Sean Michaels - Us Conductors

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, may his memory be illuminated, would have said that we can want a better world. That I might redeem my wanting by wanting that.

Through the darkness outside the window I saw my car. A man was standing over it, writing something in a notepad. He seemed a sibling of the grey hedges and the black street and I had never seen him before. He wore a suit, with a pair of binoculars around his neck. He raised them and stared at me, illuminated in my window.

I could see only the black binoculars. Moonlight grazed their lenses.

Suddenly something changed. He had lowered the binoculars, lifted something else, flash flash. A camera, a photograph, silver bromide in a box, my photograph.

The theremin was roaring. With a touch I silenced it. I turned it off. I drew the curtains. I went downstairs, past Lavinia, to the front door. The man was gone. It smelled like garbage outside. At the end of the street I could hear two men fighting. Moths tossed and whirled through the open door into the house.

PASH MET ME AT A BAKERY in Chinatown. We were squashed into a table near the door. Each of us had a tin plate and one almond biscuit. Outside it was so humid, a kind of jungle. Indian summer. Behind the counter someone kept ringing a bell.

“I killed a man,” I said. And then I told him about the Dolores Building, room 818, the opening in Danny Finch’s brow. He listened with his eyes down. Partly, I had expected him to have known. If he knew, he did not show it. He kept his gaze on the centre of the table. He interrupted only once. “You are sure it was him?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Go on,” he said.

I described my exit, the elevator ride, the return journey in the Karls’ grey car. I stopped talking. Pash picked up his almond biscuit and ate it, chewing each mouthful before he took another. There were no crumbs.

“Five years ago?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell them?”

“Who?”

“The others. My counterparts.”

“No. I didn’t tell anyone.”

Pash rubbed his neck.

“Last night,” I said, “I looked outside and there was a man examining the Cadillac and he took my photograph.”

“Last night?” Pash set his jaw. “Did he look like an agent?” I hesitated and he barked at me. “Come on, Lev. An agent. A suit. FBI, DOI.”

“Yes,” I said. “What are they looking for?” I did not know if my voice was calm or hysterical. The panic in me felt so tightly contained. “Is it about money? Is it about the murder?” It was the first time I had called it a murder. Ubíjstvo . Something had happened nearby — a bus had arrived, a factory had let out; abruptly the bakery was filled with hungry people, bellowing, wedged up against us. I hunched over the table. “What should I do?”

Pash leaned in to meet me. “Don’t. Do. Anything,” he said severely. “I’ll handle it.” He sat back and we faced each other. With his fingertips he nudged my plate toward me. I swallowed. I picked up the almond biscuit.

He glanced at me once more, nodded. He stood, squeezed through the bodies, left without saying goodbye.

I craned my neck and through the window saw him step into the steam.

IN RETROSPECT, this was the moment when my world ended. All those tremors and then a quiet catastrophe. Pash disappeared into Manhattan and my life capsized, though I did not yet know it. I came home to an empty house. Lavinia was away at the studio, moving freely. She loved me. I loved Clara Rockmore. I sat at my desk with an apple, a bottle of seltzer water. It was a blazingly beautiful day, gulls dipping through West 54th Street. I gazed at a sheet of white paper. There was nothing on it; I could draw anything.

That night Lavinia and I went to Harlem to see The Adventures of Robin Hood . I watched Errol Flynn fire arrows into his enemies. We went to Ricky’s, where they do not sell pizza by the slice. We bought an entire pie, ate it with our hands in the park, burning our fingertips, drying our palms on the grass. We went home and I removed her clothes and she traced me in the darkness; I kissed her ribs, pressed my thumb into the crease beneath her lips, against the rise of her cheekbone. We were travellers, unlit. I wanted everything. We lay, after, in a cold Y, and we felt like branches. I stared at gardenias, in a vase. I circled her wrist with my hand. Every time I moved my lips I was telling a lie.

I AWOKE TO AN EMPTY BED. It was morning. A single 1.5-volt battery sat silhouetted on the windowsill, haloed in dust. Beside my head was a small journal, an oil pencil, for writing ideas in the night. I turned to a random page. Teletouch mirror: Face Reflection disappears as you approach . Underneath, a sketch of a sparrow. I got out of bed and pulled on some underpants. “Lavinia?” I said. I went into the other room. More gardenias in vases. I passed the cabinet that held a letter from Commerce and Burr. Everything that was not in shadow was brightly illuminated, sun-streaked.

In the kitchen I put on a pot of coffee. The grains were odourless, like chips of gravel. I leaned into the counter beside the stove, listened to the water boil. From somewhere else in the house I heard a faint noise. “Lavinia?” I called again.

The kettle began to shrill. I poured. I went downstairs, and downstairs, and downstairs, to the grey parlour. It was cold now; the heat wave had passed. The house felt empty. I shivered. “Lavinia?” I murmured. Someone was standing by the barren fireplace. It was not my wife. I found myself in a defensive stance, holding my cup of coffee. The man had his back to me. “Hello, Lev,” he murmured. He was about my height and build, with a collared shirt, his sleeves rolled up.

“Who’s there?” We were speaking Russian.

He turned. The man in my parlour was the man who also called himself Lev. The man I’d met at Mud Tony’s, with Karl and Karl, on the day I committed a murder. His head was shaved. He wore square glasses. I said, “Where is Lavinia?”

He cleared his throat. “Dancing.”

“What do you mean, ‘dancing’?”

He smiled very, very slowly, as if he was still listening to me speak. “She is at rehearsal.”

My voice was level. “How did you get in?”

“I let myself in,” he said. He cleared his throat again. I scanned the room, looking for any other men. We were alone. He massaged his right forearm. “You need to leave the country.”

“No,” I said. “You should talk to Pash.”

“I spoke to him yesterday afternoon.” He took a breath. “I spoke to him again last night.”

“Why isn’t he here?”

“He was sent away.” Lev pursed his lips. “I do not think you will see him again.”

I was still in my defensive stance, left foot leading, right knee bent. I was still holding my cup of coffee, ridiculous. He noticed my pose, gave a kind of laugh. In the next beat his smile hollowed. “It is time to conclude your American adventure.”

“If—” I began.

“Lev,” he said, with unassailable patience, “it is time.”

I gestured at the parlour table — the Times , teacups, sheet music, Slominsky’s wedding invitation. A pair of Lavinia’s ballet shoes curled beside the chair. “How can I leave?”

“Tonight,” he replied. “Some men will come this afternoon to collect your work. Others have already been sent to the garage, the storage warehouse. You will collect your papers. Do not use the telephone.”