he was praying into the device. “Who killed the sheep?” he repeated.

“The murder remains unsolved,” said the memory.

“The murder remains unsolved,” he said to me, but he didn’t open his eyes.

“I solved it, Grover. Open your eyes and tell me who killed the sheep.” I reached down and gripped his hand hard until he dropped the mike. This time he opened his eyes, but he didn’t speak.

“You don’t need this,” I said, showing him the memory. “You had me going for a minute there, but you blew it when you closed your eyes. Who killed the sheep?” I dropped the box and the microphone on the floor and crushed them under my shoe. It was all plastic and wire and chips, and it crumbled pretty easily even on the soft pile of the carpet. I kicked it, spread it with my toe, until it was mixed with the first mess I’d made there. Testafer got redder and spilled his drink trying to put it down, and I think his eyes were getting wet around the edges before he caught himself and reeled it all back in.

“I killed her,” he said when he could without choking. “Tell me how you knew.”

“That wasn’t hard,” I said. “I ruled you out at first because you hit the intestine. You didn’t need to; to kill her, and someone who knew enough would avoid making such a mess. But you’re no surgeon, and you’re certainly no veterinarian. If hitting it was clever, it almost worked, and if it was stupid, you almost got lucky. Almost.”

He didn’t tell me which it was. I guessed stupid and lucky.

“Dulcie knew things that could have broken the case open,” I said. “I didn’t get them out of her, but you didn’t know that. I left you there feeling violent and frustrated and panicked. Even at the time I wondered if you would hit her. It wasn’t too big a jump to pin you with the killing.”

I watched Testafer crumble and age on the couch in front of me. For six years he’d kept these memories from himself. It was obvious he’d been using the Forgettol and the memory device as a public front. But it was equally obvious, from the way he was deflating, that he was living through the visceral part of the memory now for the first time.