Her house was much easier to leave than to get to, and I soon found myself negotiating small streets, where wisteria spilled over balconies and hyacinth and jacaranda were in bloom. During the day, these streets were likely bustling, but at night there were only a few unsavory shadows and the occasional cat, and despite the flowers and stars overhead, I was not unhappy to leave them and, after following a long row of pine trees and climbing a steep flight of steps, to arrive at the restaurant. Actually, I am omitting the part where I had to stop and ask directions. The young man I interpolated was exceedingly polite and even called me sir, which was not at all unwelcome. It is only in recent years, and even now infrequently, that anyone troubles him / herself to call me sir. I have wondered if this has anything to do with the fact that for so long I was so heavy, and now I am so gaunt. I look like one of those ancient employees you come across in medium-size family-run operations—the one who, a little wobbly on his / her pins, receives the item the other more limber family members have pulled down. The comparison is faulty only inasmuch as I am, despite the above-mentioned tendency to keel over, somewhat more agile than such individuals. I’m not, in fact, quite that far along, I’m not really far along at all, only to look at.
The restaurant was extraordinarily crowded. The walls were covered in photographs, of various citizens and sections of the city, as well as with rather hideous caricatures, possibly of the owner or some other somewhat distinguished gentleman. Waiters came and went around extraordinarily encumbered tables. An individual was playing an accordion. Another was playing a guitar. I looked for the approximation I knew to be my party, but saw no one who fell within the parameters. Clearly, however, if I took a table, she would find me. I was beginning to do so when a man called to me from across the restaurant. Actually, I’m with someone, I said. She won’t be coming, come over here and sit down, he said. The man, although he had nice eyes, was quite a fucking sight. It looked like he’d had an extra chin sewn onto the side of his face and also, in the throat area, a little like he’d swallowed a couple of tennis balls. It’s not communicable, he said. At least not highly, otherwise they wouldn’t let me in here. It’s just I’m a little busy, I said. With your investigation? You know about my investigation? He smiled. I sat down. What will you eat? I’ve already eaten. We both know that’s not true. Then I would like some boiled meat. He called a waiter over. The waiter went away. Are you …? No questions please, he said. We sat there. I listened to the accordion and the guitar. I don’t know what he did. The food arrived. I asked him if he would like some. He declined. He leaned forward and I could see his shoulder holster. I wondered if this was him. I’m not him, if that’s what you are wondering, he said. I was. Well, I’m not. The gun has nothing to do with this or with you. Well, that’s good, I suppose. Eat, now, he said. I did. The boiled meat was excellent. He poured me a glass of wine, which I quickly polished off. More? he asked. Yes, please, I said, registering that I was beginning, slightly, to enjoy myself. I was a little disappointed or disgruntled or put off or taken aback, but I’m doing much better now, I said. Good, he said. What’s wrong with your face, anyway? It’s a condition. I’ve had those. Not this one you haven’t. He had very pretty green eyes and delicate eyebrows. I was about to remark that his face must at one point have been quite sympathetic, perhaps even handsome, I had even settled on a way to say this very politely, had planned to make an allusion to a book I had once heard summarized, involving a tortoise someone had covered in gold, although actually the tortoise had ended by dying badly, from the gold, ah well, I would have omitted that part, when he leaned forward and asked me if I recognized him. No, I said. I was terribly handsome before all this. I can believe it. But you don’t recognize me? No. Well then let’s leave it. We did, but it troubled me a little afterward. I have been told many times that the old forget, that this is part of their reward for having lasted so long, but when it happens, or when I am aware that it is happening, I derive little satisfaction from it. Usually what I forget are key words and phrases, so that I look even more foolish than usual in clever company. The unpleasant episodes, which have been legion, I remember. The pleasant episodes, such as that visit to that earlier city on the coast, I also remember, but such memories pain me. The memory of her hands and of her back and of her lovely, careful movement pains me. Just as the memory of the way I think it may have ended makes me sick. You haven’t changed, he said. Someone told me recently that I looked much better than I used to. I don’t agree. I thought you said we were going to leave it. We are. Good. Go over and tip the accordion player. What? Put a tip in his basket and compliment the young guitar player, he’s really coming along. I stood. I had the idea that I would just walk right out of the restaurant, go home, drink a beverage, put a pillow over my head, and wait for whoever was coming for me, but when I reached the accordion player he jazzed up his tune and looked at me expectantly, and the guitar player, who really wasn’t that bad, did the same. So I reached into my pocket, pulled out some bills, and made to place them in the little basket that sat between them on the table. Only I saw that there was an envelope there. Should I take this? I asked the accordion player. Tip me and compliment him, and you can take anything you like. All right, I said. I dropped the bills into the basket and paid the young man an exaggerated compliment. The two beamed at me and I beamed back then picked up the envelope, turned, and discovered that my interlocutor was gone. When I reached the table, I saw that he had left enough money to cover my meal and also that he had left me a note wrapped around another note. The first note read, put this note in the envelope. I opened the envelope. It was empty. I thought for a moment, then decided that by “this” he was referring to the second piece of folded paper. I put it in the envelope, which I then licked and sealed. Then I sat down, had a sip of wine, thought a little about my interlocutor’s chin (and here is when I settled on the image of the swallowed tennis balls), decided it wasn’t so bad, his chin, wondered if I had known him, decided I had, thought about the investigation, smiled at the musicians, then took out the tiny dagger, cut open the envelope, unfolded the piece of paper it contained, and read the following:
Go home now. Digest. The boiled meat may cause problems, I am suspicious of it. I will have a strong antacid put in the medicine cabinet. Three weeks from tonight at 11 P.M. go to the southwest entrance to the public gardens. Wait.
Three weeks from that night, I went there and waited. Afterward, after I had stood waiting all night, I realized it was possible I’d been given a significant clue, one that might hold the answer or something like an answer, but at the time, having waited three weeks for that moment, and then being involved in that moment, to use the word “moment” in its more expansive sense, I was mostly just pissed off.
But in the meantime, there were those three weeks, and it occurs to me that it might be useful to give some account of them. After all, it was during this period that I learned the identity of the old woman and heard what she had to say about a key event in my life, although this isn’t to say that I believed her. Her account of that event was by no means the first I had heard, and, if you have followed any of what I have set out previously, you will no doubt have some sympathy for my attitude toward her revelations. If, in fact, you could call them that. I think it would be more accurate to call them opinions and interpretations, maybe even slander. After all, by her own account, she wasn’t in the room when it happened, when I received the punitive portion of my first disaffirmation. Which, incidentally, was nothing compared to the second in terms of sheer excruciation. They did several things to me before they threw me down the well, and, as one of them remarked after they sent the so-called spelunkers down to retrieve me, it was curious that I had not bled to death. So you can see why, among other reasons, certain of them might have felt obliged to treat the requests I made at my exit interview with extra attention, or at least why they pretended to have done so. I think she was definitely hands-on involved, the old woman I had known briefly as a young woman told me. And do you think she was the person I encountered some time later? Do you? she asked. I’m not sure. But you said you spent a fair amount of time with her. Most of it was in the dark, and before the lights came back on, the body, if it was hers, was wrapped in tape. Couldn’t you have exhumed the body? I had just buried it. So—you could have gone back later. I don’t want to talk about it. Fine, what do you want to talk about? I thought for a minute. Are you a prostitute—is that what you’re doing with your retirement? That’s what you want to talk about? Yes. Who says I’m retired? Well, I thought you must be. Just exactly how old do you think I am? I didn’t answer, as I wasn’t sure, not at all. So right now, talking to me, you’re on the job? I said. Is the blindfold too tight? she said. No, it’s fine, but why do we need the blindfold now—I know who you are. Have you gotten a good look at me? No. That’s why we need it. I don’t understand. And so on. I mean my interaction with her, once the cards, so to speak, were on the table. If there was a table, if there were any cards.
Also during those three weeks I had my body manipulated. I have taken, in recent years, to having this done occasionally. I found it helped greatly, following my fall down the well, to undergo the realignment process the procedure entails, and also to lie on the comfortable matting or padded table that is provided. I am not against the use of oils or scented candles either, although in general I prefer the sort of manipulation that occurs when my skin remains relatively unsmeared and my clothes stay on. Imagine me, a dilapidated older individual, glistening with oil, lying in my poorly filled briefs beneath a towel. Perhaps when I was younger and something of a fatty this image would have possessed some charm. I was not, in those days, against applying the occasional cream to my pleasantly taut (and so deliciously abundant) outer tegument and to ingesting any number of beneficial liquids and solids. My world was not, during that epoch, without several individuals who found corporeal configurations such as mine appealing. And it was really very lovely to present to them an exterior that was as well-maintained as it was abundant. But clearly I have, without particularly meaning to, left the subject far behind. I meant only to convey some sense of a particular manipulation, one that was conducted while I lay on a comfortable mat on the floor, fully clothed. One of the old men from the benches in the gardens had given me the manipulator’s name, describing her, as he did so, as highly capable. Extra to my desire to get some needed realignment, I have always, since my early days, been fascinated by individuals who are described by others as highly capable, which is exactly, one of my early keepers once told me as we were sitting in front of the television, what you are not. I did not disagree and in fact, quite interested, asked this particular individual to elaborate, which he / she did when a commercial came on. A highly capable person is one who is able to do whatever he / she wants to or is asked to or is required to by others. Which you, you fat little bastard, are not. And as I say, far from disagreeing with this assessment, I found it remarkably apt, and found the evocation of these mysterious, highly capable individuals extremely stimulating, and I have made it a point to avail myself of their company, in as much as they will have me, whenever they have been reliably identified. I don’t mean to say that I found the old man’s assessment entirely credible. I didn’t know him that well, and he had some rather suspect, or at least overwrought, ideas on, for example (I had brought up the subject), asbestos removal. There was a curious mechanism once, he had said, built in the shape of a great bull and made entirely out of burnished bronze and silver into which up to three individuals of normal size could be placed. A fire was then lit under the belly of the bull and the individuals were cooked. The interesting aspect of the mechanism was that an elaborate system of pipes channeled the screams of the individuals and converted them into a music that, while not exactly beautiful, was beautifully strange. I don’t think that ever existed, I said. It did, but, alas, I’m not sure where it would be possible to procure one, he said. Where did you hear about it? In a book I’ve just been reading about an unpleasant house. It was during our subsequent discussion of this unpleasant house, which apparently devoured the psyches of its inhabitants as it constantly realigned itself, that we came to the topic of manipulation and how I came to visit the individual he recommended, who indeed proved highly capable and left me utterly satisfied.
One was asked to take off one’s shoes and to lie on a mat fully clothed. Then one was asked to relax insofar as one was capable of doing so. Next, one was told that one would not have to do anything except follow simple instructions, which did, in fact, prove to be very simple, although I worried about carrying them out a little. I have a poor track record with simple instructions. But I did just fine, she said when I asked her, with these, which were of the roll over gently onto your stomach kind. It was the “gently” part that troubled me. And also the question of direction (which way to roll). Once or twice I had, so to speak, and with consequences—in one case a dull burbling sound—rolled the wrong way. And as for the interpretation of “gently,” I’ll just say that I was told, once, to handle someone “gently” and upon beginning, as I thought, to do so, was instructed that I had gotten it wrong. You’ve done everything right, now pay me and you can leave, she told me after I had lain wrapped in blankets for several minutes. I did leave. I felt much better. Then the three weeks were up.
Or almost. Because as I lay there wrapped in blankets, my body realigned, my blood enjoying better circulation, my attention oscillating pleasantly between my highly capable manipulator, who sat in the corner drinking a beer, and a blood vessel that had recently burst in my eye, my thoughts turned to another occasion, some years before, when I had lain wrapped not in blankets but in towels, following a swim. I really didn’t think much about this, likely it would be more accurate to say I remembered, not thought, or to say it came to mind. It also came to mind, and I don’t say it did so accurately, that as I lay there, a woman came in and sat down beside me. This woman, if she was there, and if it was her, was beautiful, but also terrible, like something that should not have been, at least not in my company, and despite my exhaustion, I made an effort to sit up. Don’t, she said. Thank you, I said. It was very pleasant and very frightening to lie, exhausted and wrapped in towels, with her, my love, if it was her, sitting completely naked beside me. Part of the mechanism of this memory is that I was never certain. Afterward they told me that no one had come in and sat down beside me, although I had spoken about someone in my sleep. I believed them until a few months later when I thought I saw her again. Which shouldn’t matter to anyone besides me. Or should it? Clearly now I am thinking again.