Warren Murphy: Death Check

He had noticed how weak he had become, but the rest improved him daily. When he returned to training, he would be well ready for it. But he would never again allow them to keep him at that level. He would explain this if he ever got to Smith again.

Deborah, of course, had gotten her man. He knew she would, but it was a sloppy job. He had heard about it in a bar. Father-daughter fight. But why would the woman choose suicide by photo-drying? Funny, it sounded like something he might do. The Israelis were supposed to be a bit neater. Yeah, he might do it. No, it just wasn't fast enough. For punishment, it would do. But Remo, however was not in the punishment business.

Some day, if they should ever meet, he would tell Deborah how sloppy she had been.

He looked out over the valley, gazing for miles. It was a clear night, yet there were no stars, and for reasons he could not fathom, he felt deeply lost, as if he had found something so necessary to his life, then lost it without knowing what it was.

It was then that Remo created an original line of sentiment and felt proud of it. He thought of Deborah's freckles and said to himself, waiting to use it publicly to advantage some day, "A girl without freckles is like a night without stars."

Remo looked around the restaurant for a woman with freckles. He had to try out his original line. He saw only a man in a suit with a briefcase. The reason he saw only this was that the man was standing three inches from him.

"Enjoying yourself? Pleasant thoughts?" asked the man. It was a bitter thin voice. Remo looked up. It belonged to a bitter, hateful face.

"Good evening. Sit down. I wondered why you kept me waiting so long."

Remo watched Harold W. Smith take the other side of the table. He put his briefcase on his lap.

Smith ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. The waitress said, "We have something with tomatoes and bacon and...."

"Just grilled cheese," he said.

"And make it unpleasant," Remo added. Ah, the waitress had freckles. He would devastate her.

The waitress hid a smile from all but the corner of her mouth.

"Be off," Smith said to the girl, and turning to Remo said: "My, you're in fine fettle. Did you enjoy yourself on your last business trip?"

"Not really."

"I never knew you liked to freelance."

"What?" Remo looked confused.

"You've forgotten little details?"

"I don't know what you mean."

Smith leaned over the table and peered intently at Remo's forehead, where his peeled skin was still taut and shiny, and his eyebrows were just growing back.

"Well, the reports said it was there, so I suppose I'll buy it. And I do have Chiun's explanation."

"Buy what?" Smith smiled and Remo knew that he was not supposed to ask.

"When did you recover your memory? I mean fully?"

"Tell you what," Remo said, "you tell me how I got this sunburn because I'm sure you know and I'll tell you when I recovered my memory."

"You'll tell me when you recovered your memory."

"At the Dayton Airport."

"That's about right," Smith said. He looked around him and said, lest anyone be listening, "You left your wallet in my room this morning." He handed Remo a well-worn wallet containing, as Remo knew, who he would be and where he would go and what he should look for that would tell him where he would meet Smith again.

"What about the sunburn?"

"Someday ask Chiun. I can't even understand it, much less be able to explain it."

Smith surveyed the fine surroundings and added: "You know, if the tables weren't so close together, I'd like to see you eating the next time in an automat."

"You would," said Remo, placing his wallet and new self in the pocket of the new suit he had bought for cash.

The waitress was back, putting the grilled cheese sandwich in front of Smith.

"You know," Remo said as she bent over, "a girl without freckles is like a night without stars."

"I know," she said. "My boyfriend tells me that."

And Smith took obvious delight in Remo's obvious deflation.

"I swear it," Remo said to Smith. "There is not an original line hi the world. Whatever you make up has been made up before. I had made that up. It was mine."

"Rubbish," said Smith with the quiet contentment of seeing another soul return from the clouds to the daily level of discontent. "A mutual friend of ours used to use it all the time. Little girls, old women, anyone he could bamboozle. When he was sober enough to talk."

And Remo, who knew whom Smith was talking about, dropped his fork in the potatoes and said, with thorns of outrage, "I remember every word that guy ever said to me. And he never told me that."

"If you say so," said Smith biting into the yellow goo of his sandwich.

And Remo leaned back. "I don't care if you don't believe me. At least I know I have poetry in my heart. You know. Heart, sensitivity, people, human beings."

He did not now feel like eating and he watched the Miami valley, the moving lights of the cars, the dots of lights that were far-off homes.

"All right. I really believe you made that up originally. It's possible. Now finish your dinner. We're paying for it."

Remo continued to look out into the dark waiting for a similar inspiration to come to him so he could prove himself on the point. But the inspiration was not there.