Steven Brust - Agyar

There was, by now, a great deal of activity below me; I could make out the flashing lights of several police cars, and I could see where their headlights cut the fog; but they would not look at the rooftops. I took the time to catch my breath, wanting suddenly to laugh aloud at them scurrying around down there like so many ants whose overworked simile has been disturbed.

I didn’t laugh, however. After a few moments to recover I made my way home. I was as careful as I could be in my state of anxiety, exhaustion, and weakness; at all events I made it safely into the house without any other incidents.

Jim took one look at me and I think he almost swore. “What happened?” he said.

I closed the window and sank down into the bloodstained gray chair. “The police know what I did-at least some of it-and know what I look like.”

He whistled. “Do they know where you live?”

“I don’t think so, although, now that you mention it, there are neighbors who know what I look like, and the police are already suspicious of this house, so they might put things together.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. That is, I don’t know in the long run.”

“What about the short run?”

“For one thing, I’m going to visit Jill first thing tomorrow.”

“I would imagine. What else?”

I didn’t answer, but I suppose I must have looked disgusted, because Jim said, “What is it?”

“It’s how they identified me, curse them. I wouldn’t mind all the rest, but…”

When I didn’t go on, he said, “But what?”

“They know what my coat looks like. I’m going to have to stop wearing it, damn it to Hell.”

Predictably, Jim looked disapproving at the profanity, but he also laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I said.

“Some guys sure got it rough,” he said.

“Go suck astral eggs,” I told him, and came up to the typing machine to set it all down.

A sense of perspective would be helpful now. It is not the end of the world that the police know what I look like. If I can’t evade a few cops, I don’t deserve to. Can they see in the dark? Can they peer through walls? Hell, I can see them coming well before they see me, if I stay at all alert.

They don’t know where I live. They don’t where Susan lives. They don’t know where I play cards. They don’t know the street corners where I pick up hookers; or even that I do so. They know I have a really nice coat, and that means I won’t be able to wear it any more. A shame, but I’ve lived through worse.

Once Laura and I had to hide out in a Paris sewer for three nights and three hellish days; I thought I was going to die. She never told me from whom or what we were hiding. The rats would come and do tricks for us, and moths would fly down and arrange themselves in pretty aerial patterns for us, Laura would tell me stories, and I would make up poems for her, and that was the sum total of our entertainment.

Come to think of it, that was when she told me I ought to be a poet, and after that she made me write every day, which I continued to do until she left me, after which I stopped until just recently.

But that is neither here nor there. What I remember most clearly is that each day I would get weaker, and hungrier; and by the end of the third day, when she decided it was safe again, I couldn’t move at all; I just lay there and moaned. She had to carry me out, and she was in scarcely better shape than I was. I remember her warning me on the first day that a knife wound, or even a beating, could be fatal during the hours of daylight, and I thought that it hardly needed any sort of injury at all. She brought us up, somewhere, in an alley, and we lay there together until a drunk stumbled over us, cursing, and that was how we survived.

If I could live through that, I should not be unduly afraid of a couple of police officers who don’t even know what they’re looking for.

I really do wonder what had happened, though, that sent Kellem and me into hiding in the sewers.

I found a clothing store and I have bought a winter parka. It is hideously ugly, but warm. I’m still annoyed that I can’t wear my coat any more, but at least I won’t freeze; that is, I won’t freeze more than I did going to get the coat. I doubt there will be more than another week or two of winter, but I can afford it, so why not?

As I write this, I am feeling even more worn out and fatigued; exposure will do that.

Why couldn’t Kellem have had the courtesy to want to kill me in California? Or, if she was going to insist on Ohio, she could have at least waited until summer.

For that matter, what is it about this city that has so taken her? It is too small to get lost in, yet too big to relax in. It has neither a climate nor atmosphere such as I would have thought appealed to her. Why not Yellow Springs, if she wanted a coffee-house atmosphere and to live in Ohio? Or, better yet, San Francisco, where she could hop over to Oakland any time she wanted to kill someone; no one cares who dies in Oakland.

I’m feeling angry and frustrated, mostly at Kellem. No, that isn’t right; now that I think of it, it is mostly that I am mortally weary.

Well, that is a problem I can solve. A visit with Jill ought to be just the thing. I feel that she is awake, and she awaits me.

I’m back from seeing Jill. It is late and there is a light but chilly breeze coming through the slats covering the window. Jill still seemed pale and listless; I was afraid to tax her strength too much. I feel better for the visit, but not enough, not enough.

I left her sleeping and found Susan, who was in the living room, reading French. For some reason, this set off a chain of fantasies of the two of us in Paris, the way Kellem and I had visited together. But I would never do to Susan what Kellem is doing to me.

Susan remarked that I didn’t look well; I said I seemed to have picked up some sort of virus, and she ought not to come too close to me. She blew me a kiss from across the room, and I returned home, watching for the police and taking my time so I wouldn’t wear myself out any more than I had to.

I wish I understood more of the process by which these things happen-that is, why some things leave me exhausted, and other things are as easy as falling over. Well, actually, it’s not easy to fall over; I have a deeply rooted instinct to catch myself, but the point remains.

There are many things I have learned that I can do-things that I think Laura ought to have told me about; instead I discover them by accident. This goes for limitations as well. There are times I have found that I could not do something I wanted to; a peculiar feeling, as if my will to take some action were being diverted from outside of myself. Why should this be? And why am I wondering about it now, when I never have before?

But leave all that; it doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that I am bone-weary and exhausted from all that I did escaping from the police. Seeing Jill helped, but I have not come close to recovering from yesterday’s exertions.

I will rest well, and see what tomorrow brings.

Life is a thing of give-and-take, of trading something not so good for something a little better; of exchanging a slight loss for a slight gain.

I am still feeling weak and shaken, but it could have been much, much worse.

Bah.

I cannot deceive myself. I am still enraged. I tell myself that it was a reasonable thing for her to do, and I’d have done the same thing in her position, and it is all true, but it amounts to nothing. I don’t know how I resisted destroying her utterly, and, if I continue to feel this way, she will not live to see the snow melt. There are times when I can be rational, and times when I cannot. In this case, she not only betrayed me, but she did so when I was as weak as I’ve been in a very long time indeed. I require rest, I must recover my strength; I do not need the sort of games she chose, no, dared to play with me.