The Mirror Thief(197)

Where is he?

The agent shrugs. Still in Atlantic City, he says. Last I heard, NJSP was looking to bring him in. They didn’t have him yet, but they were getting close. I understand he’s seriously ill. His mobility’s restricted.

Curtis shakes his head. If Stanley’s still breathing, he says, then NJSP is not as close to him as they think they are. And I highly doubt that he’s still in AC.

Okay. Where do you think he is?

He’s wherever Damon is. And vice versa.

The agent makes a skeptical face. I know it doesn’t make much sense, Curtis says. But that’s how it is with those guys. They’ve got the goods on each other. They’ve got something to settle, and they’re gonna settle it. The question is where.

The guy’s rollerball hasn’t touched his notebook. So your advice on how to find Damon Blackburn, he says, is basically to find Stanley Glass. And vice versa. Have I got that right?

My advice, Curtis says, is that I hope you have better luck than I did. That is pretty much my entire advice.

The agent pulls his tie from his pocket, smoothes it across his breastbone, replaces it with the inkstick. Mister Stone, he says, I should let you know that I am not anywhere close to being done with you. But I do wish you a speedy recovery, and I thank you for your cooperation today.

No problem, Curtis says. Hey, do me a favor, though. I’m starting to hurt pretty bad here. If we’re done for now—

Sure thing, the agent says. I’ll get the nurse.

The nurse comes, messes with Curtis’s IV, and soon everything’s flattening out, becoming dull and vague. For a second, he has an answer to the agent’s question—it’s obvious: he pictures The Mirror Thief lying on Veronica’s coffeetable, dropped on the Quicksilver carpet—but then the drug snatches it away, and he lets it go. He wants to quit thinking very soon.

A warm swell of tears fills his half-empty eyes. He waits quietly and thinks of Damon until the medicine finally finds his brain, until he can’t remember anything anymore except the weightless surge of planes taking off—out of Ramstein, out of Philly—until he knows nothing of his own past, until time seems to have stopped and he feels like he is no one at all.

Curtis. Add up the letters of the name, they come to four hundred eighty-two. Autumn leaves, it means. Or, believe it or not, glass. Add those three numbers—four plus eight plus two—you get fourteen. A gift, or a sacrifice. To glitter, or to shine.

Sometime later—minutes or hours, it’s hard to know for sure—a telephone somewhere nearby will start to ring.

When the cops and nurses burst into his room, Curtis won’t even be aware of the sound. He’ll wake grudgingly, blinking at the overhead lights as cops gather: whispering into cellphones, setting up a recorder, stretching the cord of the hospital phone until the base rests next to Curtis on the mattress. He’ll watch their busy mouths as they talk to him, and he’ll nod, although he’ll understand nothing they say. And then, as someone’s finger mashes the phone’s SPEAKER button, he’ll angle his head, and he’ll try to listen.

Somehow he’ll know right away. He’ll hear the ghostly whine and hiss—long distances, strange satellites—and know exactly who’s calling, and from where, and why.

But he’ll ask anyway. He can’t help himself. Stanley? he’ll say. Is that you?

And then, after a long moment, you will answer him.

Good morning, kid, you’ll say. Or good evening I guess it still is, where you are. Been a long goddamn time, hasn’t it? I’m glad to hear your voice.

You won’t keep Curtis long. Not because of the cops—what can cops do to you now?—but because there isn’t much to say. Or there’s too much. Anyway, you’ll keep it simple. You’ll say thank you. Then you’ll say you’re sorry. Then you’ll say goodbye.

Another gust: the hotel window rattles. You hear churchbells ring, the scream of a gull. You draw the blankets tight around your chin.

In another minute or two you’ll get up, make the call. You put the kid in a bad spot, so it’s the least you can do. You should phone Veronica, too, while you’re at it. See if she found what you left her in the airport locker. Her inheritance. That’ll be a tough goddamn conversation. But you guess it ought to be done.

Veronica. Three hundred eighty-eight. A hard stone, like flint, or quartz. To veil. To conceal. To spread out. To be set free.

First things first: you should go to the window. Slide your feet to the slick hotel floor, grip your cane, rise. Somewhere down there—among the fruit-and flower-vendors in the Campo San Cassiano, the bundled old women on the bridge’s dainty steps, the black gondolas that slide down the mucus-gray canal—Damon is hunting you. He must know he’s running out of chances to do this his way: with each passing minute you slip farther from him. So you expect him soon. When he turns up, you want to be ready.

He’s an annoyance more than anything else. A distraction. You had big plans for coming here, but you waited too long. You’d hoped to make a last trip to the Bibiloteca. The lady librarians are probably relieved today to get a break from your questions. What’s this mean in English? How do I locate that?

You’d like to have seen more of the city, too, of course. So far it’s been mostly Disneyland bullshit: cameras and fannypacks, glossy maps and flapping pigeons. But every so often there’s a moment—a name on a sign that you know from Welles’s book; columns and windows that echo buildings on Windward and the boardwalk—that’ll freeze you in mid-step: trying to peek through the gap before it closes again, trying to see past overlapping screens of truth and fiction to Crivano. But it’s hard to catch these moments, hard to keep yourself loose and open to them when you’re looking over your shoulder all the time. Damon has spoiled this for you, too. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter, but it does.