Emily St. John Mandel: The Singer's Gun

“What time is it?” David asked. Anton felt his tension in the air.

“A little after nine. She won’t appear if I’m with you, will she?”

“No,” David said, “she won’t.”

“Then I’ll wait with you,” Anton said. “I’ll wait with you till it’s time.”

They walked out past the harbor and along the narrow strip of beach that tethered Ischia proper to its satellite, the islet that rose out of the water on the other side of the harbor. It was very nearly its own island and no one lived there. A few hotels lined the edge of the islet that faced the harbor, but sheer rock rose up behind them. A path curved around the hill to the right. They started up the hillside, but the path was hard and steep. After a little while they turned and leaned on a bank of sand and soapstone, looking back at the village. On the other side of the harbor Sant’Angelo was a wall of lights, houses terraced up the hillside. Anton could see the hotel from here, on the edge of the lights near the piazza.

“What was she like?” Anton asked.

“Evie? It’s a funny thing, you know. People die, you remember them as angels. It gets harder and harder to remember what was real. She wasn’t an angel. . I mean, look, I was dealing coke and she was handling the money. So she wasn’t necessarily good , you know, in any kind of an absolute law-abiding non-drug-dealing sense of the word, but she was good to me. We were good to each other.”

“All that matters, I guess.”

“I think so, personally. What about your wife?”

“My wife? I don’t know. My wife canceled our wedding twice. My wife was already planning to leave me and move to San Francisco when we left New York on our honeymoon. We disappointed each other.”

“You don’t love her?”

“I do. I did. But not enough. I don’t know why either of us went through with it. Look—”

A single light had blinked on in the restaurant of their hotel, a weak shine over the water. It was hard to tell at this distance, but through the far-off windows he thought he saw figures moving. Four people, setting up chairs at a table.

“We have to go back,” Anton said. “Listen, you go first. Try not to let them hear you. If they hear you, tell them your name’s Anton Waker and that you’ll bring the package down in a few minutes. I’ll be four minutes behind you. We meet in your room.”

David nodded silently and moved away from him down the path, and Anton felt a sudden guilt. He was sending David off alone, the man’s ghost wife could be smiling in the air around any given corner, and then he remembered that he didn’t believe in ghosts and felt like an idiot. He spent a few minutes after that staring at his watch while David crossed the length of beach and disappeared into the shadows at the edge of the piazza. It wasn’t quite four minutes, but Anton couldn’t take it anymore and followed him.

There was no one on the beach. The boats bobbed quietly against the piers, soft sounds of waves calmed by the breakwaters. The piazza was deserted. The front door of the hotel was unlocked, as always. Anton slipped in almost silently, heard the soft murmur of voices from the restaurant. A faint impression of light down the corridor. He looked up the stairs and saw David crouched low at the top of the staircase. David smiled and gave him a silent thumbs-up: he had crept in undetected. Anton let go of the door, too soon — it slipped out of his hand and closed loudly, and the murmur of voices stopped. He was silent. The men in the restaurant were silent. David was silent; he had clenched his hands together white-knuckled and he was glaring at Anton. Anton closed his eyes and thought of praying, but he’d never been to church and had nothing to pray to and the world felt less than holy at that moment.

“Hello?” someone called out, in English. Anton signaled to David— stay— and walked down the darkened corridor that separated the foyer from the restaurant.

A single light was on over one of the tables by the window. Otherwise the restaurant was dark, upside-down chairs on the tables casting shadows on the walls. Four men sat watching him. They were in their thirties, of indeterminate national origin, well dressed. They gazed blandly at him, except for the man sitting to Anton’s right, who smiled and gestured at an empty chair.

“Please,” he said, “join us.”

A bottle of wine stood half-consumed on the table. One of the men was casually folding a map and putting it away as Anton sat down. Another was shuffling papers into a neat little pile and turning them over blank side up.

“What brings you to the island of Ischia, my friend?” The man’s accent was British with Eastern European undertones.

“I’m writing a guidebook,” Anton said. He cursed himself for stupidity as he said this, but it occurred to him that Aria didn’t know about the guidebook so perhaps all wasn’t lost after all, maybe the slip wasn’t ruinous, maybe they’d still believe he was David Grissom and that David Grissom was he.

“A guide to Ischia in the off-season?”

“To the world in the off-season.”

They were quiet for a moment, then one of them laughed and raised his wineglass. “To the world in the off-season,” he repeated. “Cheers.” The others raised their glasses too. “Some wine?”

“Thank you.”

One of the men poured him a glass of wine. A reaction seemed to be expected, so Anton sipped at it and nodded appreciatively. He was aware that he appeared perfectly calm — an old gift, extraordinarily useful in his first career — but his nerves were spun glass. The wine tasted like nothing. It was a dull shock that this moment had actually come; all these strained lost weeks of waiting for the transaction, and the transaction was at last about to occur.

“The wine’s excellent,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Anton Waker, I presume,” the man with the British accent said.

“Who? Oh, no, actually, I’m David Grissom. I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me—” It seemed like the perfect time to make his escape; he smiled apologetically and stood up to leave, but someone grasped his arm.

“Sit, sit, you think we’d renege on our hospitality so quickly? Come now, a small misunderstanding, sit with us a moment anyway. It’s a beautiful evening, and as you say, the wine is excellent. Alberto,” said the man with the British accent. “Ali for short. This is Claro, Mario, Paul.”

Claro said something in another language and the others smiled. Anton smiled too, trying to look as politely clueless as possible and wondering what their real names were. He was acutely aware of his heartbeat. “And you might be wondering,” Ali said, “why Ischia on a Friday night in October?”

“Why Ischia,” Mario repeated. His accent was, if not exactly British, clipped in a manner suggestive of an expensive British education.

“Because I like peace and quiet,” Ali said.

“Hard to find anywhere quieter than a tourist destination in the off-season,” Anton said.

“A man after my own heart. Every tourist destination goes quiet in the winter, but not many places go as quiet as this. There are no cars. There are no tourists. The shops are boarded up; the market hardly opens. And my new favorite restaurateur is kind enough to extend his hospitality.” He raised his glass again. “To Gennaro,” he said. The others repeated him, except for Paul, who only smiled. “You’re staying here at the hotel, Mr. Grissom?”

“I am.”

“You wouldn’t know a man by the name of Anton Waker, would you? A fellow guest?”

“Anton Waker,” Anton repeated. His fear had faded. He felt exactly as he had when he was selling Social Security cards in New York — that perfect serenity, the steadiness that overcame him. He was like a fish slipping back into water, like a bird rising back into the air. He sipped his wine and swirled it in the glass, considering. “The name’s familiar. Yes, actually—” He stilled the glass but the wine continued moving for a moment—“I do know the man you mean. Brown hair, medium build? He’s in the room next to mine upstairs.”