Jonathan Lethem - The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

She looked at me oddly. I cursed myself for bringing it up. “Shouldn’t the plural be tori? ” she said.

I winced. “I’m sure you’re right. Never mind. I don’t mean to take up your time with my little japes.”

“I’ve got plenty of time,” she said, poignant again.

“Nevertheless. You wished to speak to me.”

“You knew me once,” she said.

I did my best to appear sympathetic, but I was baffled.

“Something happened to the world. Everything changed. Everyone that I know has disappeared.”

“As an evocation of subjective truth—” I began.

“No. I’m talking about something real. I used to have friends.”

“I’ve had few, myself.”

“Listen to me. All the people I know have disappeared. My family, my friends, everyone I used to work with. They’ve all been replaced by strangers who don’t know me. I have nowhere to go. I’ve been awake for two days looking for my life. I’m exhausted. You’re the only person that looks the same as before, and has the same name. The Missing Persons man, ironically.”

“I’m not the Missing Persons man,” I said.

“Cornell Pupkiss. I could never forget a name like that.”

“It’s been a burden.”

“You don’t remember coming to my apartment? You said you’d been looking for me. I was gone for two weeks.”

I struggled against temptation. I could extend my time in her company by playing along, indulging the misunderstanding. In other words, by betraying what I knew to be the truth: that I had nothing at all to do with her unusual situation.

“No,” I said. “I don’t remember.”

Her expression hardened. “Why should you?” she said bitterly.

“Your question’s rhetorical,” I said. “Permit me a rhetorical reply. That I don’t know you from some earlier encounter we can both regret. However, I know you now. And I’d be pleased to have you consider me an ally.”

“Thank you.”

“How did you find me?”

“I called the station and asked if you still worked there.”

“And there’s no one else from your previous life?”

“No one — except him.”

Ah.

“Tell me,” I said.

She’d met the man she called E. in a bar, how long ago she couldn’t explain. She described him as irresistible. I formed an impression of a skunk, a rat. She said he worked no deliberate charm on her, on the contrary seemed panicked when the mood between them grew intimate and full of promise. I envisioned a scoundrel with an act, a crafted diffidence that allured, a backped-aling attack.

He’d taken her home, of course.

“And?” I said.

“We fucked,” she said. “It was good, I think. But I have trouble remembering.”

The words stung. The one in particular. I tried not to be a child, swallowed my discomfort away. “You were drunk,” I suggested.

“No. I mean, yes , but it was more than that. We weren’t clumsy like drunks. We went into some kind of trance.”

“He drugged you.”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“What happened — it wasn’t something he wanted.”

“And what did happen?”

“Two weeks disappeared from my life overnight. When I got home I found I’d been considered missing. My friends and family had been searching for me. You’d been called in.”

“I thought your friends and family had vanished themselves. That no one knew you.”

“No. That was the second time.”

“Second time?”

“The second time we fucked.” Then she seemed to remember something, and dug in her pocket. “Here.” She handed me a scuffed business card: CORNELL PUPKISS, MISSING PERSONS.

“I can’t believe you live this way. It’s like a prison.” She referred to the seamless rows of book spines that faced her in each of my few rooms, including the bedroom where we now stood. “Is it all criminology?”

“I’m not a policeman in some cellular sense,” I said, and then realized the pun. “I mean, not intrinsically. They’re novels, first editions.”

“Let me guess; mysteries.”

“I detest mysteries. I would never bring one into my home.”

“Well, you have, in me.”

I blushed, I think, from head to toe. “That’s different,” I stammered. “Human lives exist to be experienced, or possibly endured, but not solved. They resemble any other novel more than they do mysteries. Westerns, even. It’s that lie the mystery tells that I detest.”

“Your reading is an antidote to the simplifications of your profession, then.”

“I suppose. Let me show you where the clean towels are kept.”

I handed her fresh towels and linen, and took for myself a set of sheets to cover the living room sofa.

She saw that I was preparing the sofa and said, “The bed’s big enough.”

I didn’t turn, but I felt the blood rush to the back of my neck as though specifically to meet her gaze. “It’s four in the afternoon,” I said. “I won’t be going to bed for hours. Besides, I snore.”

“Whatever,” she said. “Looks uncomfortable, though. What’s Barbara Pym? She sounds like a mystery writer, one of those stuffy English ones.”

The moment passed, the blush faded from my scalp. I wondered later, though, whether this had been some crucial missed opportunity. A chance at the deeper intervention that was called for.

“Read it,” I said, relieved at the change of subject. “Just be careful of the dust jacket.”

“I may learn something, huh?” She took the book and climbed in between the covers.

“I hope you’ll be entertained.”

“And she doesn’t snore, I guess. That was a joke, Mr. Pupkiss.”

“So recorded. Sleep well. I have to return to the station. I’ll lock the door.”

“Back to Little Offenses?”

“Petty Violations.”

“Oh, right.” I could hear her voice fading. As I stood and watched, she fell soundly asleep. I took the Pym from her hands and replaced it on the shelf.

I wasn’t going to the station. Using the information she’d given me, I went to find the tavern E. supposedly frequented.

I found him there, asleep in a booth, head resting on his folded arms. He looked terrible, his hair a thatch, drool leaking into his sweater arm, his eyes swollen like a fevered child’s, just the picture of raffish haplessness a woman would find magnetic. Unmistakably the seedy vermin I’d projected and the idol of Miss Rush’s nightmare.

I went to the bar and ordered an Irish coffee, and considered. Briefly indulging a fantasy of personal power, I rebuked myself for coming here and making him real, when he had only before been an absurd story, a neurotic symptom. Then I took out the card she’d given me and laid it on the bar top. Cornell Pupkiss, Missing Persons. No, I myself was the symptom. It is seldom as easy in practice as in principle to acknowledge one’s own bystander status in incomprehensible matters.

I took my coffee to his booth and sat across from him. He roused and looked up at me.

“Rise and shine, buddy boy,” I said, a little stiffly. I’ve never thrilled to the role of Bad Cop.

“What’s the matter?”

“Your unshaven chin is scratching the table surface.”

“Sorry.” He rubbed his eyes.

“Got nowhere to go?”

“What are you, the house dick?”

“I’m in the employ of any taxpayer,” I said. “The bartender happens to be one.”

“He’s never complained to me.”

“Things change.”

“You can say that again.”

We stared at each other. I supposed he was nearly my age, though he was more boyishly pretty than I’d been even as an actual boy. I hated him for that, but I pitied him for the part I saw that was precociously old and bitter.