Martin Seay - The Mirror Thief

Kagami sets his snifter on the table. I’m gonna smoke a cigar, he says, leaning over and reaching into his pocket. Do you want a cigar?

No, thank you.

Kagami produces a brown leather case, removes a dark panatela, and sets to work on it with a gold bulletcutter. You’ve been around, Curtis, he’s saying. You’ve seen the world. Europe. Asia. Middle East. Me and my wife, we travel as much as we can. We did a fun thing last year for our tenth anniversary. We went back to Italy for two weeks. Northern Italy, where we did our honeymoon. You know what we did? We used the same guidebooks. Just to see if we could. And it worked. Same restaurants, same hotels. I remember we ate at this one place, this bacaro, that had been in business since 1462. Blew my mind.

Kagami’s cigar case and cutter disappear. He takes a big naphtha lighter from his pocket and strikes it. A spritz of sparks. A two-inch tongue of flame. After a few puffs he snaps it shut with a loud clear chime, like the sound of a flipped coin.

Okay, he says. Now imagine you and your better half are tooling around Las Vegas with a guidebook from 1993. How do you think you’re doing? Ooh, honey, let’s go see the Sands! Sorry, sweetie-pie. What about the Landmark? The Landmark’s a parking lot. The El Rancho? The Hacienda? You’ll never see the Hacienda, it doesn’t exist. The city is always changing. Always, just for the sake of doing it. And that’s why it’s always the same. Get it? That’s its nature, its essence. Invisible. Pure. Formless. Indestructible. What do you know about roads?

Say again?

Rhodes. Island in the Aegean Sea. Used to be a colossus there, right? Okay. What about Alexandria? Had a pretty nice library, I hear. New York? Couple tall buildings. I’m talking about ruined fortresses here, kid. Collapsed empires. Places become defined by what they lose. Once it’s gone, it’s eternal. Everything you see down there — everything! — is on its way out. Everything self-destructs. I mean, fuck Rome. This is the eternal city. Pure concept.

The waitress appears again out of nowhere with an ashtray and a fresh ginger ale that Curtis doesn’t really want. Kagami moves the tray a few inches closer, then takes a sip of cognac. The jazz trio is playing a sad French song that Curtis can’t quite place. Les musées, les églises, ouvrent en vain leurs portes , it goes. Inutile beauté devant nos yeux déçus .

Kagami rotates his cigar slowly, deposits a tidy gray mound in the cutglass tray. I love this silly fucking town, he says. I got desert running through my veins. I was born out here. Did you know that?

Curtis shakes his head. My dad told me you knew Stanley from California, he says. I figured you were from out there.

My family’s from Los Angeles. And L.A.’s where I grew up. But I was born out here. About a hundred fifty miles on the other side of those mountains.

Kagami aims a short finger in the general direction of Mount Charleston, lost somewhere in the darkness over Curtis’s right shoulder, far out of sight. Curtis doesn’t turn around.

You know where the Owens Valley is? Kagami says.

Not exactly. I know it’s west of Nellis, across the state line.

It’s about fifteen miles outside of Death Valley National Park. That should give you an idea of the climate. I was born there at a place called Manzanar. You ever heard of Manzanar, Curtis?

Curtis gives Kagami a tight smile. Kagami’s not even looking at him. Yeah, Curtis says. I’ve heard of it.

I was born there in 1943. I don’t remember it except in little pieces. How the Army blankets smelled. Brown dust in everything. You’d fill up a pitcher with water, and before you could get it to the table there’d be dust on the surface. Little swirls of it. I remember that. My mother wouldn’t talk about it, and my dad died in Italy, but over the years I’ve tried to educate myself a little bit. That led me to other things. If I’m remembering right, Curtis, your father spent the late Sixties and early Seventies playing clubs in Montréal. He ever tell you what I did during Vietnam, Curtis?

No, sir. He didn’t.

I went to prison. I walked into the Hall of Justice with my draft card and a Zippo lighter, and I spent twenty-two months at Terminal Island. I’m not trying to be an asshole here, kid. I’m not judging you, and I’m not gonna say you should live your life any different. But if I act a little hostile to the whole idea of military police, then I got some reasons. That’s all.

Kagami puts the cigar back in his mouth. A gray cloud rises toward the lights. Two thirtysomething women at the next table — flashy shoes, pricey coifs, monogrammed everything — get up and move to the other end of the room, fanning open hands before their disgusted faces. Curtis takes long breaths, counting them, until his teeth unclench.

I was an MP for twenty years, he says. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get myself to feel bad or regretful about that. Maybe that means that one of these days — when I’m in a real different mood — you and I’ll have to sit down and have ourselves a big old argument. That’s fine. Right now, all I’m going to say is this. I’m not an MP anymore, Walter. But I am still Badrudin Hassan’s son, Donald Stone’s son. And I’m still Stanley Glass’s friend. You and I may be at odds somewhere, but on this particular issue we want exactly the same thing. Which is to keep Stanley safe.

That may be so, kid. But we want it for completely different reasons.

I don’t see how that matters.

I know you don’t, Kagami snaps. That’s the whole problem. At this point, Curtis, it’s about the only thing that still matters.

Curtis can feel tightness in his neck and temples: the beginnings of a headache. He can taste it on the back of his tongue. He’s about ninety-eight percent sure that he’s wasting his time here, but that other two percent keeps winking at him, lifting up its skirts. The jazz combo is taking a break, and somebody’s forgotten to turn the piped-in music back on; it’s strangely quiet in the room.

I’m sick of this shit, Curtis says. I’ve been jerked around now in just about every direction. I am ready to go home. There’s only one thing keeping me from getting on a plane. If I leave, and later I find out that I brought something bad onto Stanley by coming out here, something that I had the power to stop, then I’m gonna feel real sorry about that. And I got enough stuff in my life to feel sorry about. So I guess what I want to hear from you is whether you think Stanley’s gonna be okay.

Kagami shoots him an incredulous look. No, he says. No, Stanley’s not gonna be okay. The man is dying, Curtis. Get it? It doesn’t matter what you do or you don’t do.

It does matter, Curtis says. It matters to me.

Kagami doesn’t respond. He’s staring at the night, looking very sad and very tired. Smoke rises from the ash of his cigar in a solid wavering column, like the ghost-white proboscis of butterfly, until the HVAC whisks it away. Curtis is watching it snake toward the ceiling when he notices a low rumble of turbofans outside. He looks out the window, searching the sky for moving lights.

Recognize that? Kagami says.

Curtis listens hard, then shakes his head.

New stealth fighter. I’m pretty sure. Haven’t seen it yet.

The sound of the engines fades. Heard any news about the war? Curtis asks.

Kagami shifts in his chair, leans forward. Curtis can see him getting comfortable, shuffling facts in his head, winding himself up for another practiced run of summary and analysis. Then he stops, like he’s tapped out, like he just doesn’t have it in him. Curtis, he says, when’s the last time you talked to Damon?

I got a fax from him this morning. I haven’t talked to him since I been out here. He’s not returning my calls.