Shya Scanlon - The Guild of Saint Cooper

“What’s this?” one of them said — a bald, fair-skinned man with large, purple birthmarks covering his face. He bent forward and sucked a big line up his nose.

“My friend Blake,” said Mitch, waving me into the room. “He’s a writer.”

The bar back tapped me on the shoulder and then disappeared back down the hallway. I smiled, hoping they wouldn’t expect much of me. Moments later a toilet flushed and a door opened, and out walked a dwarf. He had dark hair, bushy eyebrows, and bright green eyes he used at me sharply.

“Goldie,” he said, and held out his hand. “Mitch gives you the nod.” He walked to the table, stood on a chair, and did a line. “Maybe you can help me settle something. Jake here is trying to convince me that memory is the same as experience, because it excites the same parts of the brain.”

Jake’s eyes widened. “They did studies.”

“But I say that’s bullshit,” the dwarf continued, “because let me ask you something.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Can you have a memory of a memory?”

The man to Mitch’s left raised his hand in a lazy wave. “I’m Ronnie.”

I nodded. I tried to remember something, anything.

“Do you mean a memory of having a memory, or a memory of the memory itself?”

Goldie thought about this. “I like you,” he said. “So what I’m thinking is, if you can’t have a memory of it, it’s not an experience. Which means it’s, whatever, something else. A whole different type thing. I don’t give a shit what’s going on in the brain.”

“What’s going on in my brain,” said the birthmarked man, “is pussy.”

“Nice, Flynn,” said the dwarf. “Here we are trying to have an intelligent conversation.”

Flynn turned to me with a suddenly grave look. “All I have to say is, watch La Jetée . Tragedy is the only thing that separates memory and reality. Want a line?”

I considered his offer, and his face. There was something familiar about this man, I thought. Likely I’d seen him around the neighborhood. The marks on his face seemed to be some fungal bloom, and they called out to be read as one looks for shapes in a cloud. The other three men regarded me with blank expressions, but I couldn’t read Mitch. He didn’t seem judgmental, but he also didn’t seem high.

“Blake is meeting my sister Nancy tomorrow,” he said.

“Going to score yourself a big book deal, eh?” Goldie had picked his hand back up and was eyeing the flop. From my position I could see he had a low spade flush.

“Just an informational interview,” I said. “Still, I’d better not. I’ll probably be hung over as it is.”

“Speaking of, wanna earn your keep?”

I supposed I probably did.

“Since you’re standing, I mean. Go up, get a round of tequila from the bar. On the house. Jerry’ll give you a tray.”

On my way back upstairs I realized I should probably leave. The bar was almost empty, people dressed in black standing in small clusters like crows, and the bartender left one to join me as I leaned against the bar. He raised his eyebrows.

“Jerry?” I asked.

“What do they need?”

“Tequila,” I said, and drew a circle on the bar.

He nodded and turned his back. The music throbbed loud and slow, making the whole place feel underwater, the people swaying tidal, their conversations drowned out. The subjects were doubtless the same subjects people were discussing in bars all over the city, all over the world. It didn’t matter. It was an experience both highly specific and absolutely general. I wondered how I could work it into my book. It suddenly seemed like the ideal book would recreate all such moments, and in this way become entirely autobiographical while remaining a fantasy.

A woman walked toward me from a booth on the far wall, and I stood aside somewhat clumsily. Instead of ordering, though, she faced me at the bar, put on a thinking face, and leaned in close.

“My husband,” she said, “said I could kiss anyone in this bar.”

She was an inch taller than me, with short, slicked-back hair and a short black dress. I looked over her shoulder at the man she’d left, alone now in a circular booth. He raised his glass and tilted his head, and mouthed something that could have been either “Be my guest” or “Eat my pants.”

“Lucky you,” I said.

I STARED GROGGILY AT what I’d written before meeting Mitch and Goldie’s crew. Rocket the gay talking dog had just described a plot by a fast-food entrepreneur to grind stray pets into chili. I called in sick and went to the corner for coffee, feeling a little fragile and panicky. It was only 10 a.m. and already ninety degrees. An ice truck stood outside the coffee shop, and two stocky Mexican men were carrying large blocks of ice down to the basement. One of them passed me as I stood in line, cool air radiating off him.

“The ice man loadeth,” I said.

“Accuse me,” he said.

I stood aside.

Everyone seemed on edge.

I took my coffee across the street, found a spot in the shade, and kept watching the ice. Storing ice was a nearly surreal departure from daily life, I decided, something as foreign and antediluvian as plowing a field with oxen or sailing a square-rigged tall ship, and because of that it was satisfying to see. It was scrappy. Pragmatic. My phone rang.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hello, sweetie. Is this a good time?”

“I’m about to meet that agent I told you about.”

“Oh good! Tell me how that goes. I’m just calling to check in. Been thinking about you, thinking about what an amazing adventure you’re on.”

“Yeah, it’s something.”

“Something? It’s wonderful, Blake. I’m jealous! We all are.”

I flashed to my encounter at the bar last night, the strange woman’s tongue in my mouth.

“Who’s we?”

“Well, your brother.”

“He’s not jealous,” I said. “He thinks it’s absurd.”

My mother went silent for a moment. “You know, your father always wanted to live in New York City.”

“Really? He never told me that.”

“Oh, yes, always. It was on his list. The problem of course was that he wasn’t interested in making the necessary lifestyle changes.”

I’d kept one eye on the man in the booth, and he hadn’t seemed at all pleased by his wife’s choice. It had all seemed fairly dangerous. If I hadn’t had Mitch downstairs, I probably wouldn’t have done it.

“Mom,” I said, “come on, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Well, the point is, you’re doing this incredible thing, and we’re all rooting for you. I’m rooting for you.”

So now I was a high school softball team. “Thanks, Mom. Hey, I gotta go, okay? I have to catch a train.”

“The subway! I love it. Okay, honey. Call me this weekend, will you? I want to catch you up.”

“I will.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Oh, and stay safe tomorrow. Hottest day on record!”

After my mother had hung up, I scrolled through my contacts until my father’s name came up. I didn’t have him under “Dad.”

The phone rang, and rang, and rang, and went to voicemail.

“You’ve reached me,” it said, “in a manner of speaking.”

One of the workers dropped a block and it shattered on the sidewalk, bright shards skittering into the street like white mice. I went down into the subway.

Nancy Klein, née Earl, was a senior literary agent at the Roger Klein Agency, which operated out of a loft in the Flatiron District. That was about all I knew. I surfaced at Madison Square Park and looked for a while at the north-pointing wedge of the building that gave the area its name. Like the ice, the existence of literary agents seemed to me a kind of quaint anachronism. A human monocle. So I wasn’t prepared whatsoever for the young firebrand who ordered me up past the doorman and then ordered me to sit down at her desk.