You see (at least I think you do), this is what I was put on Planet Earth for. Can I be blamed for doing the thing that finishes me off, that completes me?
Answer: yes. Absolutely.
But I can’t stop. Sometimes I tell myself that I’ve gone on because if I do stop—maybe even for a day—they’ll know I’ve caught on, and the cleaners will make an unscheduled stop. Except what they’ll clean up this time will be me. But that’s not why. I do it because I’m just another addict, same as a guy smoking crack in an alley or some chick taking a spike in her arm. I do it because of the hateful fucking rush, I do it because when I’m working in DINKY’S NOTEBOOK, everything’s eventual. It’s like being caught in a candy trap. And it’s all the fault of that dork who came out of News Plus with his fucking Dis-260
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patch open. If not for him, I’d still see nothing but cloud-hazy buildings in the crosshairs. No people, just targets.
You are the bombsight, Skipper said in my dream. You are the bombsight, Dinkster.
That’s true. I know it is. Horrible but true. I’m just another tool, just the lens the real bombardier looks through. Just the button he pushes.
What bombardier, you ask?
Oh come on, get real.
I thought of calling him, how’s that for crazy? Or maybe it’s not.
“Call me anytime, Dink, even three in the morning.” That’s what the man said, and I’m pretty sure that’s what the man meant—about that, at least, Mr. Sharpton wasn’t lying.
I thought of calling him and saying, “You want to know what hurts the most, Mr. Sharpton? That thing you said about how I could make the world a better place by getting rid of people like Skipper. The truth is, you’re the guys like Skipper.”
Sure. And I’m the shopping cart they chase people with, laughing and barking and making race-car sounds. I work cheap, too . . . at bargain-basement rates. So far I’ve killed over two hundred people, and what did it cost TransCorp? A little house in a third-rate Ohio town, seventy bucks a week, and a Honda automobile. Plus cable TV.
Don’t want to forget that.
I stood there for awhile, looking at the telephone, then put it down again. Couldn’t say any of that. It would be the same as putting a Baggie over my head and then slitting my wrists.
So what am I going to do?
Oh God, what am I going to do?
XX
It’s been two weeks since I last took this notebook out from under the basement tile and wrote in it. Twice I’ve heard the mail-slot clack on Thursdays, during As the World Turns, and gone out into the hall to get 261
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my money. I’ve gone to four movies, all in the afternoon. Twice I’ve ground up money in the kitchen pig, and thrown my loose change down the storm-drain, hiding what I was doing behind the blue plastic recycling basket when I put it down on the curb. One day I went down to News Plus, thinking I’d get a copy of Variations or Forum, but there was a headline on the front of the Dispatch that once again took away any sexy feelings I might have had. POPE DIES OF HEART ATTACK
ON PEACE MISSION, it said.
Did I do it? Nah, the story said he died in Asia, and I’ve been sticking to the American Northwest these last few weeks. But I could have been the one. If I’d been nosing around in Pakistan last week, I very likely would have been the one.
Two weeks of living in a nightmare.
Then, this morning, there was something in the mail. Not a letter, I’ve only gotten three or four of those (all from Pug, and now he’s stopped writing, and I miss him so much), but a Kmart advertising circular. It flopped open just as I was putting it into the trash, and something fluttered out. A note, printed in block letters. DO YOU
WANT OUT? it read. IF YES, SEND MESSAGE “DON’T STAND
SO CLOSE TO ME” IS BEST POLICE SONG.
My heart was beating hard and fast, the way it did on the day I came into my house and saw the Rembrandt print over the sofa where the velvet clowns had been.
Below the message, someone had drawn a fouder. It was harmless just sitting there all by itself, but looking at it still made all the spit in my mouth dry up. It was a real message, the fouder proved it, but who had it come from? And how did the sender know about me?
I went into the study, walking slowly with my head down, thinking. A message tucked into an advertising circular. Hand-printed and tucked into an advertising circular. That meant someone close.
Someone in town.
I turned on my computer and modem. I called the Columbia City Public Library, where you can surf cheap . . . and in relative anonymity. Anything I sent would go through TransCorp in Chicago, 262
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but that wasn’t going to matter. They weren’t going to suspect a thing. Not if I was careful.
And, of course, if there was anybody there.
There was. My computer connected with the library’s computer, and a menu flashed on my screen. For just a moment, something else flashed on my screen, as well.
A smim.
In the lower righthand corner. Just a flicker.
I sent the message about the best Police song and added a little touch of my own down in The Dead Folks’ Nook: a sankofite.
I could write more—things have started to happen, and I believe that soon they’ll be happening fast—but I don’t think it would be safe. Up to now, I’ve just talked about myself. If I went any further, I’d have to talk about other people. But there are two more things I want to say.
First, that I’m sorry for what I’ve done—for what I did to Skipper, even. I’d take it back if I could. I didn’t know what I was doing.
I know that’s a piss-poor excuse, but it’s the only one I have.
Second, I’ve got it in mind to write one more special letter . . . the most special of all.
I have Mr. Sharpton’s e-mail address. And I have something even better: a memory of how he stroked his lucky tie as we sat in his big expensive Mercedes. The loving way he ran his palm over those silk swords. So, you see, I know just enough about him. I know just what to add to his letter, how to make it eventual. I can close my eyes and see one word floating there in the darkness behind my lids—floating there like black fire, deadly as an arrow fired into the brain, and it’s the only word that matters:
EXCALIBUR.
263
L.T.’s Theory of Pets
I guess if I have a favorite in this collection of stories, “L.T.” would be it. The origin of the story, so far as I can remember, was a “Dear Abby” column where Abby opined that a pet is just about the worst sort of present one can give anyone. It makes the assumption that the pet and the recipient will hit it off, for one thing; it assumes that feeding an animal twice a day and cleaning up its messes (both indoors and out) was the very thing you had been pining to do. So far as I can remember, she called the giving of pets “an exercise in arrogance.” I think that’s laying it on a bit thick. My wife gave me a dog for my fortieth birthday, and Marlowe—a Corgi who’s now fourteen and has only one eye—has been an honored part of the family ever since. During five of those years we also had a rather crazed Siamese cat named Pearl. It was while watching Marlowe and Pearl interact—which they did with a kind of cautious respect—that I first started thinking about a story where the pets in a marriage would imprint not upon the nominal owner of each, but on the other. I had a marvelous time working on it, and whenever I’m called upon to read a story out loud, this is the one I choose, always assuming I have the required fifty minutes it takes.
It makes people laugh, and I like that. What I like even more is the unexpected shift in tone, away from humor and toward sadness and horror, which occurs near the end. When it comes, the reader’s defenses are down and the story’s emotional payoff is a little higher. For me, that emotional payoff is what it’s all about. I want to make you laugh or cry when you read a story . . . or do 265
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both at the same time. I want your heart, in other words. If you want to learn something, go to school.