Arc VII
Chapter 57
Booze, gunpowder and tobacco.
"You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you."
Haruki Murakami - 1Q84
"Can you sing?"
"No," she shakes her head and her smile gives her away.
"Well, perhaps you can dance."
"Nope."
Now it's his turn to smile and it shows. It's been three years of this life, the longest he's spent his days with someone else, the longest he has let someone in.
"Alright, but you must have a talent," he retorts as his forearms land on the bar. "Some kind of talent… Everybody has a special talent," he insists. "Can you pour me a drink? Listen to me while I talk to you? Cause people here want someone they can talk to, so can I talk to you?"
He can. He knows he can.
She slides her hand across the bar and her fingers play with his hair. It's been three years; he's now one hundred and… who cares? He's older than time and it feels like it's always been that way. Ageless and hers. Timeless and no longer private. And she's forty… something now; he's not really sure. He knows when her birthday is, they have celebrated it for three years now, but he's always suspected something.
He has a theory.
He believes that days are shorter in Outworld. Shorter than the days in Earthrealm. And if he's right about this, that means she's younger than what he believes. Not much younger, though, but a bit younger.
A bit younger is enough.
It gives him hope.
She says he's a wrinkle in history. Something so old that just… he tends to forget what she says sometimes, his memory is not as good as it was before. In his defense, he'll say that she always changes the end of the sentence, so maybe it's not really his fault if he can't keep up with all her insults – especially when she gets creative.
And she gets creative quite frequently.
And he laughs and says: "Hey, I might be older than time but at least I'm not gonna grow old and die."
Then they both laugh.
It's terrifying.
What? You don't think he's funny? Don't worry, he's been called worse. There was a time when they didn't think that line was funny either. Then they changed their minds. But is it truly funny? Or is it cruel? Or belligerent? Or, let's say, lovely?
They don't know anymore so it's settled: it is what it is.
He hasn't seen that face in a very long time. The red beam contaminates the room and he can't see past the mercenary and his goons. Or perhaps the crimson distraction is just that, a distraction. Perhaps his eyes are fine. Perhaps he can't see past the mercenary because there's nothing else to be seen.
He never delivered. He never helped him. he just used him, time and time again.
Desperation can be more dangerous than a weapon.
Kano never helped him find his missing girlfriend. Then he failed, again, when he turned the other cheek and denied him of the chance of confronting the ghost that haunted his every dream – the same face, the same eyes he sees every time he looks in the mirror.
"What do you want now?"
He's got nothing left to offer and he knows he should have not come. But there's one thing Kano never managed to take away from him: the last bastion of his hope. That's why, every time that man would call him, he would always pick up the phone.
"Our leader has fully recovered," Kano begins, "it's been three years, we thought he'd never walk again but the son of a bitch is stronger than we thought."
"Your leader?" Nathan asks. "You don't strike me as a follower."
He isn't.
"The thing is, during these years, we've been working hard. We've recruited new members, we've indoctrinated them… but the Syndicate is weak. It can't rise without substantial support from our loyal sponsors."
A sponsor. That's what he was.
"I'm out," Nathan says as he stands up. "Unlike the last time we had this conversation, you got nothing to offer. You never found her, guess you never even looked for her. Why should I be your pawn again now?"
The tense silence in the room cannot seem to mirror the smile that suddenly takes over the mercenary's face.
"Oh, but I did find her," he says, "did I forget to tell you?"
His heart is a drum, but the rhythm is clumsy. The heat, the questions, the agonizing happiness are all beats he's not used to. His composure flies out the window and his coherence goes next. What? When? Where? How? He becomes the list of questions that cannot trespass his own mouth. Turns out Kano has something to offer after all.
"Tell me what you need," he pleads, "I can get an airplane from my company, or a car, or a boat, we'll be on our way in no time."
Kano shakes his head.
"No airplane. No car. No boat." The smile is still there. "We leave tonight."
"Tonight?" Nathan asks. "When will we be back? Can I at least call home and tell my wife that I gotta go on this unexpected business trip? Can I say goodbye to my kids?"
"Whatever," Kano whispers as he shakes his head in quiet desperation.
"How long ago did you find her?"
The mercenary doesn't answer his question and the man explodes, suspecting that he's been lied to and manipulated for years. All the time they lost, the years that are gone, the dreams they had to bury.
Kano walks up to him and his hands land on Nathan's shoulders.
"Now, for this ride, you need a ticket, pal," he says.
"A ticket?"
Kano nods.
"A ten million dollars check."
He knows that kind of money will undoubtedly jeopardize the future of his company. He knows he won't be able to justify this transaction. But his signature kisses the paper and his shaky hand salutes the devil once again. The ultimate price has been paid, and now he's got a ticket to ride. No airplane, no car, no boat. The light surrounds him and swallows him whole. It's warm, but not entirely welcoming. Uncertain, but not entirely final.
He likes to play bartender from time to time; he thinks that's what happens when you get used to living a more or less normal life. But the world is upside down, and this side of the portal the docile lights of mundanity could be enough to make a priest blush. This side of the portal, a doctor recounts her days as a prostitute and a mercenary ends up being the most honest man around.
But when the lights go off and the last patron leaves, the night offers some comfort for those whose meridians don't seem to match the typical geometry of life.
A soft caress of warm air brushes her sex and she knows, for she has felt it before, and the motion follows without warning. The tip of his tongue draws a long curl upward and then it plummets down her heat. But then, it goes up again, a little curl and down again. And again – it goes up again, another little curl and then it goes down again.
Almost there.
A full circle is next, and then his tongue dances horizontally – just once. Then up again and down again and up again and down again. The woman drowns in her pleasure, but she can't hold back the smile. She has felt it before. She has spelled it out before. Then she grabs him by the hair and forces his head up until their eyes meet:
"Did you just write your name on me?" she asks, and the mercenary looks proud of his creation. "With your tongue?"
He can be so sheepishly naïve sometimes that it's hard to believe his childhood took place eons ago. Can he still remember his days as a little boy? How can he even manage to understand a place like Outworld in a mind so ancient?
He's adaptable, she remembers. Still, it feels far from being enough to understand that the boy that existed oh so long ago and the man who embraced his own infinity in the shape of a world that's not even his can be the same person.
As her mouth lands on his mouth, the woman wonders: how many mouths have been there before hers? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?
He's an avantgarde retrograde - both primitive and postmodern. He is the little boy who grew up in rural Texas and he is the eccentric cowboy that exists in a land where cowboys were never a thing.
A fine, rich – but at the same time misplaced – oddity.
She sits on his lap and admires the mystery of his skin, her scientific curiosity is mesmerized by his skin – old and new at the same time, eternal and evergreen, yet destined to disappear someday. His skin contains traces of those who are long gone, but it seems incapacitated to contain those whose existences are confined to the distant future. And she sighs in the dark and tries to tell memories from ghosts – for him, with him, in spite of him. Oh, you conundrum of ancient knowledge, you university, you endless pool of accumulated wisdom.
The years he has lived, the number of days he has lived… the numbers are obscene and disheartening, how can she think of him as her love when she's only going to exist for a fraction of his time? Then the concept of irony reappears briefly, as the woman rides the cowboy – is it possible to feel that old, original pain? The first-time pain. How long has it been since you've been with an Earthrealmer? Does it feel the same with an Outworlder? She can explain with medical precision every single thing that's bound to happen during the act – but she never does. His years of experience always cloud her judgment: he's like an encyclopedia.
She laughs.
The whore becomes a virgin when she's touched by his eternal fingers.
Underneath humid moans, they still remind each other of a time long gone.
"Where are we?" Nathan asked as Kano guided him through the nightly landscape of the Kuatan Jungle. "What is this place? Is she really here, or is this yet another one of your tricks?"
The mercenary stops and wonders, for a moment, if he should feel offended by the accusation. But then he resumes his march.
"Yeah, she is."
"Then let's go get her."
Another pause in the ride indicates the younger man that the mercenary is reaching the limits of his diminished patience.
"It's not that simple," Kano whispers in the dark. Far, beyond the green canopy, the yellowish lights of the city seem fatuous and melancholic.
"How did she manage to get here?"
Nathan's voice is an echo in the hot wind. The smell in the air is but a mirage for his senses: booze, gunpowder and tobacco… he should have finished the cowboy when he had the chance, all those years ago, in this very same jungle.
"And how the fuck am I supposed to know that?"
Without the Syndicate, money's tight, but they manage. There's no use holding on to the past if you're not going to honor it. So they honor it. The House of Pleasure and The Wise Bird merged into a single sanctuary for lost souls and so The Wise House was created. No longer a dumpster for broken women that people feel free to discard at the margins of society, now the girls wait tables, sing, dance and pour drinks. No one is forced to bed anyone to reach a monthly quota, and even if they know that prostitution is not completely off the table, at least they find comfort in knowing that each one of the girls is finally free to choose how they want to spend their days and with whom.
"It really is a shame that there are no pictures of Rosario," the doctor whispers as her head rests on Black's chest. "I think she would have liked this, I think she would have liked The Wise House."
A soft grunt escapes Black's throat and reaches the atmosphere.
"What was the deal between the two of you?" the doctor asked. "Even if I was the one who spent years under her wing, I still feel like you knew her better than I ever did."
She's right.
"She was gorgeous when we first met," he remembers, "it's still hard to believe she's gone…"
Sometimes his words remind her of the fact that time for that man does not represent the same thing it does for nearly everyone else. Sometimes the topic fades away, but they both know all solutions are only temporary. The topic will always resurface. It will always return.
"I used to be a regular client when I first came to Outworld, she was one of my favorites," he confessed. "She was the old owner's protégé, and when that woman died, Rosario took over. I remained her only client – her personal client. I have always told myself that Zar had been the reason why I stopped coming, but time proved me wrong. I stopped coming because Rosario had aged, and the image of an old lover was sad and depressing. She was able to do what I could not – I was growing older too, but it was impossible for people to notice because my body remained young."
A short pause helped her digest his words. But the true tenor of his confession still lingered there, all over her. Nobody can dance the rhythm he suggests, but it's not because his rhythm is frantic – it's because his body is completely rhythmless. No-one can stand still for that long, but he can.
He does.
"What are we waiting for?" Nathan demanded, unable to fall asleep in such a horrific place. "Why can't you just tell me where she is so I can go to her?"
"Because you would ruin everything," Kano retorted. "Have you considered what are you going to tell the woman you sleep with every night when you get home with your old girlfriend?"
Nathan shook his head. The commotion had taken his senses by surprise and now, at the gates of resolution, his confusion seemed greater than ever before.
"Then excuse me if I don't think you'll be able to keep your cool the second you see the woman you've been searching for almost half your life, mate," the mercenary stated coldly. "We'll have to be patient and draw them out."
"Them?"
"Oh, did I forgot to mention? Your girlfriend's married to another man, but I guess that makes it even between the two of you, right? It must be nice to know that she wasn't alone during all those years without you, some people call it poetic justice…" the words were an unpleasant surprise for Nathan. "What? Don't tell me you thought you were the only one that had the right to move on?"
He never moved on. And Kano knows this.
"Hang in there, Romeo. Luckily for us, one of our most valuable associates must be reaching the Palace as we speak," the mercenary laughed. "You won't have to wait that long."
"How old were you when you stopped aging?"
He doesn't remember the exact number. He guesses thirty-something and tosses the idea in the air, for her to play with it.
"Sometimes I wish I could take a sample of your blood and have it analyzed; you know? Then I look at your teeth, your gums… I try to keep up with the math, but I always fail. My mind is far too pragmatic to believe in magic – but here you are, and here I am, trying to deduce the biology of this trick of yours."
She sits on the bed, plays with her hair. Then her eyes meet his again, and she looks far from satisfied.
"Considering the gap of time between your current age and your age back then, when you stopped aging, I believe that you must age one year every X amount of years. But I can't remove the X from my equation, you don't look older than a forty-year-old man so how big is the interval between stages of your aging? I can't seem to figure it out."
He stares at her; his expression is a perfect mix of tenderness and concern.
Her mathematical precision is accurate. He's a museum of loss and pain.
"How many times have you been with an outworlder?" she asks and it takes the man some time to come up with an answer.
"Twice, maybe three times tops."
"Oh, you're a sexaholic…" She knows he's lying. But it's a kind of lie she can live with.
"Do you know how many pairs of breasts I've seen up until now?" the woman shakes her head. "Neither do I," he smiles, "I must have lost count during the seventies – that was a busy decade."
He's well adjusted. Adapted. He has naturalized time in every single place he's ever inhabited.
He's seen the machinery of time working its magic, and has lived to tell the story.
"I can see why you like this place so much, it has kind of a western vibe after all," she admits.
"Minus the syphilis."
Her laughter is music to his ears.
"I wouldn't be so sure. There must be a local equivalent to syphilis," she tucks her hair behind her ear like a small child and smiles at him: "Syphilis… such a beautiful word. An ugly thing, but a beautiful word…"
"Gonorrhea is, too," he lives in these moments of complete innocence. "And chlamydia. All nasty things, but beautiful words nonetheless."
Every once in a while she forgets that he cannot age. Her perception becomes ambivalent, fluctuating between oblivion and memory. Then she breathes again, and she realizes that the woman who's going to love him more than she does hasn't been born yet.
But then she remembers.
He can indulge himself in the wait.
He is an endless in-between.
That woman hasn't been born yet, but he can wait for her.
Then he holds her in his arms and the uncertainty of the future fades from her eyes. And she falls asleep in his chest, cocooned in the depths of his elongated fate.