Martin Seay - The Mirror Thief

Yes sir. Downstairs, in my coat.

Well, run and get it. I’ll be writing out that list I promised you.

As he descends, Stanley can hear Synnøve somewhere nearby, singing wordlessly to herself, but he doesn’t look around. He opens the hall closet, pulls The Mirror Thief from his pocket, mounts the stairs again.

Welles has turned on the desklamp; it glows under its opaque green shade. As Stanley approaches, Welles lifts with a flourish the page he’s written and hands it over. This will keep you busy for a while, I’ll wager, he says. May I?

Stanley gives him the book, takes the page. He looks it over in the dim light: a long column of strange names, uniform and equidistant, as if plotted with a ruler. The handwriting is neat, but cramped and peculiar, and he knows he’s going to have a hell of a time making sense of it.

When Stanley looks up again Welles has the book open on his desk, a fountain-pen in his hand. He’s motionless, wearing a confused expression. Oh yeah, Stanley says. I guess I forgot to tell you. Somebody already wrote in my copy. Like I said, I got it second-hand. I never been able to read the message.

Welles begins to laugh. It’s a funny laugh: a little hysterical, then joyless and forced. Ah, he says. This is beginning to make sense. Where did you say you found this, again?

The Lower East Side. It belonged to a thief who got sent off to Rikers.

What was his name? Do you know?

Stanley shrugs. Everybody called him Hunky, he says. I never met him.

Hmm, Welles says. Then I suppose you got it — let’s see — third-hand, at the very least. Here, I’ll read it to you. Dear Alan —ah, good, I see I misspelled that— I salute your naked courage. Yours respectfully, Adrian Welles .

Oh, Stanley says.

I gave it to a poet who came through town two summers ago. A young self-styled visionary. Blake, by way of Whitman. Larry Lipton, I think, had invited him to come down from San Francisco. During the reading he had an altercation with someone from the crowd, and to demonstrate— something , his sincerity, his commitment, I don’t know what — he disrobed completely. It struck me at the time as a rather impressive gesture.

Welles closes the book, sits to open a drawer. You know, he says, this copy is rather the worse for wear. I’ve got one here in my desk that’s essentially untouched. Let me replace—

Stanley puts a quick protective hand on the book. If it’s all the same to you, he says, I’d just as soon keep the one I got.

Welles’s eyes track up Stanley’s arm to his face. Something in them seems slightly wounded. Then he smiles.

When he rises, he’s holding a metal ruler. He sets it down, fishes a razorblade from the top drawer. Opening the book again, he slips the ruler inside and cuts out the inscribed page with a single swift motion. Stanley tenses for an instant, about to spring, to seize Welles’s arm. Then he realizes that he doesn’t care. He’d rather be rid of it.

Welles flips to the preceding page, uncaps his pen again. As the nib scrapes the paper, Stanley’s eyes drift across the room: the mountains of books, the arsenal desk, the great barred door. After a moment Welles blows across the ink to dry it and puts the open book in Stanley’s hand. I tried to be more forgiving with my penmanship this time, he says. Can you read it?

Sure, Stanley says. Most of it.

It’s a quotation from Roger Bacon, the Thirteenth-Century English magus.

Okay. What’s it mean?

Welles caps the pen, turns off the lamp. It means I’m glad I met you, he says. Very glad indeed.

Welles picks up his pipe and steps toward the french door again, but Stanley doesn’t follow him. He stands next to the desk, holding the book, staring into space. Thanks for everything, Mister Welles, he says. Really. But it’s time for me to go.

Back downstairs, as he’s pulling on his jacket, Synnøve does her best to get him to stay — there’s a murphy bed in my studio, she says; I promise it’s quite comfortable — but he exits as quickly as he can, accepting a peck on the cheek, giving her an awkward hug. Wait! she says. Did you want to take your fish-buckets?

Oh, Stanley says, those aren’t actually mine.

Welles walks him down the path to the gate. What shall I tell your friend when he and Cynthia return? he says.

He’ll know where I am. You don’t need to worry yourself.

Welles offers his hand. Stanley takes it, and Welles pulls him into an embrace. Stanley is suspended for a moment, his ear against the man’s chest, breathing in his spicy smoke, hearing the roar and rumble of his chambered interior. Then Welles releases him.

As he steps from the curb, Stanley turns. Oh, Mister Welles? he calls.

Yes?

When we first met on the beach, a couple nights ago, you said something to me. What was it?

Welles walks away slowly until he reaches the stoop. Then he turns and leans against a wooden column. I don’t think I recall, he says.

It was in another language, Stanley says. You said it twice.

Welles is a featureless silhouette against the open door. His wife stands behind him, looking sleepy and sad. Two points of light appear in his spectacles. Stanley can’t tell where that light is coming from.

I’m sorry, Welles says. I must have enunciated so poorly that whatever I said sounded foreign. I’m sure I spoke only English. And that badly, it seems. My apologies.

Stanley nods. Okay, he says. Goodnight, Mister Welles.

Goodnight, Stanley.

On the way to the boardwalk, maybe two lots down, Stanley passes an overgrown yard with a cat in it. The cat has something in its mouth: a sandy fishhead, trailing scraps of viscera. It watches him with glassy green eyes.

Stanley clenches his jaw, aims a kick at the cat’s skull, then pulls it at the last second. The cat hunches, flattens its ears, and tears off through the grass, darting under the porch. Stanley’s vision is blurring again; a tremor gathers in his throat, and his breath comes heavily.

He looks over his shoulder at Welles’s deck, just visible through a spearpoint row of juniper trees. There’s a dark shape on the rail that must be Welles, though Stanley can’t tell if he’s watching or not.

You’re a lying sack of shit, Stanley hisses through his teeth.

When Stanley wakes the next morning in the squat on Horizon Court, Claudio isn’t there. Stanley sits up, wipes his eyes, looks around. Wondering if maybe the kid knocked at some point and he didn’t hear it. Then he remembers last night — Cynthia and her frog flick, Synnøve and her murphy bed — and he knows exactly where the kid is.

He flops down again, pulls up the blanket. Trying to get mad, not quite managing it. The kid is soft; of course he’d take the bed. Can’t blame him for that. Stanley’s not even sure why he was in such a hurry to leave Welles’s place himself. Partly because he was embarrassed by his waterworks performance, sure. And partly because the talk had quit paying off. But there was something else: an uneasiness he can’t name, a sense of something compromised or put at risk. Trying to pin it down just makes Stanley sad, and being sad always makes him tired.

It’s late morning before he wakes again; he’s not sure how late. Still no Claudio. He’s starting to feel like he’s made a bad bet: bankroll too small, number taking too long to come up. He shoves away the blanket, brushes his teeth, drinks from his father’s canteen. The list of names Welles gave him is still in the breast pocket of his new shirt; he finds it and flattens it on the counter in the front room, then looks at it from time to time while he gets dressed. It may as well be in Chinese. Sometimes it’s hard for Stanley to say just what he crossed the country to find, but it goddamn sure wasn’t this. Welles has ducked him again, shifting shape like some wiggly undersea thing, leaving Stanley in the usual cloud of ink.