Emily St. John Mandel - The Singer's Gun

“New York,” Elena said.

“I meant originally.”

“A place you’ve never heard of,” Elena said lightly. “A town up in northern Canada.”

“I’ve been to Canada. I’ve been traveling since my wife died.”

“Not this far north, trust me.”

“I took the ice road to Tuktoyaktuk,” David said.

“You’ve been to Tuktoyaktuk ? You’re serious?”

“I was trying to get as far north as I could,” he said. “Which town are you from?”

“Inuvik.”

“I spent a few days there.”

“In Inuvik? Why?”

“I liked it there,” David said. “I was there in the winter and the northern lights were beautiful. The sun never came up, but I liked living by moonlight.”

“It’s small,” she said. “Everything’s always either muddy or frozen. There’s nothing up there.”

“You’re talking about a lack of employment?”

“No, I’m talking about a lack of everything. A loss of potential. It’s hard to explain. There’s just. . it’s a narrowing of possibilities,” she said. “Even the smartest people end up doing nothing much with their lives, because there’s nothing to do. It’s not just Inuvik, it’s everywhere in the world that’s small and remote. Fewer things are possible in places like that.”

“I think I understand. Do you believe in ghosts?” David asked her.

“David,” Anton said, “the poor girl just got here.” He couldn’t seem to lift his hand from her thigh under the table.

“You know how much I hate small talk.”

“I hate it too,” Elena said. “It’s small.”

“Well said.”

“I don’t think I believe in ghosts,” she said.

“Have you ever seen one?”

“No. If I had I’d believe in them.” She was tired, and a short time later she excused herself and went to bed. David sipped at a glass of coffee and stared out at the harbor.

“I like her,” David said, when his coffee was done.

“So do I.” Anton was perfectly content for the first time in memory.

“What’s she doing here?”

“I have no idea.” Anton knew exactly what she was doing there, but he didn’t want to talk about it. The night was too good; the stars were bright, the coffee was perfect, in a few hours the transaction would be over and he would be perfectly free. There was Elena and soon there would be a child, and he was already thinking about names. Esme. Michael. Zooey. Lucille.

“I have no idea what I’m doing here either.” There was an edge to David’s voice. “I’m thinking about leaving tomorrow.”

“Why are you leaving?” Anton was surprised by the loneliness that overcame him at the thought of this.

“Look, you’ll think I’m crazy.” David was leaning back in his chair, looking up at the stars.

“I promise I won’t.”

“I felt this, well. . this prickling at the back of my neck today. I know it sounds absurd, but I don’t know how else to say it. I was sitting on that wall over there this morning, my back to the harbor, just reading the newspaper, and that feeling comes over me. I turn around, and no one’s watching me. But the last time I felt like that, the last two times, I saw her a little while later.”

“Saw who?”

“My wife,” David said. “If I stay here now I’m just marking time on this little island, waiting for her to appear again. How long can you flee from a ghost? She’s been dead for five years now. I don’t know why I’m afraid of her. I mean Christ, it’s Evie. It’s just my wife. I love her. But I’m afraid of the dead.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” Anton was uneasy. He didn’t know what to say.

“Ideally, no one. Ideally, we’d, I don’t know, we’d embrace them, man, we’d just fucking accept the fact that they walk among us and get on with our lives. It shouldn’t be that big a deal, you know? Things overlap sometimes.”

“You think they walk. .” Anton didn’t want to hear the answer to the question, so he stopped midsentence and let it hang in the air.

“Aren’t you listening? I saw her. Twice.”

“After,” Anton said carefully.

“Yes, fucking after. I went up north after she died, like I was telling Elena. There’s nothing up there, but that was the point — I wanted to get away from everything, from the whole nightmare of the last few months. I think I was just trying to get as far away from the cancer ward as humanly possible, actually. I sold all my stuff, I broke the lease on my apartment and headed north. The landscape up there was so beautiful, I can’t even describe it. There was almost no daylight, just darkness and then twilight, and the moon was brighter than I’d ever seen. I could see the northern lights out the window of my hotel room. I stayed in Inuvik for a while, then I took the ice road up to Tuktoyaktuk and rented a snowmobile one day. I rode a bit out of town. It’s silent up there, but the snowmobile was loud, and I just wanted to be there in the silence for a minute. So I stopped the snowmobile, and I felt like someone was watching me, so I turned around and there she was—” David gestured, and in the movement of his hand Anton almost saw her. “She was standing on top of the snow in her wedding dress. She was only there for an instant, just a flash, but she smiled at me and I could smell the vanilla perfume she used to wear.”

“And then again?”

“Yes, again. I got out of the arctic as fast as I could, headed down to Sault Ste. Marie for a while, and then I went to Europe and I saw her in the crowd in Athens. And you’re thinking, Right, you saw her in the crowd in Athens, whatever. You can see anyone in a crowd in Athens. There’s too many fucking people there, that’s the problem with the place, and everyone on earth sort of looks like someone else from the back. But I was walking, and I saw a black woman wearing a long blue dress far up ahead. My wife was from Kenya, and her wedding dress was blue. This woman in the crowd was moving in and out of view. I started following her, but I couldn’t get close. And just when I’m thinking, Come on, get a grip, she’s been dead for years now, Evie turned around and smiled at me. It was just like we’d been temporarily separated and she was waiting for me to catch up.”

The implications of this caught Anton with a sudden chill.

“Ghost stories,” he said weakly, and made an attempt at a lighthearted laugh.

“The thing is,” David said, “I’m not unafraid, I keep hoping I’ll stop seeing her and then, I don’t know, get some kind of peace in the world — but if she left, I mean really left, if I didn’t think she was still somewhere close by, I think I’d miss her even more. So there’s no way out of this one, is there.”

“You ever see her when you were with someone else?”

“No. I only see her when I’m alone.”

“Then we’ll sit out here for a while. The other night,” Anton said, “on the dock, you said that for a certain sum of money you might be willing to do something for me.”

“Make me an offer,” David said. “God knows I could use some traveling money.”

“Would you do it for five hundred euros?”

“You’d pay me five hundred euros to give an envelope to someone?”

“I don’t know these people. It might be dangerous, they might—”

“It’s a deal,” David said. “I’ll be fine.”

When the restaurant had closed they sat on a low stone wall by the harbor, looking at the boats. The sense of impending freedom was exhilarating. Earlier in the day Anton had called his old bank in New York and had the eighteen thousand dollars from Aria wired into a local checking account where he’d already moved the bulk of his savings. Now he sat by the harbor with David in the half-light, thinking of a bright new life that would start tomorrow, thinking of getting a job somewhere and living with Elena and the child in Sant’Angelo.